My new squirrel gun.....P. Webley & Son in .577

[Brian H]

I was at a gun show yesterday and went way outside my comfort zone on a whim. I picked up this P Webley & Son in .577 Snider, 28" barrel, it's in fantastic shape with a few light pits in the right bore. The story I received was that the original owner was a Colonel in the British military who ordered it in the military calibre for ease of finding ammunition. It went to the 2nd generation and wound up for sale in Victoria as an estate item in the mid 90's. I bought it from that person. I have found out quite a bit about the calibre being the mainstay for the British military for years and was used around the world. It's having a bit of a resurgence with all the Enfield musket conversions and Martin's chambered in .577 Snider in the market. You can make the casing out of MagTech 24 gauge brass and Lee sells a die set. The load is ~500 grain bullet moving about 1250 fps. This one has a fixed site and 1 flip leaf, so the Tiger was in your sites at 25 and 50 yards. This vintage is around 1885 I believe so no loading data on the barrel flats.

I have looked at the Express forum but there picture posting is a pain in the @#%. If anyone has any good information on the proof marks and your thoughts I would love to hear from you. There are only a couple of examples of hunting rifles in this calibre on the net and no rifles from P Webley & Son in this vintage prior to joining Scott. I also posted at double gun.

Best regards!