When facing down a charging elephant, size matters. Robert Ruark encouraged dangerous game hunters to "use enough gun," and it doesn't get much bigger than the 4 bore.

From Samuel Baker to John Ross, the 4 bore rifle is defined by history, heroics, and heavy recoil, and some of the finest examples of the genre past and present can be found at Rock Island Auction Company.

What is a 4 Bore Rifle

Originating in the late 18th century, the 4 bore gun is defined by its massive bore diameter. Antique examples ranged from 0.93 to 1.05 inches, depending on the maker, and were designed to deliver a massive ball, conical bullet, or blast of shot downrange.

The 4 bore was used for waterfowling, military applications, and taking some of the largest game animals on Earth. Early manufacturers included Holland & Holland, Purdey, Manton, and numerous other English gunmakers. In the case of the 4 bore rifle, the firearm carved out a legacy in colonial Africa and India thanks to its unmatched stopping power.

An engraved Ken Owen "Owen-Rewa" double rifle, a modern example of the 4 bore gun.

Birth of the 4 Bore

Massive firearms were developed in the black powder era to take on elephants, Cape buffalo, gaur, and other deadly giants. Sir Samuel Baker, one of the first widely published big game hunters, commissioned some truly colossal rifles including a 2 bore gun nicknamed "Baby" that fired a "half-pound shell."

This W. Parker patent marked 2 bore flintlock dangerous game rifle from The Norman R. Blank Collection is similar to Samuel Baker's famous "Baby."

Baker also recommended the 4 bore, a slightly more manageable monster of a weapon like the example below dating from the last decade of the 18th century. Where the earliest 4 bore guns were muzzleloaders, breechloading options like famed London gunmaker Henry Nock's patent of 1787 hooked breech design sped up the reloading process.

A rare Henry Nock 4 bore flintlock dangerous game rifle from The Norman R. Blank sold for $7,638 in December 2023.

The percussion lock was another important advancement in 4 bore design and offered greater reliability. One of the guns favored by famed British hunter Frederick Courteney Selous was a percussion 4 bore rifle. Selous praised the weapon as the most effective firearm against elephants, though his prolific use of the powerful gun resulted in shoulder issues later in life.

An engraved "Jno. Rigby & Co." and J. Purdey 4-bore percussion rifle from The Norman R. Blank Collection sold for $16,450 in December 2024.

In George Peress Sanderson's 1878 book, 'Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India: Their Haunts and Habits From Personal Observations; with an Account of the Modes of Capturing and Taming Elephants,' the British naturalist and hunter detailed numerous firearms used during his service with the public works department of Mysore. He captured wild elephants destructive to agriculture and felled aggressive animals using a 4 bore, an 8 bore, and numerous other elephant guns.

When comparing the effectiveness of lighter loads like the 14 bore to his preferred 4 bore, Sanderson wrote, "There is as much difference in the power required to kill by a picked shot and to stop a changing elephant as there is to move a locomotive at rest and to arrest it when at full speed."

In 'Thirteen Years Among the Wild Beasts of India,' George P. Sanderson details the power of the 4 bore gun against the mighty elephant.

A single shot, rolling block 4 bore rifle weighing 22 pounds was among the guns carried by Henry Morton Stanley's 1871 British Expedition to Abyssinia. Stanley famously traveled through Africa in search of Dr. David Livingstone, locating the Scottish physician near the shore of Lake Tanganika. The rifle is stamped on the tang "H.M. Stanley."

From the NRA National Firearms Museum, this 4 bore rifle was used by British journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley on his famous African expedition.

4 Bore Evolution

The Jones 'under-lever' or 'double grip' patent of 1859, today known as the rotary underlever action, allowed for some immensely sturdy designs. As W.W. Greener wrote in his 1871 book, 'Modern Breech-loaders,' "The double grip is considered by all practical gunmakers to be the strongest and most durable arrangement."

This translated well to the 4 bore rifle and shotgun. Examples manufactured by R.B. Rodda & Co. of Calcutta, India offered the ultimate stopping power for the well-heeled Victorian hunter, noble, or maharaja who could afford such a grand and expensive firearm.

This incredible engraved R.B. Rodda 4 bore double barrel rotary underlever dangerous game hammer rifle with case, manufactured circa 1880-85, sold for $58,750 in RIAC's August 2022 Premier Auction.

While impressive masterworks, the exceptional 4 bore rifle examples pictured above and below each weigh in at over 20 pounds, a hefty mass to help absorb some of the thunderous recoil. Each gun is calibrated from "100" to "200" yards and engraved with the instructions: "SHOT WITH SPHERICAL BALL/CHARGE OF POWDER 9 DRS/CURTIS & HARVEY’S NO. 6."

This R.B. Rodda 4 bore double rifle from the The Malcolm King Collection sold at RIAC in May 2023 for $49,938.

In 1898, the introduction of John Rigby & Company’s .450 Nitro Express smokeless cartridge represented a significant breakthrough in the hunting industry. Higher velocities and longer ranges made more lead less important, and the .450 NE offered impressive power in a much lighter package than the hefty 4 bore.

Holland & Holland's .500/450 Nitro Express and numerous variants of the .470 NE provided even more options for early 20th century big game hunters. The age of the 4 bore rifle appeared to be waning, but the platform would see a renaissance of sorts in the 1980s that has continued ever since.

This engraved Holland & Holland .500/450 Nitro Express sidelock double rifle, manufactured between 1894 and 1905, sold for $32,313 in RIAC's May 2024 Premier Auction.

4 Bore Rifle Ammo

In Clive Phillipps-Wolley's 1894 book, 'Big Game Shooting: Africa and Northern America,' he recommends that sportsmen carry "A single 4-bore rifle, weighing 21 lbs., sighted for 50, 100, and 150 yards, shooting 12 drams of powder and a spherical bullet."

For reference, the 19th century dram measurement was equivalent to 1/16th ounces or 27.34 grains of black powder. W.W. Greener recommended a 10 to 14 drams load for the 4 bore, with the high end of that range powering an 1,880 grain slug at a muzzle velocity of 1,400 fps. Some were even designed to fire 16 dram loads, like the John Ross Rodda & Co. 4 bore featured later in this article, a staggering amount of power from a shoulder gun.

L to R: .30-06, .700 Nitro Express, .950 JDJ, and a modern 4 bore bullet.

Modern designers like Peter Hofer continue to push the boundaries of 4 bore rifle ammo. The Austrian gunmaker recently developed a 4 bore Magnum double rifle designed to fire a 1-inch-diameter 2,000-grain bullet at a shoulder-numbing 2,624 fps.

The Peter Hofer 4 bore Magnum, the largest 4 bore platform in the world today.

The 4 Bore Shotgun

4 bore shotguns were significantly more popular than their 4 bore rifle counterparts in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In W.W. Greener's 'Modern Shot Guns' from 1888, he states, "Two heavy barrels of 4-bore, side by side, are more than the hand can firmly grasp, so many shooters adhere to single guns for wild-following, preferring to lose the chances of a second shot than possess only an imperfect command of the gun."

The single barrel, 4 bore shotgun by Holland & Holland pictured below demonstrates Greener's ideal example. Dating to 1879, the impressive fowler weighs in at 17 pounds. The takedown case includes a loading data label listing "Ordinary Charge/7 1/2 Drams No. 8 Powder/3 ounces shot/Charge for wire Cartridge/8 Drams No. 8 Powder/Cartridge weighing 2 1/2 ounces."

This scarce cased engraved Holland & Holland single barrel 4 bore percussion duck gun from The Norman Blank Collection sold for $22,325 in RIAC's May 2024 Premier Auction.

The double barrel 4 bore excelled more as a punt gun, mounted to the front of a duck boat and designed to spray hundreds of pellets over a wide area. The Thomas Bland & Sons 4 bore punt gun pictured below, from 1909, weighs over 28 pounds and would have been capable of bringing down dozens of waterfowl in a single shot.

Legislation like the Migratory Bird Act of 1918 prohibited anything larger than the 10 gauge shotgun for hunting in the United States, and the United Kingdom and other European countries imposed similar regulations, making the 4 bore shotgun a collecting rarity today.

A 4 bore rifle (left) and a 4 bore punt gun (right), titans of the land and water.

Shooting the 4 Bore

Joel Kolander, Rock Island Auction Company's Interactive Production Manager, had a chance to fire the mighty 4 bore rifle back in 2017 and compare it to other titans of the trade, including the .700 Nitro Express and the .950 JDJ.

"The 4 bore throws the shooter back about as far as the .700 Nitro Express, but the sensation is markedly different and more powerful," Joel explains. "In fact, this was the only rifle fired that day where the sensation of the recoil didn’t end after the shot."

"Think of it this way. After you fire a hunting rifle or a military surplus collector firearm, you fire and then the sensation is finished. You walk away no different. Now imagine you have asked a good friend to haul back and slug you where you normally position the butt of a rifle or shotgun. That sensation doesn’t end as soon as the punch does, it lingers. The same can be said for the 4 bore and its cordite-powered punch."

Joel Kolander fires a 4 bore rifle manufactured by Ken Owen of Memphis, much to the chagrin of his rotator cuff.

Scott from 'Kentucky Ballistics' had a similar reaction when firing his single barrel 4 bore rifle for the first time, comparing it to "getting kicked by a horse." His gun is a custom 4 bore falling block rifle made by William Christian Firearms LTD., serial number 4. Weighing in at 20 pounds, this impressive modern 4 bore shoots 1 inch, 2,100 grain bullets and produces "200 pounds of felt recoil."

The Modern 4 Bore

After author John Franklin Ross's African hunting trip in 1983, he was considered the only living person on the planet to have brought down dangerous game with a 4 bore rifle. Ross helped revive interest in the platform and became one of the modern world's leading authorities on 4 bore hunting and loading 4 bore ammo. Today, there are a handful of dedicated master craftsmen and manufacturers keeping the art alive.

The engraved and inlaid 4 bore double rifle from Rodda & Co., owned by author John Ross, sold at Rock Island Auction Company in 2019 for $126,500.

John Ross used the 4 bore rifle pictured above to take two elephant and two cape buffalo, and the imposing gun served as the inspiration for the 4 bore used by Henry Bowman, the protagonist in Ross' popular 2nd Amendment novel 'Unintended Consequences.'

Ross' 4 bore regulates with 450 grains (16 1/2 drams) of DuPont FG powder and a 1,950 grain conical bullet for 1,520 fps. The gun weighs in at over 23 pounds and has a 14 3/8 inch length of pull.

As Ross recounted, "Some knowledgeable big bore shooters, most notably Ross Seyfried, say these massive black powder guns are safe with appropriate smokeless loads. I was never willing to test that theory, as I own modern nitro 4 bores and the Rodda performs exactly as designed with black powder."

Clayton Nelson of Gunnison, Colorado was one of the most famous custom gunmakers in the modern big bore field.  An ATF letter dated Oct. 2, 1991 explains that Nelson's single barrel designs for a "caliber 2 bore (1.325 inch) and 4 bore (.935 inch)," based around the sturdy Farquharson falling block action, could be classified as sporting arms rather than destructive devices.

For bore size, a destructive device is classified by the ATFas any weapon "which has a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter." Thankfully for 4 bore fans, the definition excludes "a shotgun or shotgun shell which the Secretary finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes" and "a rifle which the owner intends to use solely for sporting, recreational, or cultural purposes."

A custom 4 bore Farquharson single shot sporting rifle made by Clayton Nelson sold at RIAC for $20,700 in 2014.

The double barrel 4 bore rifle fired by Joel Kolander was manufactured by master gunsmith Ken Owen of Memphis, Tennessee in the early 1990s. Owen modeled the firearm after an early 20th century example from Holland & Holland made for the Maharaja of Rewa, India, the only known 4 bore cordite double rifle the company produced in the 1920s.

A Ken Owen 4 bore double rifle, one of only six produced, sold at RIAC in December 2018 for $40,250.

British gunmakers have also contributed to the 4 bore revival. One of the most impressive recent examples is "The African," as it became known in 2011. The project was conceived by Giles Marriott, a renowned dealer in vintage side-by-sides, who oversaw the build from start to finish. Giles' concept was to showcase the skills of some of the finest craftsmen working in the 21st century British gun trade.

Michael Louca of Watson Bros. made the barrels and undertook final finishing, Hayden Hill of Birmingham undertook the actioning and jointing amongst other tasks, and Keith Thomas regulated the rifle. This 4 bore masterpiece was completed in 2022 and sold the following year at Rock Island Auction Company for a worthy $105,750.

This Peter Spode signed, gold inlaid, and dangerous game scene engraved Watson Brothers 4 bore sidelock ejector double rifle weighs a staggering 25 lbs. 4 oz. and is regulated for a 2,000 grain bullet.

2 Bore vs 4 Bore

In a 1996 interview with 'Westworld' magazine, Clayton Nelson said, "Now, as best I know, I've built the only two-bore cartridge rifle in the country, and probably in the world."

More 2 bore rifles have been produced in the years since, but the platform has always been even more of a rarity than its 4 bore counterpart. Gunsmith Steve Zihn of Shoshoni, WY, who specializes in recreations of muzzleloading arms made from about 1730 to 1855, produced one of the most impressive recent designs with his amply inscribed "King Kong" 2 bore rifle, a super heavyweight percussion gun that weighs in at 22 pounds.

A massive engraved Steve Zihn manufactured King Kong 2 bore back action percussion left handed rifle.

The work of gunsmith William Christian has received greater attention in recent years thanks to 'Kentucky Ballistics.' In business from 1990 to 2000, Christian Firearms produced numerous big bore rifles built on the falling block action, including a 25 pound 2 bore titan.

Loads for modern 2 bore cartridges differ, but one configuration pairs 700 grains of smokeless powder with a 3,500 grain bullet, achieving 1,400-1,500 fps and a staggering 17,500 foot-pounds of energy.

This massive William Christian Firearms 2 bore falling block rifle sold for $44,063 in RIAC's August 2024 Premier Auction.

4 Bore Rifle Price

If you're wondering how much is a 4 bore rifle, you've found the right article. 4 bore guns have seen their values soar at auction in recent years, with many examples garnering $40,000 and higher. Part of their lofty price comes from sheer rarity.

Determining how many 4 bore rifles were made is a difficult question. They were never produced in large numbers, and each of these behemoths represents a bespoke custom work. For instance, at the height of the 4 bore rifle's popularity from the 1850s to the 1880s, Holland & Holland produced fewer than 100 examples.

Today's 4 bore rifles are just as scarce thanks to the comparatively few craftsmen producing them and the skill and labor involved in their manufacture. For example, the Ken Owen 4 bore rifle we previously discussed took Mr. Owen approximately "1000 hours" to complete. Youtube personalities like Kentucky Ballistics have popularized the genre with a younger generation, making the 4 bore an appealing option for those seeking a new experience at the range or some bragging rights among friends.

4 Bore for Sale and More

From the black powder safari era to the modern big game hunt, few guns inspire as much awe as the mighty 4 bore rifle. Any fan of history, engineering, craftsmanship, and the adventure of the hunt will appreciate the supreme stopping power of these titanic firearms, and Rock Island Auction offers numerous chances throughout the year to add a 4 bore gun to your collection.

A nearly 19 pound Cogswell & Harrison 4 bore single barrel falling block duck shotgun, built on a giant brass field patent action.

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A McMillan Bros. bolt action rifle in 14.5 JDJ (left) and an MMCI bolt action rifle in .700 JDJ (right).