Peter Hofer Jagdwaffen  

In the composition of his work, Peter Hofer has immortalized the jaguar in its colourful and breath-taking habitat. In addition to the jaguar, the engraving also features an American crocodile, anaconda, capybara, ocelot, yellow-breasted macaw, giant toucan and tree frogs. Peter Hofer enhanced the impressive play of colors on the precious metal inlays with a newly developed enamel finish that can withstand even the strongest vibrations of a 500 NE double rifle.

The Jaguar double rifle is designed with a special action with double barrel hook lock and third bite. Peter Hofer special system with pinless sidelocks. Double trigger with floating front trigger and two-stage rear trigger. Non-automatic safety. Chopper lump barrels of 24 inches in high quality barrel steel. Special front sight, folding leaf sights as well as a fixed sight. Swarovski scope mounted with a Peter Hofer quick detach swivel mount. Walnut stock with "Jaguar" embossing. Total weight: 12 lbs.

Peter Hofer's Autumn Shotgun is a distillation of the highest gunsmithing art, innovation and beauty. The colors of autumn in a harmonious composition with gold alloys inlaid in steel. Colorful birds in precious metal and enamel inlays embedded in the play of colors of autumn leaves. The result and achieved effect are almost beyond comprehension, let alone topping.

Peter Hofer special action with double barrel hook locking. Peter Hofer special system with two external side locks and a third special center lock. Front trigger designed as single trigger for the shotgun barrels, firing sequence right-left. Rear trigger executed with French set trigger for the hidden rifle barrel. Automatic Peter Hofer special ejector for the shotgun barrels. Separate extractor integrated in the ejectors for the hidden rifle barrel. Special shotgun barrels of 28 inch, ¾ choke and full.

Handmade hunting weapons, unlike machine-made weapons, bear the very special signature of the gunsmith. It is therefore not possible for several people to work on one set. This circumstance also explains the correspondingly long delivery times, since each operation is performed by only one person.

With a set of different calibers, the big challenge is to match the dimensions, balance and weights precisely to the caliber in question, step by step.

The crowning glory of this set is undoubtedly the special shotgun caliber 410/17HMR/410 developed by Peter Hofer with a world record weight of only 5.5 lbs. For this innovation, a greatly reduced action had to be developed, in which Peter Hofer packed a concentrated amount of additional technology, such as a third, internal lock, single trigger and split ejectors for the shotgun barrels, set trigger and separate extractor, as well as the rifle barrel hidden under the rib.

In developing the world's largest double barrel rifle, the challenge was to test the limits of recoil energy still tolerable for the human body. The result of decades of development work was the largest double rifle in caliber 4 bore nitro powder. The ballistic data speak for themselves and show the following record values: 2000 grain bullet/130 grams, velocity 800 m/s or 2624 f/s, bullet energy 41584 Jule or 30671 Ftlbs.

The engraving should also do justice to this monumental work and shows the largest mammals that lived on our planet in the Pleistocene era. 

At the other end of the weight scale is the world's smallest and lightest double rifle developed by Peter Hofer. Here, too, the master gunsmith was unable to circumvent the laws of physics, because nothing can be reduced in size by any amount if it is to retain its full function.

One of the most important gun collectors in the world had been searching for years for a master craftsman who could make this pair of shotguns for him in an absolutely small-scale design. The customer wanted a roundbody version with absolute minimum dimensions, whose action was so narrow that the functional parts of both sidelocks almost touched each other on the inside.

A 3D computer simulation was necessary in order to implement each work step by hand. Even a deviation of 0.1 mm would have meant that everything would have been lost in terms of shape during rounding, resulting in 5500 lost hours.

At the beginning, the customer handed over a miniature double rifle as a template.  When the pair was completed, the comparison between the miniature gun and the shotgun was made. For this purpose, the action widths of both weapons were measured and it was found that the action of the 410-caliber shotgun was 5 mm narrower than the one of the miniature weapon, which was designed for 4-mm miniature cartridges.