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

Sir Bob,

My feelings about the find of BadboyMelvin are same as yours.
Buy a donkey to him for bringing it here.

The guy making the youtube has a great newsreader voice
and he does prefer the .458 Winchester Magnum over the .458 Lott, bless his heart.
But there are a lot of holes in his presentation as you note.

The claim of 26" barrel use instead of 25" barrel, as you note, and the false claim of failure to achieve advertised ballistics in original rifles
shows the guy did only superficial research and was regurgitating the pablum of the Lottites on those points.
He should have read General Hatcher and known that in H. P. White Laboratory data of circa 1955 engineering development, in a 25" barrel:

500-gr WRA FMJ round nose
3.340" COL
71.0 grains HiVel#2 NOT COMPRESSED
Winchester No. 120 primer
Winchester brass case
>>> 2160 fps <<<
at 50,410 PSI for average of 10 shots.

A bit less egregious is his flummux in saying that the German 9.3x62mm Mauser M98 of 1905 inspired the English .404 Jeffery M98 of 1904 !
Yes, the .404 Jeffery was first, bless his heart.
And he did not even point out that the 9.3x62mm Mauser of CIP spec gains much of its mightier-than-expected prowess from being throated
with a long, leade-only chamber similarly as with the SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum.

He totally neglected the .450 Watts Magnum and .450 Watts Short in the history of the .458 Winchester Magnum,
over two decades before Jack Lott neglected it too.

He neglected to mention that if Jack Lott's first shot on the Mozambique cape buffalo in 1959 had not been a gut shot
then Wally Johnson would not have had to use Jack's .458 Winchester Magnum to finish off the cape buffalo,
after Jack got tossed and dropped his rifle on the ground.

He carries water for the .458 Lott in claiming so much superiority for the Lott.
There is only 50 fps superiority for the Lott, not 150 fps, if both are limited to SAAMI restrictions with 500-grain bullets.
He fails to mention that the .458 Winchester Magnum can be loaded to 3.600" with many bullets instead of 3.340".
He fails to mention that the SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum can be loaded to the higher MAP (62,500 PSI)
that the .458 Lott requires to have any advantage over the SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum at MAP of 60,000 psi .
If the .458 Winchester Magnum is loaded to 3.6" COL and 62,500 PSI, it easily surpasses the .458 Lott in velocity and at lower pressure.

He really did not stress the past failures in faulty manufacturing of factory loads for the .458 Winchester Magnum.
He just blew it off as inherent to the .458 Winchester Magnum case capacity.
The same QA applied to the .458 Lott would have resulted in the same problems.

Also he did not mention that the current SAAMI .458 Lott is a far cry from the .458 Lott that Jack built.
Jack had his cartridge inserted within the SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum chamber, with same length to end of throat.
The SAAMI .458 Lott is crippled by its short and tight little throat.

Well, he came to the right conclusion anyway, even if it was because the SAAMI .458 Winchester Magnum has less recoil than the SAAMI .458 Lott,
even when both are delivering the same ballistics.