B & R Photography

Hello all and welcome back. I want to start by saying I apologies for missing last week but I ended up quite sick and unable to write a blog post.

This week we are going to look at the .50 Alaskan. Which up until recently I never even knew existed. One of the shops I order from regularly recently sent me a package of excess brass that they had, this was any singles left over from barrels after they packaged up their 50 and 100 packs for sale.

One of the many pieces included was the .50 Alaskan. Which honestly doesn’t come with very much data. So little so that my cartridge book doesn’t even have any info on it so keep in mind some of this info was hard to find.

Designed in the early 1950s the .50 Alaskan was a wildcat. The designers Harold Johnson and Harold Fuller had decided that they needed a rifle that was capable of handling the large bears that roamed the Alaskan coast.

The .50 Alaskan is a .348 Winchester case necked up to accept a .510” diameter projectile. The original projectile was a 720gr Boat-tail 50BMG cut in half with the rear section seated upside down in the .50 Alaskan case. It was said that they never recovered one of these slugs as the shot through any big brown bear no matter the direction. They also received bullets from Barnes weighing in at 400 grains.

Looking at Buffalo Bore load data if you take a 450gr projectile you can fire it at 2100 fps which gives it 4,406 ft-lb of energy at the muzzle.

As far as trajectory goes for the above-mentioned load you get the following projectile drop when zeroed at 100 yards:

200 Yards: 7.93 inches of drop.

400 Yards: 62.45 inches of drop.

600 Yards: 200.52 inches of drop.

(Please note the above trajectory information was pulled from https://www.buffalobore.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=163 )

Short Notes.

Official Name: .50 Alaskan

Year Designed: 1950s

Designed by: Harold Johnson and Harold Fuller

Parent Case: .348 Winchester

Rifling Twist Rate: 1:20” (Seems to be the average however I see some listed at 1:18” and another up to 1:36”)

Maximum Point-Blank Range: Roughly 200 Yards.

I hope you enjoyed this brief overview of the .50 Alaskan and will return next week for our Cartridge of the Week series.

Please remember to always practice safe muzzle control when dealing with firearms and happy shooting.

B