The .577 Tyrannosaur

I ran across this video of some folks, at what appears to be a range outside the US, shooting the .577 Tyrannosaur:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQJSZs-euZU[/youtube]

You can find some background on the round here:

As A-Square loads the cartridge, it fires a 750-grain bullet at 2,460 feet per second, for muzzle energy of more than 10,000 foot-pounds. For the record, the case will hold 180 grains of H4831! No other company loads the cartridge or makes the brass, but since brass, bullets, and loaded ammunition are once again readily available from A-Square, securing a supply is less difficult than for many other big cartridges.

Jim Smith, the new owner of A-Square, says the first question anyone asks about the Tyrannosaur is “What’s the recoil like?” Since there are a couple of videos floating around the internet showing several people being thrown across a room when firing it, your long-suffering correspondent would like to assure you that it simply is not like that.

The Hannibal rifle employs Art Alphin’s “Coil-Chek” stock, which minimizes recoil in heavy cartridges through proper stock design rather than gadgets like muzzle brakes and recoil reducers. However, Art conceded the Tyrannosaur needed something more and put three reducers in the stock. So equipped, it weighs about 13 pounds.

10,000 ft-lbs of muzzle energy?   Holy recoil batman!  But hey, if your goal is a last ditch defense against a charging elephant, I’d wager you’d need every bit of it.  Now I really want to shoot one.

7 thoughts on “The .577 Tyrannosaur”

  1. If it really is a .577 cal, it’s a DD subject to NFA taxes. Also, I think i’d want the rifle to be a bit heavier.

  2. I want one. Almost everyone shooting in that video had no business shooting it. Most were leaning back away from the rifle and visibly scared of squeezing the trigger. The last guy did fine, he was pretty much the only one who was hding it properly. You can get away with a lot of bad habits with an AR mousegun or even something more substantial like a .270 but when you step up to that type of cartridge you have to repect it and use proper technique. Gotta love the guy who had the butt on his arm, I wonder if he broke it…

  3. No, the secretary can, and the secretary has, exempted some sporting cartridges like the .577, .600 and .700 Nitro Express rounds and the .577 T-Rex

  4. Those guys lle have a horrible stance for firing a heavy rifle, no wonder they are tipped off balance. I have shot the .600 and .700 and they are controllable if you can handle heavy recoil. Read Keith and Taylor before you try it.

  5. There’s even a .975 JDJ that’s not classified as a destructive device.

    And I really want to shoot one. I got to shoot a .458 Lott the other day, which is more on the order of 500 grains at 2400fps, so it’s only about 2/3 the energy of the Tyrannosaur. It was fun. :)

  6. It’s hard for me to imagine what shooting it must be like. The 50 BMG rifles have extensive porting and other features to reduce felt recoil, plus they are heavy. The Barrett M82A1 weights nearly three times as much as the .577 Hannibal Rifle does.

    I can’t imagine anything you can do with the stock is going to make that rifle comfortable to shoot, but it’s light enough to carry around comfortably at 10lbs, at least. While the .50BMG actually generates more muzzle energy (12000-13000 ft-lbs), I would imagine the .577 Hannibal Rifle is much much more of a shoulder breaker. No one is going to want to slog a Barrett around on the savannah though.

    Nontheless, I want to try one.

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