Sporting Round
The ballistics of the 7×57mm became popular with deer and plains game hunters. The relatively flat trajectory and manageable recoil ensured its place as a sportsman's cartridge. The 7×57mm can offer very good penetrating ability due to a fast twist rate that enables it to fire long, heavy bullets with a high sectional density. This made it popular in Africa, where it was used on animals up to and including elephants, for which it was particularly favoured by noted ivory hunter W. D. M. Bell, who shot 1,011 elephants using a 7×57mm rifle, when most ivory hunters were using larger-caliber rifles. Bell selected the cartridge for moderate recoil, and used 11-gram military full metal jacket bullets for reliable penetration. Bell sectioned an elephant skull to determine the size and location of the brain, and used careful aim to ensure bullet placement in the brain.
The 7×57 was also the favored cartridge of Eleanor O'Connor, wife of famous hunter and author Jack O'Connor. Eleanor accompanied her husband on multiple hunting expeditions all over the world, killing small and large game with the 7×57mm. Though not as popular today, the 7×57mm is still produced by most major ammunition manufacturers and many modern rifles are available chambered for the cartridge.
The 7x57 was also used by the famous Indian hunter Jim Corbett to hunt the famous "Man Eaters of Kumaon," the various tigers who terrorized the villagers of the Kumaon region of India.
Read more about this topic: 7×57mm Mauser
Famous quotes containing the word sporting:
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)