If a person like me. was to ever get a chance to either buy, steal , borrow & or get to shoot one of these all Time Classics from the Past. I know that I would have an extremely hard time saying no. Just saying that is. Grumpy
he five standard calibers of the Shooting Master: Barrel Markings:
Shooting Master .455 Eley:
Shooting Masters in nickel:
.45 ACP
.45 Colt
Engraved Shooting Masters:
S/N 328185 given to Ed Langrish by Fitz and enscribed as such:
“C” Engraved Shooting Master
All that I know is that if and when I win the lottery Big. Getting my hands on any of these Beauts.
Will be on the extremely high part of “what to do my to do with my newly won loot! list”
H&H by the way, in my book at least. Does not stand for Holland & Holland. But in true, it means Hurt & Hurt some more!
Somebody went out and got themselves a mighty nice piece of tree here!
It looks to me that all this lion tamer needs is a good scope with rings. That & some good quality ammo to feed it!
Nice Tip on it too!
That Gentlemen is one mighty big hole there!
“The .375 H&H often is cited as one of the most useful all-round rifle cartridges, especially in shooting large and dangerous game.
With relatively light bullets in the region of 235 to 270 grains (15 to 17 g), it is a flat-shooting, fairly long-range cartridge ideal for use on light to medium game. With heavy bullets of 300 grains (19 g) and greater, it has the punch necessary for large, thick-skinned dangerous game.
In many regions with thick-skinned dangerous game animals, the .375 H&H is seen as the minimum acceptable caliber, and in many places (primarily in Africa) it is now the legal minimum for hunting such game.
African game guides, professional hunters, and dangerous game cullers have repeatedly voted the .375 H&H as their clear preference for an all-round caliber if they could have only one rifle. Alaskan game guides have expressed a similar preference for brown bear and polar bear country”.
This is part of my series of articles that I have written in the past about postwar Germany right after the end of WWII and before Germany was formed as a republic in 1951.
The surrender didn’t happen immediately, there were cases of German U-boats that didn’t know of the surrender until weeks later.
It’s easy to imagine that once World War II officially ended, the defeated Germans forces were so anxious to get home that they dropped their guns where they stood, stripped off their uniforms, and quickly surrendered from exhaustion, hunger, and stress.
Not quite.
Many German soldiers were caught by surprise when Hitler’s second in command, Karl Donitz, signed the instrument of unconditional surrender in Berlin in 1945.
By then, as we know, Hitler himself was dead of a self-administered cyanide dose in his bunker, along with his mistress, Eva Braun.
But trying to stop a war in its tracks is a little like coaxing a hippo into doing a pirouette: impossible. In reality, it took months for the war to end. In some cases, Germans were terrified of surrendering to the Russians, from whom they feared the worst treatment. In total, the surrender took four months to go fully into effect and halt all skirmishes.
Field Marshall Keitel signs German surrender terms in Berlin 8 May 1945General Alfred Jodl signing the capitulation papers of unconditional surrender in Reims.
When the fighting ceased on the Russian front, many German soldiers raced to reach Allied forces, fearing the Soviets would be merciless in their treatment of POWs.
Along the coast of Gdansk, they fought not for Hitler anymore, but for their very lives. Finally, they had to surrender to the Red Army in early May.
Captured German battle Standards displayed on Red Square after the Surrender.
As the Germans retreated, brief but fierce battles broke out on the Balkan and even on some occupied Greek Islands.
As news of the Allied victory spread, men serving on the German U-Boat 234, loaded with half a ton of uranium intended to aid the Japanese, headed for America instead.
Its captain, Johann-Henrich Fehler, was terrified of being caught by the British or Canadians and felt the U.S. would be less harsh in its treatment of his crew. Two Japanese men on board killed themselves, rather than face detention in a POW camp.
U-234 surrendering. Crewmen of Sutton (DE-771) in foreground with Kptlt. Johann-Heinrich Fehler (left-hand white cap)
Another incident that took place rather slowly was the British recapture of the Channel Islands. Churchill was in no rush to round up the Germans, who had occupied the islands since their invasion in 1940, saying “let them starve.” Eventually, there was a peaceful surrender in mid-May.
Crowds of people gathered outside the General Assurance Corporation building in St Peter Port, Guernsey to welcome the British Task Force sent to liberate the island from German occupation, 10 May 1945.
The bloodiest incident that took place after Germany’s defeat was a mutiny on the Dutch isle of Texel.
Germany had forced some Georgian citizens into service during the war, as part of its Atlantic Wall Defence Force.
However, on April 5th, the Georgians launched a mutiny in an effort to shed themselves of Germany’s control. Resisters killed 800 German soldiers while they slept.
Two wounded Georgian soldiers at Texel in 1945
This infuriated the Germans, who sent 2,000 troops to the island to squash the rebellion. And squash it they did, at the cost of 565 Georgian men, 120 Dutch citizens, and 812 German soldiers. The long-awaited Allied invasion finally happened on May 20th.
Perhaps the best-known individual from the war’s conclusion is U-Boat Captain Heinz Schaffer, who wrote a book about his exploits, “U-977 – 66 Days Under Water.”
Schaffer was given the unappealing assignment of steering his sub to Britain in a suicide mission designed to destroy all the British boats he could before he himself was destroyed.
But when he got word that Germany was defeated, he headed instead for Argentina, where he hoped to find asylum. Unfortunately for him, the Argentine government immediately turned him over to the Americans, who kept the sub as a kind of macabre war memento.
Germany submarine U-977 in Mar del Plata.1945An almost humorous incident took place on Bear Island, in the Arctic. A small group of German soldiers had been sent there to set up a weather station, but when their radio transmission failed, they could not stay in touch. Finally, a small band of Norwegian sealers found themselves in the curious position of being surrendered to, four months after the war was declared over.
Last but not least is Japanese operative Hiroo Onoda, who must be included in any round up of the final events of World War II. Onoda was sent to the Philippines to hinder the enemy in any way he could. He heard about his country’s defeat in a timely fashion but decided he wanted no part of it. Instead, he chose to keep undermining the Allies and so he headed for the hills to escape. He managed to hide there until 1974 when a Japanese official finally went to the Philippines to retrieve him.
Japanese imperial army soldier Hiroo Onoda (R) offering his military sword to Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos (L) on the day of his surrender, March 11, 1974.
When a New Mexico hunting guide reportedly found himself the target of a bear, he dropped his phone and reached for his pistol. It would turn out to be one of the best decisions he ever made. An earlier decision, though, threatened to cost him his life.
He’d been working out his dogs in preparation for the upcoming hunting season when they’d struck a bear’s trail.
The only way to put an end to that was to catch up with his dogs, so he pursued, with family members following. As he approached the fight, he grabbed his not-fully-loaded pistol as he left his UTV.
As an afterthought, he took the GLOCK 20 10mm pistol from his vehicle and shoved it in his waistband behind his cowboy belt.
It was loaded with 175 grain Hornady Critical Duty FlexLock loads. The magazine only had 10-12 rounds in it.
A few months earlier, he had heard the theory of “spring set” and decided not to keep the magazine fully loaded.
He approached the melee, expecting the bear to run at the sight of him. And when he spotted the bruin, he grabbed his phone to take some video of its unusual cinnamon coloration. But the bear had other ideas.
Bridger’s first thought was to get video. It would be an incredible image. Big cinnamon bears aren’t common. The bear would run at any moment, once he saw or smelled the man. Bridger grabbed his phone.
That bear never read the rule book. It didn’t run.
The bear saw Bridger, turned toward him, and flattened its ears back along its head. Its eyes had locked on Bridger.
He’d watched hundreds of bears in similar situations and he knew he’d been targeted. He dropped the phone and snatched the GLOCK from his belt.
A lot happened very fast, but for Bridger, everything slowed down as he went into tachypsychia.
It’s a common occurrence in high stress life-or-death situations. The mind speeds up and events appear to be happening in slow motion. In reality, the person is acting faster than they ever have before.
The bear was coming for him. Bridger elected not to aim for the head. He didn’t want to hit one of his dogs.
He triggered two or three shots aimed at the bear’s body. The bear started to spin, snapping at the wounds, about six feet away.
Bridger decided to retreat. He turned and hopped to the next boulder, then the next. He was mid air to the third when he saw dogs moving past him.
In his fast mind-state, he realized this was bad. As he landed and turned, the big GLOCK in his hand, and saw the bear coming at him like an over-sized NFL linebacker with claws and big, pointy teeth.
Before he could fire again, the bear hit him. They went over the edge of the shelf together, tumbling down a steep, rocky slope in mortal combat.
Although he has no memory of shooting as they fell, empty shells were later found along the path of their descent.
Bear and man stopped down slope, wedged into brush and boulders.
Bridger could feel the bear and frantically attempted to disentangle.
The bear reared erect, jaws ready to strike. Bridger shot him again, in the front of his chest before falling/sliding further down the slope.
The bear pursued him. He screamed at Janelle to stay away.
Bridger tried to kick the bear away from him as it tried to get at his upper body. He couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting his own legs.
The bear dodged a kick, and grabbed Bridger’s right inner thigh in its jaws, lifting him like a dog lifting a rabbit.
Bridger shoved the muzzle of the GLOCK against the bears neck, trying to shatter its spine and shut the bear down. He fired.
The bear released his lower thigh, then grabbed his calf, just below the knee.
The shot missed the spine. Man and bear are still moving fast, but in Bridger’s hyper-aware state, time slowed. He saw an opportunity for a head shot and pressed the trigger on the GLOCK.
Click.
Later, Bridger found bear hair between the guide rod and the slide of the G20 pistol. The hair prevented the slide from returning into battery.
Bridger knew he should still have ammunition left in the magazine, so he racked the slide and saw a live round eject in slow motion.
Fractions of a second later, another opportunity for a head shot presented itself.
The bear ripped at his leg. As the bear tried to tear off his calf muscle, Bridger saw his chance and pressed the trigger.
Blam!
Man and bear went down together, rolling and sliding a bit further down the slope.
Although the bear was dead, its teeth were still hopelessly tangled in Bridger’s calf muscle. When rescue personnel arrived — quickly, thanks to his family’s close proximity at the time of the attack — they struggled and failed to free the meat from the fangs.
Only after cutting the bear’s head off with a pocket knife could they transport Bridger and his now-gray leg muscle.
Which was another problem. After seeing the aftermath of a helicopter crash months before, Bridger had sworn never to ride in a chopper. But that was his only choice…
As he heard the rescue helicopter come in, Bridger started saying “I am not going on that thing!”
The helicopter landed asd [sic] shock was setting in. Bridger started convulsing. Bridger told one of the flight paramedics from the helicopter, a lovely young woman, that he couldn’t ride in that machine.
She hooked up an intravenous drip as they transferred him from the mountain litter to a gurney. “Let me help you get more comfortable,” she said. She reached across and fastened the chest strap, leaned over, lips close to his ear, and said, “Honey, you don’t have a choice.”
The morphine started to hit. The world changed, and Bridger said, “Lets go!”
Surgery took more than 4 hours, and he received more than 200 stitches.
The article says Bridger is “thinking about heavier, deeper-penetrating bullets in 10mm cartridges designed for bear defense, to carry in his GLOCK.”
I’d say that’s not a bad idea… although a revolver chambered for a more powerful round might be a better one.
________________________________ Myself am a fan of the Sig 220 with some GI 45 acp 220 gr FMJ in the magazine. None the less this man put up one hell of a fight! Grumpy
