Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns 454 Casull vs bigger calibers question

It always kills them but can you find them?

I never looked. Aren't some sort of hard cast, long bullets available for the .454?

I shoot both cast and jacketed out of my. 454 Casull and 45-70 revolver. In the .454 I am a huge fan of XTP bullets. The XTP magnum is almost indestructible even in the 1700 fps category and the regular XTP at about 1300 fps is a joy to shoot and quite deadly still.

XTP bullets gets my vote out of revolvers especially the .454.

That's what I shoot out of mine. I don't load them though...they are the Hornady factory load...300 grain XTP at 1650 feet per second. They're pretty hot. I would think I'd be good to go with that...

I'd simply ask the manufacturer for the ideal fps velocity range of the particular bullet you question. That would be simple enough. If it is designed to expand, you'd then have a good ideal of the minimum and maximum velocities so to keep the loadings within the guardrails. As far as I'm concerned, I choose a bullet to meet my prefered needs for the intended game. In some hunting situations, like my 44 that is used to hunt deer, I like and want an expanding bullet that will open up to some degree on a through the lungs broadside hit. Same bullet, I don't want it to totally trash itself if I'm on the ground and elect to take a deep quartering away shot aimed to exit the far shoulder. When loading, I keep my velocities within that range. On the other hand, I'll do a lot of backcountry activities such as fly fishing in bear country. Using my 45 Colt as an example, I chose this chambering because it is easier for me to accurately manage than something larger like the .454s and such. The bullet I chose to meet my prefered needs for this situation is a wide flat nosed hard cast with enough frontal weight so that the ass end doesn't attempt to pass the head when the bullet hits hard bone. I keep the velocity range of this load to give it enough horsepower to shoot straight through the skull of a head on bear while being slow enough that the bullet stays intact so it travels deep.

I know from experience that the later will punch a hole through a deer from just about any angle, but I still prefer the former when dedicated to hunting deer. There are ample examples of the former being used to defeat large bears on frontal shots, but I still prefer a bullet that improves the odds of travelling straight when impacting a heavy round skull.

1,400 fps is not necessarily too fast and consider what the velocity will actually be at impact. 1,400 is at the muzzle.....

The point I am trying to make is that if you use a given hardcast bullet in .45 Colt at a MV of 1,300 fps, and load the very same bullet in your Casull and run it up another 400 fps, I will make a wager that more often then not, the .45 Colt will penetrate better.

If someone feels the need to run the highest velocities possible and still desires uncompromised straight-line penetration, I would suggest the Punch bullet or the CorBon Penetrator. They are essentially glorified flat-nosed hardcast bullets without the material limitations.

Some food for thought on cast versus jacketed and damage done. Just recently we had two deer down, both about the exact same size and they both ran almost exactly the same distance, about 30 yards and both shots and angles were all but the same.

First with a 30-06 using 180 grain Corelokts and the other with the 45-70 using a 420 grain cast bullet. Which did more damage?

The cast bullet hit a rib and blew bone all over the place causing minor meat damage, the 180 grain corelokt caused zero meat damage.

That old saying with cast bullets that you can east right up to the hole isn't always true.

Jayco

Jayco, I have personal experience on a grand total of one large doe shot with a 45-70 using a +P handload with a wide metplate cast bullet. The results were extensive damgage and bloodshot meat greater than I ever expected. Only a sample of one, but in comparison, I've shot a number of deer when I was managing kill permits using 150 and 180 flat based bullets out of a 270 and '06 loaded to standard velocities. I don't recall a single deer killed with those combinations that had an alarming amount of excessive damage and blood shot meat. When killing deer for meat on the table, my benchmark is shooting through both lungs over the heart while having a clean kill and saving the heart for table fare. If the combination tends to jellify the heart and contents within the chest cavity, I avoid that combination. But, I believe centerfire rifles afford more room for cast/jacketed bullets to work due to the greater velocities compared to handguns. With the slower velocities of handguns, it becomes more challenging to engineer jacketed pistol bullets to perform well within such a narrow range of speed. Trying to have a bullet that opens up at low speeds while not busting up at muzzle velocities, especially if striking bone.

This is my take.

The ones I've measured with a hardness tester (the 300 gr. .429 SP and the 300 gr. .451) measured from 5-7 BHN. The best I can figure is that they are either pure lead or the jacket has a considerable amount of void/space to allow the core to slump.


Having used many Sierra bullets, I don't think bullet concentricity is the issue.

If you know what ranges/impact speed the bullet is known to expand or not blow apart, testing them on media or feral animals at those given scenarios, you'll have a much better insight beforehand.

While we all love our bulletmakers, realize they are also part PR/advertisers and mass produce bullets as economically as possible.

I have used the .45 .451 300gr. on deer from 75-80 yards to less than ten. I never had any fragmentation noted in the wound and never recovered the 4 bullets. The loads clocked at 1,300 fps from a 7.5 inch barrel.

Totally agree.

Also note, as caliber and/or frontal area increase, the velocity amount for a given hardness and alloy to deform is less.

Cast versus jacketed has been around in hunting handguns forever,mainly because there were no jacketed bullets that would penetrate at lower velocities like cast do. Today it is different with the new hot rods there.

If you want a bullet not to expand and do the extra damage, shoot cast in the lower velocity hunting handguns. If you want to do the most damage to the game for a quicker kill, use a quality jacketed bullet at a higher velocity..

Which is more deadly, a tsx that doesn't expand or a nosler or an a-frame that does in the same diameter, exit or not?

Pistols are no different.

Jayco

Not necessarily. The expanding bullet may make a bigger hole initially but may not go deep -- especially at the subdued velocity.

Handguns are different by virtue of the fact that they cannot achieve velocities anywhere near typical rifle velocities. Treating a revolver like a rifle is a mistake. It's more of a long range punch press, to quote John Linebaugh.

I think expanding bullets work great on smaller and/or thin-skinned game.

What is your opinion of the Hornady factory load I've previously mentioned...the 300 grain XTP at 1650 fps from a .454 Casull?

quick story some of you might appreciate.
when I was about 23 years old I purchased my first 8 3/8" 44 mag S&W revolver I quickly found I needed to polish the chambers because several were a tiny bit rough, but a few seconds with a bit of jewelers rouge on a dowel and a hand held drill removed the minor burrs, and I went out and practiced a great deal slow firing double action at first but eventually building the skill and accuracy to do far better with time, so that when hunting season opened I was ready to go hunting for some of the rather large wild hogs that were tearing up much of the management area we hunt near my home.
Id purchase a 280 grain 44 caliber mold and we had found a decent load using about 16 grains of 2400 powder.
about 8 am on the opening day I was sitting in a tree stand on one edge of a long power line right of way clearing that was about 300 yards across and a friend was in a similar tree stand on the other side of the clearing.
I see him stand up and take aim with his Remington 12 ga pump and fire off three quick shots then he starts yelling he thinks he just killed a huge hog.
I get down to go look carrying my 44 revolver, I get about half way across the field which is mostly waist high grass and I see the grass parting like a boat wake as several large hogs are running in my direction, directly away from his location.
I don,t know if this one hog was charging me or running from ,my friend but he was heading at a fast run directly at me, but due to the tall grass I could only see the grass moving like a boat bow wake until he got into about 20 feet, , I fired and a hog that easily weight 200 lbs dropped instantly.
a close examination showed a couple buckshot creased this hogs butt, and there was two holes from the front, one entered the head and exited the chest, a second hit between the shoulders and exited the belly.
I opened the revolver to find Id fired it twice without realizing it.
from that time On I was hooked on close range large caliber revolver hunting.

What a wonderful revolver, the 8-3/8" S&W.
Yes my friend, a big revolver is a great thing.
Great story.

Uh, not really.

Jacketed bullets were created first to allow the ammo companies a way to get around leading in magnum revolvers and feeding issues in autos, since "hardened" lead was basically lead/tin.

Halfway reliable expansion with jacketed bullets in handguns was many years and miles later. Bear in mind getting a reliable jacketed bullet from a powerful rifle didn't show up until 1948.

If you really want to do some damage with a handgun, lead alloys will provide it, at the high end or the lowest end, but its not a "one size fits all" proposition like many folks demand.

Like so many things, getting the best things in life isn't always about money, but its always about work and effort....

What caliber and velocity would you say caused that mushroom? Also, what game,shot placement and distance? Can i buy that for a .454/

That was paper, 750 fps at impact 300gr 45 caliber, 10 feet away.

This was 30 yards, 1,500 fps impact (estimate) 50 caliber. Recovered in right rear hip of a deer shot in the brisket; recovery being an anomaly (Only one ever recovered.



You can make them, as many as you want.

In an earlier post here there is a claim made by a man that shot "crater" bullets through a stack of 6 feet of wet newsprint at 100 yards.

While I'm not claiming this is a "lie" I would sure like to understand more of this event. I've shot through a lot of stuff in my life especially when I first got my 458 Lott. I rather doubt that my 458 Lott could shoot through 6 feet of wet newsprint at 100 yards. Wet.... damp? News print can be very difficult to penetrate in length. It tends to stack and compress very well. I don't think I have ever shot through even three or 4 feet with a rifle. Maybe I have heavy duty news print here?

This guy claims he did this with a 420 grain bullet at 1600fps from a 45/70.

My 458 Lott was shooting 2300 with a 500 grain bullet. Even the solid tungsten bullets would not likely go through 6 feet of stacked news print. I'm not sure anything you can fire from the shoulder will! Now maybe there was some kind of placement of the paper that was unique, or wet to the point of pulpy paper or other unknowns.

I guess the point I'm making here is that " If you read it on the internet it must be true right?"

Something way fishy about a story like that and it does nothing to improve the credibility of the rest of the story which may actually be accurate. I tend to throw the whole set of ideas out the window when there is such a high level of simply unbelievable content.