Our story yesterday about James Bond’s ghillie telling Daniel Craig in Skyfall “This is your father’s hunting rifle” being a possible solecism has provoked huge correspondence. In Britain, we “hunt” with hounds not with rifles. However, the gun handed to Bond is not a shotgun (as we said) or a hunting rifle but a big-game rifle.
“Americans have hunting rifles but the British use stalking and big-game rifles,” explains Jonathan Young, editor of The Field. “The double-barrelled rifle wielded so deftly by Commander Bond is an Anderson Wheeler .500 Nitro Express big-game rifle, usually employed on large dangerous game, such as buffalo, but also, in 007’s hands, effective on Mercedes and helicopters.”
Would Bond’s father have such a gun on his Scottish grouse moor? “A lot of landowners had rifles for big-game hunting,” says Young.
