“The tiger slipped through a passage between the enclosure and an adjacent storage building, where it fatally attacked the 43-year-old keeper,” latimes.com reports. “It appears the gate wasn’t properly shut.” D’oh! “The zoo was evacuated and a SWAT team was called in, police said. But before it arrived the zoo’s director managed to kill the tiger by climbing onto the storage building and shooting it through a skylight using a high-caliber rifle.” I wonder what type of rifle the zoo’s MD used?
Harsh.
What kind of rifle is that in the pic?
Merkel rx.helix.
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A Merkel with a Kahles scope? I’ll let the tiger maul me for that!
hell, with that the tiger shouldn’t have a chance to maul you.
That’s lotta $$$$$
That’s sad that he killed the tiger. There are 7+ billion people on this planet and the Siberian Tiger is a critically endangered species.
The Siberian tiger in the wild is endangered. A tiger in a zoo is just a oversized cat.
That is a beautiful firearm in the picture.
The only round that Merkel is chambered in that could be considered a “dangerous game” round is 9.3×62. Not saying that’s what they used, but it would be what I would use in that rifle if I wanted something dangerous “dead right now.”
Out for a big cat, I’d take a .50 Beowulf. Lots of stopping power and fast follow up shots. Either that, or a “normal” caliber like a .375 H&H.
9.3×62. that’s what, a 35-37 caliber bullet out of a 30-06 length case. is it comparable to or better performance wise than the 35 whelan?
IIRC, 9.3 x 62 is a skitch higher in terms of velocity and muzzle energy than the 35 Whelen.
Similar. It pushes 230-300 grain bullets to roughly .300 Win Mag energy levels, close to a .338-06 wildcat, and had less energy than hot .375 H & H loads.
thank you all, good info. i have some experience with the 300 win mag so that gives me a yardstick to measure it by.
Correct.
The 9.3×62 was developed by Otto Bock in Berlin, 1905, for the express purpose of providing a more powerful rifle for dangerous African game that could be afforded by the German colonists in what is now Namibia. English double rifles cost an arm and a leg. Putting a new barrel on a Mauser 98 costs much less… and this was the express purpose for which the 9.3×62 was designed.
The canonical load is 286 gr at about 2500 to 2650 fps produces 3700+ ft-lbs at the muzzle. Before the 60’s, it was the most widely used non-military round on the African continent, and it has taken all of the “Big Five” and then some.
About the 9.3×62, in his book “African Rifles and Cartridges,” John Taylor (go look him up if you don’t recognize his name immediately) said this: “There isn’t really a great deal to say about it. Everybody found it so generally satisfactory that there wasn’t anything to start a discussion.”
When I examined what published records of Mauser (that I could find) between the World Wars, I found that over 25% of all the sporter rifles they produced were chambered in 9.3×62. In Europe and Africa, it is a deservedly popular round, and it is gaining more traction here in the US as a “do everything” round in the Mauser action.
I’d bet that SWAT team was sorely disappointed that they didn’t get there in time to shot the tiger.
Assuming that the distance of the shot was probably easier measured in feet instead of yards, I would think anything more powerfull than say a .30-30 would be enough gun. What I mean is shooting through a skylight on top a storage building would be a VERY close shot. Sad about the tiger, sadder about the zoo employee.