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The most powerful sporting rifle in the world

By Mike Hanlon
March 26, 2008
The most powerful sporting rifle in the world
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March 26, 2008 There are a few videos doing the rounds on Youtube at present showing people firing the A-SQUARE Hannibal 577 Tyrannosaur rifle and getting blown away with the recoil. It’s not surprising, because the monster gun is actually purpose built to stop charging Rhinos, Hippopotami, rogue elephants and it gained its name because it could indeed stop the biggest dinosaur – it’s the most powerful sporting gun in the world and shoots a 750 gr bullet at 2700 feet per second – the recoil of the 13 pound, US$4000 gun is so powerful that despite three mercury reducers in the butt plus a huge pad area, it kicks like a mule.

There’s also an excellent video of A-SQUARE proprietor Arthur Alphin discussing the gun and its origins with David E. Petzal. Arthur explains that the gun came about from a request from a Namibian professional hunter who had a tourist/client who wounded an elephant just enough to make him very angry, but not enough to kill it, and the hunter’s close call in dealing with the charging elephant.

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8 comments
Mike Hanlon
Mike Hanlon
As a photojournalist, Mike’s work has been published in a dozen languages across 20+ countries. He has edited or managed over 75 different print publications, each with a different target audience: sports, automotive, advertising, marketing, design, ad infinitum. Mike has been working in the internet for more than 25 years and was the veteran of five internet start-ups before founding New Atlas in 2002.

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8 comments
Dave B13
For it to be the most powerfull \"sporting\" rife in the world you have to exclude the many brands that shoot the .50 BMG. Also I\'m surprised the Tyrannosaur does not come with a muzzle brake. Both these things are pretty widely known. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.50_BMG 800 gr (52 g) Barnes 2,895 ft/s (882 m/s) 14,895 ft·lbf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM_Hecate_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_brake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.577_Tyrannosaur 750 gr (49 g) Monolithic Solid 2,480 ft/s (760 m/s) 10,240 ft·lbf
Gregg Eshelman
If anyone ever does a movie based on the story \"A Gun for Dinosaur\", this one should be in it.
Fresnel Blake
.577 Tyrannosaur is patently NOT the most powerful sporting cartridge in the world. That honor goes to the .950 JDJ, a 3,600 grain (half-pound) bullet fired at 2,200fps for a total of 38,600 foot-pounds of force, roughly the same as an early, WW1 tank cannon. The 80-110lb rifle needs to be affixed to a tripod, because firing it from the shoulder would shatter your bones, even after the use of a super-efficient muzzle brake. Assuming it did not shatter your bones, the force of the bullet resisting the rifling would twist the rifle out of your grip.
Normally, any bullet larger than a half-inch is considered a \"destructive device\", but SSK Industries got a sporting use exemption (the same kind of thing that keeps .72\" 12-gauge slugs from being banned) for his round. It may seem like pointless one-upsmanship, but I hear it is the single most accurate long-range round fired from a man-portable system. No reasonable amount of wind is going to redirect a half-pound projectile from the course it was set on.
Samantha Renault
A species of black rhino was declared extinct just last week. Elephants are on the decline. Seems people like to kill elephants despite the fact that they mourn their dead, show emotions and intelligence, and sometimes even bury dead humans for reasons unknown (something they do for no other animal). But whatever, not easy enough to kill I guess, humanities got to step up its game if we want every other animal extinct before the end of the century, I think we can pull it off.
Spike Elex
Well I\'m all for hunting any animal with any weapon, its the greatest benefit of being at the top of the food chain. I think this is a great cartridge even if it is not actually the largest on the market today for wildcats.
Ethan Brush
Everyone, please keep in mind the legality of any other round you might mention as bigger than this. In most states the big fifty is the largest round you can fire legally. So, the \"half pound round\" that someone mentioned is completely ridiculous. That thing sounds more practical as a ship sinker than an elephant dropper. Do the math on that thing, .227kg * 670m/s/s= 152 Newtons of recoil force. A 140lb person weighs 63 Newtons. Ouch.
J.Carter
Dear Ethan. 63 Newtons is not 140 lbs !! ( Kgr # Newtons). Also, I liked the way you calculated kinetic energy and the sentence \"do the math ....\". Yes : Ouch.
Charlie Harnett
"Arthur explains that the gun came about from a request from a Namibian professional hunter who had a tourist/client who wounded an elephant just enough to make him very angry, but not enough to kill it, and the hunter's close call in dealing with the charging elephant."
Am I missing something? I would think the penalty for being off target when elephant hunting is that the elephant wins for a change.
So, we design a bigger rifle? Why not just hunt with a tank? At what point does it stop being "hunting" and become "slaughter?" That you can do at the stockyards for a lot less money.