The man who loved too much.
The shotgun slug you shoot this fall owes its heritage to a hunter who cared too much for animals to see them suffer.
By Tom Bulloch
Big game hunting in the late 19th century in Europe was a messy, sometimes ugly affair. The average hunter relied upon surplus military rifles and munitions, sadly lacking in power and caliber. The fully jacketed, poorly constructed bullets of the day more often than not resulted in a wounded—and lost—animal. Shotguns and other smoothbores, shooting a soft lead ball, were no better.
Wilhelm Brenneke was not happy about it. As a young man in Hannover, Germany, his grandfather had instilled in him a love of hunting, along with a profound respect for his quarry. “If you kill, you must kill humanely,” he was told. Too often, young Wilhelm had seen otherwise.
Brenneke built his first gun at age 13, from pipes, wire and a clock mechanism. When proof-tested with a barrel stuffed full of powder and ball, after the smoke cleared nothing remained but small pieces. Fortunately, the youngster tested his creation with a long string tied to the trigger.
Undeterred, the young man pursued an intensive education in precision machining, toolmaking, machine construction, optics, even the new-fangled automobile, always returning to his first love—guns and hunting. His subsequent forays into gunbuilding were much more successful, and in 1895, at 30 years of age, Brenneke opened the Brenneke Gewehr und Gesschossfabrik (Brenneke Gun and Bullet Factory) in Leipzig. Little did he know he had just created a company that would endure two world wars, financial ruin, and family tragedy to prosper into the 21st century.
Brenneke understood that to make a more powerful cartridge, first the hunter needed a stronger, safer firearm. His revolutionary action design, locking mechanisms and foolproof four-way safety turned the European firearms community on its ear. Brenneke rifles are still made today, in high demand especially by hunters of African game. His business grew rapidly, and next he turned his attention to rifle bullets.
In 1897 he patented his first bullets, combining both hard and soft alloys (the same principle used in many of today’s “new” partitioned and dual-core projectiles); he was one of the first inventors to understand the principles of penetration combined with controlled expansion. For years he experimented with and perfected his designs, always seeking flatter trajectories and greater power, even creating several proprietary calibers such as the 8x64—one of the world’s great hunting cartridges. So successful and advanced were his designs that Brenneke bullets are still manufactured and in high demand throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.
Brenneke next turned his attention to the shotgun. Like the rifles of his youth, the few shotgun slugs on the market in that era were underpowered and ineffective…in essence, round balls little changed since muzzleloading days. Since a shotgun was the most common firearm owned by the average hunter—often the only long gun a country hunter could afford in those days—Brenneke was committed to inventing a projectile that would create devastating knockdown power, previously unobtainable ballistic efficiency and precise accuracy in a scattergun, just as he had revolutionized the bullet and rifle industries.
He devised a streamlined projectile with a weight-forward design. He added six slanted ribs around the front of the slug, and screwed a felt wad onto its tail. After countless hours of testing, trial and error and modification, in 1898 the first Brenneke slug was introduced. It was an immediate success. Moving the weight to the front of the slug provided stability, preventing the projectile from tumbling in flight. It resulted in accuracy never before achieved from a smoothbore barrel. The ribs, contrary to popular opinion, are not designed to act like rifling in a rifle barrel, but compress to allow the slug to easily pass through a choked shotgun barrel. The massive weight of the projectile—close to 500 grains—resulted in an incredible amount of energy transferred to the target. The Brenneke® Classic Magnum produced today, similar in many ways to the original 1898 model, generates 2460 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle.
The broad frontal area of Brenneke’s invention created a huge hole in the target, resulting in rapid and extensive blood loss. Even if an animal could survive the initial impact, it did not travel far and left an easy-to-follow trail. This is exactly what Wilhelm Brenneke was seeking; a humane projectile that would not allow any solidly hit animal to escape and suffer. Of course, a projectile has to be accurate as well as powerful, and his design is easily capable of groups under three inches at 100 yards.
Brenneke continued to tinker, to test, and to improve upon his slug. He relied upon the ultimate laboratory—performance in the field, witnessed with his own eyes. He traveled and hunted extensively, taking stags, European elk, the great bears, lions, tigers, leopards, boars, even Cape buffalo with his invention. He would perform detailed on-the-spot autopsies of the game he killed, analyzing penetration and the slug’s effect on hemorrhaging, bone and internal organs. The distinctive alloy used in Brenneke slugs—harder than many competitors, but soft enough to perform properly in a choked shotgun, is a result of these observations. It is one reason the Brenneke design achieves such excellent penetration.
Brenneke’s business prospered, and by the 1930s he was producing over 750,000 slugs per year. His firm had survived the devastation of World War I, but not without terrible personal cost; he lost both his sons, one killed in action and the other in a car accident. The first major improvement to his slug was made in 1920, increasing the number of guide ribs to 12 and adding a conical hard lead point for greater penetration. 1935 brought another re-design, making the ribs deeper and more pronounced.
World War II once again brought tragedy to Wilhelm Brenneke. His grandson was killed on the Russian front, his factory had been bombed into ruins, and Allied restrictions on munitions after the war brought his business to a virtual halt. In 1945, at the age of 80—long past when most men think of retiring—he escaped from Soviet-occupied Germany to West Berlin, re-opened his business, and started anew…ironically, with help from a Russian general who was a fan of Brenneke products. Brenneke lived another six years, long enough to see his company become more successful than ever. Indeed, in Europe, shotgun slugs are still referred to generically as “Brennekes.”
It is testimony to the genius of Wilhelm Brenneke that virtually every shotgun slug on the market today owes some or most of its design to his 19th century invention. The company he founded now produces more than 10 million slugs and sabots every year, and remains a family-owned business with Brenneke’s great-grandson, Dr. Peter Mank, as its director. BrennekeUSA was established in 1995 to make the firm’s products more readily available to the American hunter.
Modern materials and technology, including special coatings, high-energy wads, even lead-free projectiles have vastly expanded the Brenneke product line. It is certain, though, that Wilhelm Brenneke would have no trouble recognizing the 21st century designs.
When you take to the field this fall, you will go with the same motivations that drove a young man in Germany well over a century ago; to find your quarry, make a good shot, and anchor it on the spot—quickly and humanely—with all the power and accuracy your shotgun and cartridge can muster. Wilhelm Brenneke would have no difficulty recognizing that, either. And he would approve.
