Treasures of history

George Wallace does some digging into his old 1902 Rigby rifle and discovers its storied 20th-century past

- George Wallace

For many years, I have had something of a love affair with what was originally Rigby’s Special Cordite .350 cartridge. It was loaded with a 310-grain bullet, either solid or soft-nosed, at 2,000 feet per second (fps) muzzle velocity. It was for years the most popular medium-bore rifle in Africa. Rigby offered bolt-action, single-shot and double rifles.

My first experience of it was over 20 years ago when I bought a Rigby bolt-action rifle. Although 100 years old, it handled like a dream and performed impressively on two African safaris, a wild boar hunt in France and deerstalking here in the UK. It had an interesting history and might have been handled by Theodore Roosevelt on his 1909/10 safari, but I eventually sold it to a friend and started looking for my true love in rifle design – a single-shot.

Exalted circles

Needles in haystacks and hen’s teeth soon began to seem like an easy option compared to finding a single-shot Rigby chambered for the .350, so eventually I gave up and settled for a double rifle, which was advertised by a dealer in the USA. I thought it was a nice old Rigby rifle until I began to research its history. At this point, it abruptly became much more interesting.