ALL BUT FORGOTTEN

“I STUMBLED ACROSS A NEW COMPANY RIGHT HERE IN THE STATES THAT CAN, AND WILL, MAKE ANY CARTRIDGE CASE YOU WANT. ROBERSON CARTRIDGE COMPANY USES A CNC LATHE TO TURN EACH CASE, RESULTING IN A VERY UNIFORM AND CONSISTENT PRODUCT WITH A DIFFERENT MOLECULAR STRUCTURE THAN DRAWN CASES POSSESS.”

I’ve long been an aficionado of the “golden age” of African safaris, including its literature—and especially its rifles and cartridges. Those years when safaris really got going—from 1900 to 1914, and then again from 1919 to 1940—saw a parallel era of cartridge development, with some of the newly introduced designs going on to become undeniable classics ... and others fading into obscurity.

The .375 Holland & Holland, .416 Rigby, .404 Jeffery, .333 Jeffery, .275 Holland & Holland and the .470 Nitro Express were all released before the outbreak of the Great War, and while some are household names, others have long become unavailable or remain a rarity at best. Among those is a simple, little cartridge that kept popping up in those classic books, as well as in my research on the famous hunters of the era—the .318 Westley