Feature & Exhibit Detail

View All Features & Exhibits

Royal Grade Double Rifle presented to Theodore Roosevelt

In the Arena, 2nd floor

Holland & Holland, Ltd. English (London), 1909. Photograph by John Fitzgerald. Courtesy of the Frazier International History Museum.

By the late 19^th century Holland & Holland rifles had become the standard for big game hunters, and this double-barreled rifle is arguably the best-known weapon made by the company.

This was the most powerful gun ever owned by one of history’s most famous sportsmen, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1908, Roosevelt considered going to Africa on safari with his son Kermit after he left office. The huge undertaking became a combined safari/vacation/scientific expedition that would cost some $75,000, part of which was underwritten by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, with other expenses to be offset by income that Roosevelt was to receive from Scribner’s Magazine for his exclusive accounts.

Roosevelt wrote to Kermit “I think I shall get a double-barreled .450 cordite… It is no child’s play going after lion, elephant, rhino and buffalo.” Perhaps acting on this knowledge, this rifle was built in 1908, and in January 1909 Edward North Buxton, a personal friend of Roosevelt and a well-known hunter, together with a group of 55 British zoologists and sporting enthusiasts, presented the rifle as a gift. In a note of thanks to Buxton, Roosevelt called the rifle “a perfect beauty. The workmanship is like that of a watch…I cannot say how delighted I am with it.”

Kermit Roosevelt recalled “it shoots very accurately, but of course the recoil is tremendous....so severe that it became a standing joke as to whether we did not fear it more than a charging elephant!” This monster of a rifle later acquired the unofficial nickname of “The Big Stick,” derived from Roosevelt’s famous quotation “speak softly and carry a big stick,” itself from a West African proverb.