A caliber question for you. An old friend called recently
and said he was getting a group of 4 handgunners together for a Grizzly hunt in Sept. I hated to pass it up but not knowing if my vision problem will be cleared up by then, or if the vision problem would be cleared up, period. So
I had to pass. He needed to know by March 1st so I had no choice but to pass.
This brings up a question. If you were on a Grizzly hunt in Alaska, limited to a handgun, what 2 calibers would you choose? If I didn't pass on this hunt My two calibers would be the 476 GNR in a 15" Encore barrel at almost 1800 FPS. The second one would be my old stand-by 510 GNR revolver, strictly as a back up with the 350 JSP at almost 1300 FPS. I had taken an African lion with this revolver so if I did my part it would be up to me.
If you were going on this Grizzly hunt what 2 calibers would you take with you? Seriously, no jokes.
I have a pair of those myself, I concur
Having been in bad breath distance of a wild Grizzly. Back then I had My .510 revolver and a .440 GNR. I was hunting Blacks but I carried some special ammo just in case for Grizz!
George, our guide was quite surprised. He said I was the very first to have shown up with custom "Paper Patched' big bore ammo. I had read Seyfried long ago and mimic'd his cue. Not having any .430" bullets over 325 gr. I "paper patched" some 410 gr. Hornady .416" FMJ bullets. I bumped them up to around .432", lubed the paper with alox, and with a good dose of H322 they worked their way up to 1900 fps from the 14+2" Encore. That was about all I could stand. I felt as safe with that rig as I could have with anything.
I bought the .476 GNR barrel from Puffy. I have some Barnes 500 gr. bullets for it. That would do about anything with some reserve.
The MIGHTY .476 GNR end all load, a 500 gr. Barnes monolithic solid.
![[image]](images/uploaded/2026030603281069aa49ca33b1e.jpg)
I think the fact that it is an absolutely balls
to the wall round and scares a lot of people off. I thought about loading it for my African lion hunt couple of years ago. John (our PH) told me a lion is a thin skinned animal and there were several other cartridges that would do just as well without flattening out your nuts. I think Blake used it on his lion.
The only problem with the 476 GNR is you get one round off and are fighting the recoil of that one round when you need to be sending a second round his way.
The best thing I can say about the 476 GNR is "it works".
I flattened my second Asian water buffalo
At one of the HHC with with my 476GNR Encore with a 400gr LBT. one shot in the shoulder put it down. And it flattened the Lion on my last African trip with Gary and the guys. The round I used in Africa was 500gr Hornady dangerously game round. Copper plated steel jacket with enough IMR 4198 to push to 1900fps. It is one bad ass round! I practice reload one round right after another. Fast and clean , as hot as those rounds were, the empty case fell right out of the barrel. I would brake the action open with the barrel pointed up after the shot the case would drop right out then quickly point it down, drop a new round in and level the gun off as I closed the action and was ready to shoot again in a couple of seconds.
Yeah, the action was ready for the next round, but were you?
Doing the test of the new rounds a while back. Sean did most of the testing but I did more than my share. Which on cartridges like the 476 GNR, one round was enough.
I bought 4 boxes of the Hornady
500g dangerous Game bullets I used 3 boxes in load development and training.
Had a hard time finding a scope that could handle the recoil. The 2 power Burris did the trick. I would shoot 25 rounds at a session sometimes. So yea I was as ready as I could be. That gun always draws a crowd at the shooting range. In fact all your guns draw a crowd 