First, it might be good to note that there are few subjects which can carry as much contention as big game hunting. Colonialism, imperialism, triumphalist white males, ethical treatment of animals, environmental justice......it's a very long list, and there are a lot of things that could be said. Lets hang some of those little bright orange triangular flags that say MINES here, note when we're close to something contentious, and try to avoid straying off your specific question.

When the British began hunting in Africa and India in the early 1800's, they brought with them military muskets and hunting rifles. The muskets were intended to kill and disable other people, the hunting rifles intended to kill the small-to-medium sized game they had hunted at home- anything from rabbits to deer. They were muzzle-loading, and to get any accuracy they had to be carefully loaded, which took time: the powder charge had to be measured so it was the same, the lead ball had to be patched, in order to be a tight fit in the barrel and grip the rifling. When those hunters tried to use those guns on the very large, thick-skinned, powerful, easily-angered and potentially fast-moving game animals of their new colonial playgrounds ([MINES] people did get killed or injured. Being possessed of significant funds [MINES] those hunters asked for something better, and gunmakers like Purdey, Rigby and Gibbs did their best to oblige. The calibers increased, the weight of the barrels grew to take the greater and great pressures of the greater and greater powder charges. Rather than a patch, the ball was cast with a belt to engage the rifling. A rifle might have two barrels, instead of one, for a quick second shot. And of course there would be bearers, drawn from the local population [MINES] who could carry a second rifle, or more. These guns would sometimes be 8, 4 or even 2 bore, which means they could fling a ball of even 8 ounces. The recoil was colossal, and it's hard to imagine how anyone could take an accurate shot- especially an accurate third or fourth shot- knowing what punishment was to come. And, in order to get a good shot, the hunter had to get within a fifty to a hundred yards of the big scary animal, and so could be easily identified as the source of trouble and effectively charged. Once charged, more loaded guns would be handed up to the chargee, more shots taken. Sometimes many: Ronaleyn Gordon-Cumming, hunting in Africa in the 1840's, started shooting at an elephant with his shoulder-cannon, and "when forty bullets had perforated his hide he began to evince signs of a dilapidated constitution". Of course, someone was behind the chargee, loading those guns, and if mostly the large, scary animal would be brought down, there were times when it wasn't, and then there was a problem with teeth, hooves, tusks..... The advent of breech-loaders, conical bullets and metallic cartridges in the 1870's created guns that were more deadly, and could be reloaded very quickly, and such problems were less. Still, the cartridges were heavy and the recoil as well, and the range not that long, and problems continued. It would not be until the late 1880's and 1890's, when high-velocity smokeless-powder rifles were invented, that a hunters could quickly take several carefully-aimed shots at a respectful distance without major recoil damage. Frederick Selous later wrote, "the punishment I received from these [big] guns has affected my nerves to such an extent as to have materially influenced my shooting ever since, and I am heartily sorry I ever had anything to do with them".

As dead men tell no tales, dead hunters write no memoirs and so of course we have to glean stories of injuries from living hunters' accounts. One hunter/memoirist was Sir Samuel Baker (1821-1893) who wrote a whole series of books of his adventures and armament. Baker was a great example of the aristocratic British diplomat and public official, was governor of what's now South Sudan and northern Uganda , African explorer and what passed for a naturalist at the time [MINES] . He was also an Abolitionist and had some marvelous real stories - widowed in his late 30's, he purchased his second wife Florence at a slave auction before she was packed off to be in a harem and they lived happily until his death. Baker wrote "ripping yarns", was likely a very confident and long-winded authority on many subjects at dinner parties. But Baker is useful , here, because he began his hunting exploits when those muzzle-loading guns were used, and finished when the newer smokeless powder guns had come in. His Wild Beasts and Their Ways ( 1890) begins with a long dispensation of advice and opinion on hunting rifles. He happily admits that things are easier with the new rifles. But warns of overconfidence, reprinting an account of a tiger hunt gone wrong in India, in 1888

"Mr. Cuthbert Fraser had a most miraculous escape from a tiger the other day at Amraoti...... Mr. Fraser was told by his orderly that the tiger was lying dead with his head on the root of a tree. The orderly having called him up, he went to the spot. Mr. Fraser then sent the orderly and another man with the second gun back, and knelt down to look. Just then the tiger roared and came at him from about eighteen feet off: he waited till the tiger was within five feet of him and fired. As the tiger did not drop, he fired his second shot hurriedly. The first shot had hit exactly in the centre of the face but just an inch too low. It knocked the tiger's right eye out and smashed all the teeth of that side of the jaw. The second shot struck the tiger in the chest, but too low. What happened then Mr. Fraser does not exactly know, but he next found himself lying in front of the tiger, one claw of the beast's right foot being hooked into his left leg, in this way trying to draw Mr. Fraser towards him; the other paw was on his right leg. Mr. Fraser's chin and coat were covered with foam from the beast's mouth. He tried hard to draw himself out of the tiger's clutches. Fortunately the beast was not able to see him, as Mr. Fraser was a little to one side on the animal's blind side and the tiger's head was up. Suddenly seeing Mr. Fraser's orderly bolting, he jumped up and went for the man, and catching him he killed him on the spot. Mr. Fraser had lost his hat, rifle, and all his cartridges, which had tumbled out of his pocket. He jumped up, however, and ran to the man who had his second gun, and to do so had to go within eight paces of the spot where the tiger was crouching over his orderly. He heard, in fact, the crunching of the man's bones and saw the tiger biting the back of the head. He now took the gun from his man. The latter said that he had fired both barrels into the tiger—one when he was crouching over Mr. Fraser, and the other when he was over the prostrate body of the orderly. The man had fired well and true, but just too far back, in his anxiety not to hit the man he would save, instead of the tiger. When afterwards asked if he was not afraid to hit the Sahib, 'I was very much afraid indeed,' he replied, 'but dil mazbut karke lagaya: I nerved myself for the occasion.' 'A good man and true!' a high officer writes, 'who after firing never moved an inch till Mr. Fraser came to him, although close to the tiger all the while. ..... Perhaps no narrower escape than Mr. Fraser's has ever been heard of. To the excellent shot which knocked the beast's eye out he undoubtedly owes his life. He says that he felt that he had the tiger dead when he fired, but the Express bullet unfortunately broke up. Probably, he thinks a 12-bore would have reached the brain."

Yes, so there's announcement of Mr Fraser's narrow escape in the first line, and the actual death of the mere anonymous orderly comes lower down in the story, rum thing that, pity... [MINES]. Obviously, even with the more modern weapons, big game hunting was still pretty risky. This was a large bore gun, a double rifle of two shots using .577 Black Powder Express. Baker counts this as overconfident reliance on those newfangled hollow-point bullets ( far left in the linked site), but clearly, after Fraser and the orderly foolishly assumed the tiger was dead and came up to admire it, even blazing away at close range didn't immediately kill the animal.

Hunters of the late 1890's like Frederick Selous could take advantage of the great range of smaller-bore higher velocity rifles. That long range meant that the hunter could normally be well out of harm's way when he began shooting. And once rifles got very good scopes, in the 20th c., the range could be stretched to hundreds of yards, large animals became more protected, and big-game hunting could become less a test of skill, patience and bravery and more a matter of staff, expenditure, and guide scheduling [MINES].

Sir Samuel Baker : Wild Beasts and Their Ways

Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming: Forests and Frontiers