GOING GREAT GUNS : A Good Shoot ‘Em-Up With Some of These Powerful Weapons at a Sports Fair Can Bust You Up

NORCO, Calif. â€”  For sport shooters, the annual Shooting and Hunting Sports Fair at Linc Raahauge’s Pheasant Club represents a chance to try out what’s new in the shooting sports, from trap and skeet to handgun silhouette shooting to air rifles.

At this year’s fair, Friday through next Sunday, shootists will have opportunities to put some big blue marks on their shoulders and to bust up some knuckles.

Fairgoers will learn not just what’s big, but what’s biggest. Manufacturers of the .460 Weatherby, the world’s most powerful rifle, and of the .454 Casull, the world’s most powerful handgun, will be here, allowing visitors to test-fire the weapons.

In Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” films, he identified the .44 magnum revolver as the world’s most powerful handgun. Then, he was right. Now, however, it’s Casull’s .454, a 3.2-pound, stainless steel cannon.

The other day at Raahauge’s, Beverly Hills writer Rick Hacker was test-firing a Casull at a paper target--wearing gloves.

“These are shooting gloves,” Hacker said. “A big handgun like this can tear up your hands pretty good. You’d have bruises all over your hands the next day if you fired 30 or 40 rounds with this thing.”

Shooting gloves, slightly padded, look like handball gloves, with roughly half the finger exposed. Hacker loaded the Casull with five rounds and rapid-fired all five. When he finished, he looked at his right hand, at a trickle of blood running down his right index finger.

“See? I got a little careless,” he said. “This thing has such a huge kick, you need to grip it tightly. If there’s any play in your hands at all, it’ll bite. On that last round, I relaxed just a little, and the trigger guard knocked my finger.”

The Casull, manufactured for the last three years by Freedom Arms of Freedom, Wyo., retails for about $1,000. It’s too big for metallic silhouette shooting, or any other standard competition handgun shooting.

“Most people who buy the Casull are big-game handgun hunters or fine gun connoisseurs who like the idea of owning the world’s most powerful handgun,” said Jim Morey of Freedom Arms. “We make several thousand of them a year. The design dates back to 1952, when Dick Casull first came up with the concept for the gun.”

The single-action .454 Casull has a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet a second, or roughly twice the energy of a .44 magnum. Freedom Arms has a promotional video showing slugs from .44 and .357 magnum revolvers bouncing off quarter-inch steel targets, leaving dents. A .454 Casull slug leaves a neat, round hole in the steel.

The Casull is so powerful that it’s a five-gun, as opposed to a six-gun. The shells are so big that even the .454’s huge cylinder can hold only five.

Hunters in Africa have killed elephants and cape buffalo instantly with one shot from a Casull. Big-game hunting guides in Alaska, particularly brown bear guides, carry Casulls as side arms.

The Casull is so powerful that it can even kill small game by missing.

“Just the shock wave from a Casull slug hitting the ground near small game like squirrels kills them,” Hacker said.

Hacker, who collects antique firearms, brought a working replica of a handgun that once carried the “world’s most powerful handgun” label to the firing range.

It was an 1847 Colt-Walker .44, a black-powder gun manufactured for the Army by Eli Whitney for the Mexican War.

“These things quickly got the nickname horse pistols, because they were so heavy, they pulled the soldiers’ pants down,” Hacker said. “So they started putting the holsters on their saddles, with many guys carrying two of them that way.”

Hacker fired a few cap-and-ball rounds with his Colt-Walker. The gun had a rolling recoil, more like a shove than the violent, whiplash kick of the Casull.

“Until 1935, when the first .357 magnums were made, the 1847 Colt-Walker was the most powerful handgun ever made in America,” Hacker said. “But it had a short life. Only about 1,000 were made in 1847. Today, it’s an extremely rare gun (Hacker’s is an exact replica, made by Dixie Gun Works in Union City, Tenn.) One in good condition today is worth around $10,000.”

In muzzle velocity, of course, the .460 Weatherby rifle far exceeds the Casull. The Weatherby fires a shell as long as your index finger and has a kick that can knock you backward into the next ZIP code.

The big Weatherby’s muzzle velocity is 2,700 feet a second. It weighs 10.5 pounds and retails for about $1,200. The rifle comes with a “de-kicker” device at the barrel--a vent allowing exhaust gasses to escape--but still produces a jarring, powerful recoil.

Weatherby rifles have been made for the last 43 years at the same South Gate location where about 100 employees manufacture hunting rifles of nine calibers.

Sometimes, Weatherby spokesman Larry Thompson said, a 110-pound woman handles the biggest Weatherby more easily than a 210-pound man.

“Most men try to outmuscle the rifle, and they take a harder jolt,” Thompson said. “But a small woman just rolls with the punch.”

Like the Casull, the Weatherby isn’t a target gun. It’s strictly a big-game rifle, or the rifle for the collector who wants the biggest.

The shells cost $50 for a box of 20. In remote areas of Canada and Alaska, they’ve been known to fetch $100 a box.

So when you line up to pull the trigger at the Shooting and Hunting Sports Fair, understand if the Weatherby people limit you to one shot. It works out to $2 a shot.

Besides, your shoulder’s not going to like it anyway.