Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only The great 458 Winchester. Everyone should own one at least once

It is good to be able to make your own bullets, what with the hoo-hah of the DALD Party in the USA fermenting right now.
Good to have an all-purpose bug-out rifle too: .458 Winchester Magnum.
Capable of .410 shotgun to better than a SAAMI .458 Lott for the big stuff.
I am getting quite a mould collection, and collection of recipes for accurate cast bullet loads in the .458 WM.
I have not used the NOE 600-grainer/hollow-pointer yet, need to do it.
Ordering from either Accurate Molds or NOE via their web sites is a pleasure, and speedy delivery usually.

Hannay's mould appears to be the Lyman #457406 that throws a 482-grainer in Lyman #2 Alloy, a gas-checked bullet.
Old Lyman cast bullet manual shows .458 WM loads for that at 3.090" COL, in a 24"-barreled Ruger No. 1, W-W brass and WLR primer:

Unique:
17.0 gr >>> 1175 fps
21.0 gr >>> 1320 fps

IMR-3031:
57.0 gr >>> 1850 fps
66.0 gr (compressed) >>> 2120 fps

You can get Trapdoor to Nitro Express level ballistics with that bullet with very short COL.

IMHO, about any cast bullet is good in the .458 WM sized as small as .459" if you keep the velocity down to 1400 fps or less.
If you want velocities around 2200 fps with 400-ish to 540-ish grainers in the .458 WM,
better cast them hard, powder-coat paint them, and apply the gas check as you size them to .461" diameter for the common .459"-grooved .458 WM.
That worked fine in a .458"-grooved .458 WM too, and the standard 1:14" twist.
The 1:18" and 1:20" twists are nice if you want to obsess over it, but 1:14" is best for the all-purpose bug-out rifle.

We would do well to imitate the loads of Sir Bill Bagwell and Sir Jerry,
with our scoped and smokeless rifles.
Advanced loading of the .458 WM (aka .45-98 2.5" Sharps Belted) will include black powder and paper patch mastery, and use of beeswax and olive oil lube on the greaser bullets.
Heck we might have to learn to make our own BP and primers when the apocalypse arrives.
Keep a flintlock handy too.

I forgot about Bill Bagwell's other movie when he was the GOEX Pro.
Something like "African Safari" and "Smoke over Africa" are the two.
Bill says I can use anything from those for show and tell.
So I better go watch them again and see what I can configure ...