The soul of any rifle is its action. Bell’s wasn’t just a classic; it’s the classic. The first rifle lives in South Carolina and is based on the 1908 Brazilian Mauser, a product of the DMW arsenal in Berlin. Crisp engineering; just cut and reweld the bolt handle to clear a scope. Restocked, this is the classic sporter based on a military action.
The second is on a civilian action, BRNO Model 21, a 1949 small-ring Mauser, now safe in its final home in New Zealand. Why bother? Well, these double-square bridge models are among the most sought after in the world for good reason. Butterknife bolt handle. Double-set, double-phase trigger, barrel band, wonderful iron sights. Again, that bolt handle underwent a little fiddling to clear a scope, but that’s about all.
Both these rifles can be found in 7 x 57 and with barrels that still shoot like crazy. But why do all this for a sedate old caliber? We have newer, sexier rounds that do the same thing, in new rifles, too. Hardly anybody even chambers a rifle in 7 x 57 anymore, so surely we’re looking at the twilight years of a clunker.
Mauser’s cartridge was an astonishingly modern invention way back in 1892, at the dawn of smokeless powder. Not long after, the Englishman John Rigby, wary of anti-German sentiment, simply renamed it for himself, and so we also have the .275 Rigby. Today, lawyers would be involved. Incidentally, mainstream manufacturers are still using Mauser’s bolt action well over a century after he devised it. The equivalent would be someone designing, say, the A380 airbus or the flat-screen TV back in 1892, and it still being in use today.
But one thing at a time: The 7 mm/08 is widely seen as the heir to Mauser’s patent, though why is hard to understand when you look at the facts. It’s a genuinely effective round, but the Mauser has more case capacity, and infinitely more charisma. It’s like comparing a lunchroom microwave to a wood-fired pizza oven—superficially the same thing, with very different reality.
The Mauser case offers much more to hand-loaders, and in factory ammo the old boy runs riot, with loads ranging from 140 grains up to the long, heavy-for-caliber 175-grain projectiles. The light loads are pleasant and remarkably efficient, even by modern standards. They do the job on deer-sized game with little fuss or recoil, and shoot remarkably flat.
It’s at the far end of the spectrum where the old Mauser becomes something completely different, and the ’08 can’t follow. Experts once called the 7 x 57 a ballistician’s delight. When you take a long, heavy, round-nose soft point and send it out at modest velocity—say, 2,600 fps or thereabouts—some strange things happen. The creaky old .318 Westley Richards is a good example. In all the ways that count, it’s the equivalent of the most widely lauded cartridge on earth, the .30/06, yet it’s dead as mutton today. How can that be? It’s that long, heavy bullet and mild velocity. Faster must be better, especially to gun reviewers splitting hairs or manufacturers selling new cartridges. Who wants a slower round?
Well, we do. At least 90 percent of game is taken under 300 yards, a surprising amount at 100. Within those ranges, the Mauser cartridge has accuracy and trajectory comparable to modern hunting rounds, whose zippy velocity (and the blast and recoil that go with it) really becomes an advantage only outside normal hunting range.
At average hunting ranges, the special ballistics of that long projectile come into play, turning it into something most people have never seen, don’t understand, and refuse to accept. Were it not for Bell and his sub-caliber bullets whining off into the mopanes after exiting an elephant’s skull, that secret might have been lost forever.
But there are more factors at play than just the shape of the projectile. There’s spin—not the kind that sells magnums, but twist. Many commercial rounds today have a barrel twist of 1 in 10 inches or more, but many 57s have a twist of 1 in 8 inches, some even less. “Mechanical cruelty,” Colonel Whelen called it. Do the math. One and a half turns to the foot at 2,600 fps. That’s a theoretical 3,900 revolutions per second. Putting aside the fine detail, it’s safe to say that long slug is spinning hell-for-leather when it leaves the muzzle. At modest velocity, and with this kind of ferocious rotation, projectiles don’t need to be high tech. They just work.
There has never been a more successful recipe for penetration than a very long round-nose projectile, launched at medium velocity, with a high rate of twist. And penetration is exactly what Bell was after. So was Hemingway, who wrote so confidently about the “far shoulder” theory. In fact, a whole generation of African hunters argued—are still arguing—that complete penetration of vital organs and bone, along with a splashy exit wound, makes the difference between success and failure, or in some pursuits, life and death.
Ask Jim Corbett, a 7 x 57 fan, who used one in 1926 to take down the famous man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag. Ask the handful of Boer commandos whose 7 x 57s gave the British Empire so much grief with withering long-range fire. Ask Jack O’Connor, who shot the 7 x 57 a lot. Ask the Scandinavians, who’ve been happily tipping over moose with the 7 x 57 for a century, using their excellent ammunition. The heavy soft points may not offer modern dazzle, but they offer penetration in spades, along with a low report and recoil so negligible, Queen Elizabeth owns one. Shot it on safari, too, and at last report had no plans to give it up. Then there are the professionals of the modern era: Mike Rowbotham, Peter Johnstone, Finn Aagaard, Jim Carmichael. In more recent times, Craig Boddington has declared openly that he wouldn’t hesitate to tackle an undisturbed Cape buffalo with a 7 x 57. It would be a brave man to suggest these people don’t know what they’re talking about.
There is a point that must be made with these two Mausers: They aren’t restorations, nor are they an attempt to re-create the Bell rifle. It’s still around, by the way. It was bought by Bob Ruark, who gifted it to Harry Selby’s son Mark, who took it to Botswana in fairly recent years.
No, a strict museum-style re-creation would be a little lame, but a project in the spirit of the thing is another proposition altogether. Keep the action, keep the enigmatic old caliber, keep the simplicity. Above all, keep the charisma. As any gal will tell you, charisma counts.
