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

Sir John,

Phil surely did, and Finn Aagaard raved about them too, a favorite bit of trivia for me.
Here is a start at the study of those .458-400gr monometal expanding bullets:







Those slick GSC HV 400-grainers were loaded by me to a COL of 3.395" with a mere 80 grains of AA-2230.
This COL easily works through the magazine box of a SAAMI .458 WM Ruger M77 Mk II
with a Shilen-barrel 25"-long, at 55 degrees F, MV = 2527 fps, 100-yard 3-shot group was 0.63 MOA, and 5-shot standard deviation was 1 fps.
That data was shot in December 2019.
It passed completely through a running whitetail doe at 150 yards in November 2019, after loaded ammo had sat for a year.

In a 23"-long McGowen barrel on a .458 WM+ Winchester M70, MV = 2511 fps @ 55degrees F, same ammo compared on same day in December 2019.
The McGowen barrel is a little tighter-grooved. Good barrels, McGowen.

I have only two boxes left of each of the 400-grainers above, little boxes of 20 to 25 count each.
The discontinued X-bullets were found at a gunshow.
The GSC HV were ordered when GSC USA had come over here from SA. They got a bad shake here from getting mixed up with CheyTac.
I hope and pray I can find them again someday.