Elephant gun - Definition and Overview

A elephant gun is a large caliber rifle, used for elephant hunting. Traditionaly, these were very large caliber black powder double rifles, often as big as four-gauge. The development of cordite negated the need for such massive calibers, but most gunss were still in calibers bigger than half an inch, using cartridges such as Holland & Holland's .577 Nitro Express. More recently, very expensive and unwieldy double rifles have fallen out of favor with most hunters, and have been superceeded by more modern bolt action rifles, usually in .416 Rigby or .458 Winchester Magnum