The clip on the Wolf site notes next to this book, “Definitive book on large calibers from 8mm to .600 Nitro with more than 60 chapters containing load tables and commentary on the guns and cartridges. The best book ever done on big bores!” Not really, actually, not at all.
It’s unfortunate that this book is not listed for what it is, a collection of antiquated reprints of articles from Handloader and Rifle Magazines, and that virtually all of this material has already been reprinted in other Wolfe books such as “Wildcat Cartridges” and Wildcat Cartridges Combo”. In fact, Wolfe conveniently omits date of publication from their listings, so the book shopper can’t tell how old or new of a book is being offered. In the case of Big Bore Rifles and Cartridges, the book is 11 years old and comprised of data that clearly has limited shelf life.
I believe that most people seeing the title would anticipate mostly magnum cartridges .375 H&H and larger, but as noted, bore size begins at 8mm, which I believe would suggest perhaps the oldRemington 8mm Magnum. In fact, the 8mm Remington Magnum is covered as a newly introduced magnum. I don’t believe most people would anticipate coverage of the .33 Winchester, the .35 Remington, the “Winchester’s Latest ’94” .356 Winchester and the Remington .350 Magnum as fair inclusion. By noting the .600 Nitro Express, the inference is that big bore British cartridges receive reasonable coverage, but this is clearly not the case with most of the true big bore cartridges, at least by bore diameter, is dedicated to mostly low pressure black powder cartridges for use in old black powder firearms.
Setting aside the issues of cartridges covered and dated articles, I’m just not waiting for an answer to the question, “Are .35 calibers brush busters?” or for a review of Remington’s Model 600 .350 Remington Magnum. Where there is legitimate cartridge coverage: 404 Jeffery, .416 Rigby, 416 Remington and Weatherby cartridges, .450 Ackley, etc., the data is so old there are bullets from companies that no longer exist, and powder selections that have been made obsolete by more current availability. The photos and reprint quality are tragic, there are some with whole sections of image missing in the best tradition of a broken copy machine.
If there is a benefit to owning this book, this might be found in the coverage of the .348 Winchester derivative Alaskan series of cartridges, which are covered extensively from .348 Winchester to .50 Alaskan. Another area that might be of interest is the historical information and significance of some cartridges; some black powder, some smokeless. Personally, I find the .358 Norma Magnum and interesting cartridge and I like the idea of the now obsolete 8mm magnum, but not enough to buy a book with hundreds of other less than useful pages.
When I couldn’t locate a copy in Amazon, they were selling them for $26 with their extra gun book $1.99 special handling charge, I picked my copy up on the Wolfe site for $10.95 – about the price of a seasonal special news stand magazine. When I was fact checking the Wolfe site, I found the price had been increased to $19.95, clearly not worth this price.
Thanks
Joe
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