I had spent day after day practicing with the Lott, ramping up for the opportunity to take an “own use” elephant in the Kasika Conservancy, with all the meat going to feed the Kasika people and the tusks, if there were any, going to the conservancy as well. In the Caprivi Strip, the Chobe River separates the nations of Botswana and Namibia. On the Botswana side, the area includes the Chobe Game Park and one of Africa’s most travelled tourist destinations. On the Namibian side, it is far more undeveloped, and there are far too many elephant in the area—on both sides of the river. As a matter of fact, the animal I hunted for six days and ended up taking was declared a “problem” by Namibia Game and Parks due to a bachelor herd’s refusal to leave a village. Contrary to popular opinion, elephant in that part of Africa are nowhere near endangered and, in many areas, are dangerously overpopulated.
The Beast
It was the power of the .458 Lott cartridge that drew me to choose it, as it is a considerable step up in power from the .458 Win. Mag. Based on the .375 H&H Mag. case and introduced in 1956, the .458 Win. Mag. has a belted case tapering from 0.513 inches ahead of the belt to 0.483 inches at the case mouth. Factory tables, likely exaggerated at the time, originally quoted the cartridge as moving a 0.458-inch, 510-grain bullet at about 2,130 fps through a 24-inch-barreled rifle.
A gunsmith, big-game hunter and one-time technical editor of Guns & Ammo, Jacque P. Lott hunted Africa often, and he was almost killed in 1959 when a .458 Win. Mag. failed to penetrate to his satisfaction on a Cape buffalo. That set Lott in search of .45-cal. cartridge with more power and penetration than was offered at the time in .458 Win. Mag. Lott was looking for a .500-grain, 0.458-inch bullet in the 2,200- to 2,300-fps range from a 22-inch barrel. With no factory cartridge available, he decided to make his own.
The .458 Lott, too, is based on the .375 H&H Mag., but the maximum cartridge overall length is 3.600 inches—0.260-inches longer than the 3.340 inches of the .458 Win. Mag. One of the virtues of the Lott is that .458 Win. Mag. ammunition can be fired out of a .458 Lott-chambered rifle, which may be helpful in remote parts of the world. I say “may” because it helped me not at all.
According to its factory data, Federal Premium Safari Ammunition’s 500-grain Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer .458 Lott loading delivers 2,300 fps.at the muzzle and 5,875-ft.lbs. of energy. The same bullet in the company’s .458 Win. Mag. factory load leaves the muzzle at 1,950 fps. delivering 4,221 ft.-lbs. of energy. Over an Oehler Model 35P, out of the 24-inch-barreled Caprivi at 15 feet, the Lott load ran at 2,283 fps—very close to the factory number—with 5,786 ft.-lbs. of energy. That is more than 1,500 additional ft.-lbs. of energy over the .458 Win. Mag.
The Federal loading I chose uses the Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer, which has a thick bronze jacket bonded around its lead core. It has a flat meplat (marked with a “T”) and is designed for straight-line, deep penetration. The 500-grain bullet in the Lott has three relief grooves around its shank to improve accuracy and reduce pressure, which, judging from my range sessions, seems to have indeed helped with the former.
Between zeroing, testing for accuracy and practicing before the trip, I fired more than 80 rounds of .458 Lott and another 60 of .458 Win. Mag. I knew the rifle well. Off a Caldwell Lead Sled DFT II (which I broke a weld on at round 24) it delivered a 1.17-inch group at 100 yards. Off sticks at 50 yards, I could keep three shots within 4 inches while working the bolt with alacrity.
I have had relatively few genuinely unpleasant experiences with firearms. The majority of them involve the .458 Lott cartridge. A friend who worked with Lott once said of the cartridge: “It’s unpleasant; just like the man who made it.” It is not really the cartridge’s fault; it is merely doing its job, delivering a powerful blow sufficient to fell the largest beasts that walk the earth. The Lott’s most recent transgression? The sin of omission. For the latter, blame cannot actually be assigned to the cartridge; that belongs to the crack baggage-handling team in Atlanta.
I have shot five rifles chambered for .458 Lott—owned two and broken two (neither Kimbers)—and must say that the Caprivi is the one that handles the recoil best, points most naturally, shoulders quickly and is utterly reliable. The name is derived from the narrow strip of land in Northeastern Namibia that linked what was German South West Africa to the Zambezi River and Germany’s former colony on the East African coast, Tanganyika. And I was fortunate enough to take one there to the wild land that gave the rifle its name.
The Caprivi does not have a true magnum length action—one that would accept say a .416 Rigby—but it is built on the 8400’s 1.365-inch-diameter, cylindrical receiver and accepts certain magnum cartridges. The ejection port is 3.51-inches long, so complete .458 cartridges must be just slightly angled for insertion into the magazine. The heart of the Caprivi is its dual-opposed locking lug bolt, which borrows from both the Model 98 and the Arisaka. The claw extractor is on the bolt’s right, and there is a three-position wing safety on the bolt shroud’s right.
