If you like firearms and adventure stories, and you've never seen the movie The Ghost and the Darkness, you really should. As we've discussed here at NRA Family, that movie chronicles one of the strangest and most shocking true stories in modern memory. The movie stars Michael Douglas, a pair of man-eating lions ... and a Howdah pistol.
In the movie, that Howdah pistol is used to hunt lions. But that wasn't what it was designed for. It was created to hunt tigers.
Tigers weren't always endangered, and at the time of the pistol's manufacture, they were regularly hunted to reduce livestock depredation and, of course, to stop predation on human beings. This was often done as a mounted hunt, on elephants rather than horses, because tigers are incredibly dangerous game. It was paramount that the hunter have a quick-reloading, heavy-hitting handgun that wouldn't jam or let dangerous gasses escape ... and that was the Howdah.
"Necessity is the mother of invention. You have a need, someone will find a way of developing something to fulfill it," NRA Museums Director Phil Schreier says. "Certainly, that's been the driving force of the evolution of the technology of firearms throughout history. Most of them having been developed to outgun and overpower one's foe on a battlefield. But one of my favorite niches, and one that is so small, is called the Howdah pistol."
In this great video from American Rifleman TV, you'll learn all about the Howdah and the history of hunting the most dangerous animals in the world. How'da bout that? (Sorry, we couldn't resist.)
