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

Yes, probably not .44 Sharps and Remington cartridges for the old guy with the Farquharson above,
more likely .461 Gibbs No. 1 or No. 2 or the .45-2.4" Match or .45-2.6" Match that John Rigby copied from Sharps
when he finally quit the muzzleloaders.
Creedmoor 1874 Irish team were all shooting muzzleloaders built by Rigby, as pictured above:
.451" bore, with loads starting as light as 530-grain PP bullet with 85 grains of BP and working up from there.
Essentially same loads as the BPCRs but with not as good gas seal around the percussion cap on the ML.

Here is the old guy transitioning away from his ML to his BPCR:

"Sir Henry Halford is shown in the following two pictures. The upper picture is from 1877 when he was Captain of the Great Britain team to Creedmoor to shoot against the USA. The lower picture was published in 1893 and was titled 'Sighting a Shot.' Note that the placement of the butt varies between pictures. Halford is shown in 1877 firing a muzzle loading rifle with tang-mounted sight, where as in 1893 he has a breech-loading rifle with heel-mounted sight."





http://www.researchpress.co.uk/index.php/marksmanship/art-of-shooting/the-back-position

All of them were like a .458 WM-BPCR.
The .45-bore was the first and still best caliber for 1000-yard match shooting, the small bore of yore,
and also the best BP express rifle to become a dangerous game rifle as a Nitro Express, and still tops.

Note how Sir Henry Halford's front sight is moved way back from the muzzle, shortening the sight radius otherwise possible.
Must be to maintain the graduation yardages on the vernier that was moved to heel instead of tang.
That might work on a .458 WM-BPCR Match Rifle with a 25" barrel and front sight forward, robbed from a longer-barreled Pedersoli tang.