Jack Lott

Jacques P. Lott (July 15, 1920 – August 12, 1993), best known as Jack Lott, was a big game hunter, writer, historian, and inventor of the .458 Lott, a renowned .458 caliber belted hunting cartridge. He was a biographer of Frederick Russell Burnham and a frequent contributor on gun topics.

Born in Maryland, Jack Lott was named after his uncle, Pessou Jacques Lott. He was of Scottish, English and German descent and several of his ancestors served as Confederate States Army officers in the American Civil War. In his early youth, his family moved to California and he graduated Beverly Hills High School and Los Angeles City College. He developed an early interest in military history, big game, and guns, and learned to make his own gun barrels on a lathe.

Lott was a trained machinist and a tool-and-die man who worked Pachmayr in the 1960s. He used this training to specialize in very high-grade firearms, particularly Mauser rifles and English double rifles. He was also an expert at stockmaking, combining English and American styles into his bolt-action rifles stocks. He was knowledgeable in all aspects of firearms lore, and he applied this knowledge in his writing. In addition to writing several biographies of Frederick Russell Burnham, in his personal collection he owned several of Burnham's guns.

Lott was a 35-year veteran of African hunts, specializing in Cape buffalo, and he hunted in Sumatra and Thailand on occasion. His expertise in hunting and gunsmithing combined to make him one of primary authorities on rifles and loads for dangerous game. While he is best known for the .458 Lott cartridge, he also helped Tom Siatos in the invention of the .460 G&A and several other heavy-caliber rifle cartridges for big game hunting.

According to his colleague Craig Boddington, a fellow writer on gun topics: "Legend has it that he worked for the CIA. We never knew that for sure, but I know he was with the anti-castro movement and he spent a lot of time in Rhodesia during the long bush war. With Jack one never knew where fact, legend and myth intertwined – but I actually saw his Congo Cross awarded to him by Moise Tshombe for his courage in that long forgotten insurgency."

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