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

"O’Connor wrote the .450 Watts cartridges he used were made from .375 H&H hulls run into a .450 Watts die, then loaded with 82 grains of No. 4895 powder and 480-grain bullets developed for the .450 Nitro Express. With a muzzle velocity of 2,175 fps, they carried 5,050 ft-lbs of energy ..."

JOC looks to have had a full-blown integral muzzle brake on that rifle, slotted fish gills.
Looks like 5 pairs of those slots on the sides of the barrel near muzzle.

Of course we know he was shooting a reduced load compared to what can be done with a SAAMI .458 WinMag nowadays, even limited to 3.34" COL and 60,000 psi.

The 480-gr soft he was using was too soft it seems, from the description of the lung shot mashing up against the spine of the buffalo that charged them.
Of course if he had been using a 404-gr Shock Hammer at 2500 fps MV from a .458 WinMag,
that first shot would have killed the buffalo DRT.

I killed my first cape buffalo with a .416/380-gr GSC FN (SOLID) at 2506 fps MV.
I killed my second cape buffalo with a .510/450-gr GSC HV (SOFT) at 2654 fps MV.
One shot kills.

My next one will be sort of an average of both of those loads for caliber, mass and velocity.
It is a SOFT bullet that converts to a SOLID after impact.
.458/404-gr Shock Hammer HP blows off nose in chest cavity of buffalo
and the cylindrical base solid destroys spine, if entering at angle of JOC's first shot.
How could that possibly fail ?
Only by muffing the shot.
A gut shot with any bullet might not go well for either the shooter or the shootee.
I am sure we all can recall a story about a gut-shot cape buffalo that got angry about it ...