.585 Gehringer

The .585 Gehringer is an elephant gun cartridge of the .577 bolt action wildcat family. It was designed over several years by Karl Gehringer, member of the Australian wrestling team during service in the Australian Armed Forces. Like most elephant guns the purpose was stopping power on large dangerous game at close quarters. The test rifle was a CZ-550 .416 Rigby fitted with a .577 Tobler Barrel of 1:22 twist rate. A 2.8" Nyati reamer and 3.25" Bertram brass was used to create a unique case length of 3.06" and the rims were rebated to the original .416 Rigby boltface.

In 2001, Woodleigh 750gn softpoint and FMJ bullets were tested to 2350 ft/s as a suitable hunting load. Geoff McDonald of Woodleigh also provided a special run of 900gn softpoints for the rifle.

Case capacity
200 grains to case mouth.500

Power
Power is dependant on the practicalities of gun weight and recoil. Like most 3"+ 585 wildcats it will exceed 2600 ft/s with a 750gn bullet for near 11400 ft.lbf muzzle energy (roughly 4 times the power of 7.62 Nato).