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

Sir Woods wrote:

I noted a difference in bullet design (More lead exposed in the tip) from late 80's to late 90's in that Hornady 500 grainer so it was evolving in design or retooled?
Secondly, I shot that bullet loaded to 2500fps into a scrub bull's shoulder and it expanded and stopped in the membrane behind the shoulder between the shoulder muscle and ribs but did not penetrate the rib cage. Shot the balance of what I had loaded up on pigs and brumbies (wild horses) after that.

AH SO ! My .460 factory ammo from Weatherby was from late 1980's to late 1990's production.
At faster velocity into a bovine ribcage the old Hornady bullet disintegrated instead of over-expanding and being stopped by shoulder.

I think that bullet as released to the handloader was only ever designed for the 2100ish of the .458.

My 1987 vintage Hornady .458-500gr RNSN was over stressed by being handloaded to 2150 fps MV from a 24"-barreled .458 WM.
It separated into 3 chunks, an intact, empty jacket and 2 chunks of lead on a cow moose (special drawing permit at Fort Richardson, AK).
Each of the 3 bullet chunks broke a rib on the offside of the cow moose. Bang flop.
It was a spectacular success of a bullet failure: 600 pounds of processed deliciousness from the butcher shop.

It is also possible that Hornady did a slightly heavier jacketed version for the Weatherby Factory Ammo as I also noted 2 different .416 cal 400 gain Hornady bullets. After owning 3 .416 Weathery's and a .416 Remington, I noted that the factory Weatherby ammo had a more parallel sided body shape meeting with the round nose whereas the handloader version had a .416 shank to the cannelure then a tapered ogive to meet up with the round nose. It was obviously different.

Hornady ! Bless their hearts they finally came up with some decent softnose-expanding bullets with the DGX Bonded.
I suspected same as you with those older cup&core designs.
Another thing I noted when I first started shooting the .416 Rigby, was that the old Swift A-Frame 400-grainer, when seated to the cannelure,
could not be chambered in the no-throat .416 Rigby, due to the bullet being full .416" diameter forward of the cannelure.
Later the Swift ogive changed to fit in the .416 Rigby.

I tried to get a box of factory .416 ammo for comparison but the distributor told me they were too expensive to give away to writers even though I wrote more articles on Weatherby rifles that the whole market combined back then. To be fair, he did send me a complimentary Weatherby The Man, The Gun, The Legend Book which I appreciated.
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Sir Woods,

I have that book about Roy on my shelf, by Grits Gresham and Tom Gresham, for reference purposes, of course, not hero worship.
Whenever I came into "big walkin' around money," I used to go buy a box of .416 Weatherby Magnum ammo for my stash.
Just preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse.