Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR Indian wars/buffalo extermination period 45-70 bullets

A friend is writing a book and needs to know what the most popular grain weight bullet was used by the military and the buffler shooters. Also, what Ideal mold Number if anyone knows. Thanks

No offense, but if your friend wants to be HISTORICALLY ACCURATE, he would be better served to buckle down and do some serious research of his own,......

How in the hell anybody could generate historical text from what a friend gathered off the internet, and call it veracious just flat eludes me.

There's a VAST compendium of great lore on this subject at your Bud's fingertips,...tell him to get his nose into it.

GTC

The best way to see what the buffalo hunters used is to look in the Sharps and Remington Catalogs from the time period.They used anything and everything they could get ahold of from 38 to 50 caliber.
The Goverment used a 45 cal 405 gr greasegroove bullet, except for the few 50-70's, and spencers that were still in service until the 30-40 krag was adapted in 92.

No offence taken. He writes fiction and is really not interested in the historical aspect. I suppose he just wants to be in the right ball park, so to speak. Thanks

That would mean he is a historian, then

Good point except that he is an old school conservative realist.

Brings to mind a quote that I believe I heard from Russel Means along time ago; "Historians are the most powerful bearings in the universe....because even God can't change history"

I wonder how many people out there have formulated there histoical perception of the "wild" west on the backs of such great "historians" as Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey. Instead of doing the hard research required and sifting out the facts from the fiction. (We could also bring into this the movie industry and great works of truth like "True Grit" the present and/or past works. NOT. Or "Lonesome Dove" which at least was based on a modicum of real life)

Conservative or democrate in sheeps clothing, fiction is just another word for lying.

473 gr

I'll post this for Mr. Dah and it may give a good start.

http://www.chuckhawks.com/buffalo_cartridges.htm

Thanks Bro Sulpher. I was getting this info for our friend Bro Dubicus Texicus. He is working on Part II of his latest novel.

no doubt but most enjoy a good story now and then.......mostly read nonfiction stuff but do read a bit of fiction and also enjoy suspending disbelief and enjoy movies though i watch documentaries more than anything.....

Well, for most of the 1870s, the rel impetus for any buff hunter to even USE a 45-70 was the availability of US military ammo. Most serious buffalo hunters did NOT use a 45-70. They used larger cased rounds like the various .40& .44 Bottlenecks, 45 2 7/8" straights, and 50 2.5" etc. etc.

The most commonly used Military bullet in the 45-70, was a 405 grain slug. If a civilian shooter reloaded his cartridges with something he considered "better" that might include a 450g to 500g slug- grooved or patched etc.

Actually, if his story's protagonist MUST use a 45-70 it would be kind of cool and authentic for him to reload his cases with something that "carried" better at long range such as a heavier than than military issue.

I would suggest you mention to him to look into the heavier weight Creedmoor type slugs made from mold by Bridgeport Implement co. etc. A character using cheap and easy to obtain Military ammo and improving it's performance with a target slug design would show that the character has some real knowledge of rifles and is trying to get the most performance for the least amount of cost.

Which is just what modern day owners of .223s and.,308 etc, commonly do to this day..

jim62, very good and thanks a lot. I'll pass the info.

Look at the bullets that are shown for Sharps and other rifles of the era in James Grant's first book, "Singleshot Rifles"

Also, don't call it the .45-70! It was not referred to as such at the time. The cases were listed in length, and not the amount of powder they carried. While the government might have called it the .45-70, the hunters would not have. They would have called it the .45 Government or the 2 inch .45.

Dan

L'Amour is touted as being really historically accurate, but I have not found it so. Same with Elmer Kelton. He has dude's getting some 30-30's before they head back to the homestead after the War Between the States. I can't remember much about readings of Zane Grey when I was a kid. True Grit, from what little I remember about it, is pretty accurate historically. John Wayne's rendition butchered up the weaponry, as his movies usually did, but the newer version is pretty accurate and the book was very much so when compared to other works of fiction. There is a lot more known about the old west than there was back in the sixties when True Grit was written. One would think that some of Grey's stuff was written so far back that he didn't even have to do too much work. L'Amour, for all the hype, was pretty lazy about research on lots of stuff, weaponry being foremost in my mind. He like to arm his characters with stuff that was different than the usual 30-30 (in books) and SAA, so lots of people think he is accurate. Lots of people say that McMurtry plagiarized whole parts of Lonesome Dove. He is better than L'Amour with his weaponry, but certainly in the same vein. With as much research as has been done in recent years, there is really no legitimate excuse for not arming your characters accurately.

As an aside, some of McMurtry's writing is nonsensical. It doesn't add up. For instance, the shooting of the Buffalo Hunter on the Staked Plains in Lonesome Dove. Gus makes a scratch shot with his Henry and it is treated as such. The two hunters and the Kiowas recognize that he only has a lever gun which has a very limited range compared to the scoped Sharps that the hunter is shooting. Gus makes the shot and they get scared and ride out of range. Then in other places and in other books, McMurtry refers to the Henry as a "buffalo gun" or some such. In Cadillac Jack, he has one of the supporting characters purchase an antique Henry and then visualize Buffalo as he sights down the barrel. Of course the character is a Democrat so maybe it is understandable, but still...

Not exactly Dan. The old cartridge designation would be 45-70(or 75)-405,or 45-70-500,or 45-70-550. 45-75 was merely the Sharps designation for the same round. They just liked being able to put their name on it is all. 45-70=45 2.1", 45-90=45 2.4" 45-100=45 2.6",45-110=45 2.8". Bullet weights for the big 45's ranged from the 340 "Express" bullet to the 550 grain bullets. Most common hunting bullets for buffler started at 500 grains. 540 grainers appear to have been fairly popular. Papr patched ammunition was used mostly because it kept the barrels from fouling with lead and gave good accuracy. They tended to be a bit heavier than the GG bullets also.

Actually a quick check of the catalogs from the time period designate what we call the 45-70 now as the US Government 45.Usually loaded with a 405 gr bullet.The government adopted the 500 gr bullet in 81 so that leaves it plenty concievable that buff could of been shot with a 45-70-500. If you think some guncrank on the plains didn't stuff a 500 gr bullet in his 2.1 case.
The 40 caliber bottlenecks were very popular hunting rounds even in the buffalo hunts and anything over a 390 gr bullet would of been a custom job of some sort.
The heaviest bullet listed for the 44's was 520 grs with the light end starting at 280 grs.
The 50's limit was 475 grs.
Unless they were pushing over 110 grs of powder in the Sharps 45's the usual bullet was 500 grs , except for the 2.1 sharps case which topped out at 425 grs patched at the closing of the factory.
Cornell publishing is a must for anybody that's got any interest in finding the straight skinny as to what the factories offered in their catalogs at the time.

Let him do his own homework be it fact of fiction.

By '81 the Buffalo had been exterminated from the Southern Plains and the Northern Herd was all that was left-mainly in your area and on north. In five more years it was all over. It is doubtful, with the progress in cartridges, that many 45-70's of any stripe, were being used on the Buffalo range by that time. The 45-70 and 50-70 were the cartridges that started it all, soon eclipsed by the time the focus went from northern Kansas and Nebraska, by the .44 and then the Big Fifty. By the end of the hunt, they had went back down to the .40's and then up to the .45, but with much larger cases. Full circle.