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

Sir,

Do you wish to claim the 12th seat at the Round Table ?
What is your SIR NAME to make it officially official if I forgot to write it down previously ...

Ordering from Buffalo Bore is as good as it gets for factory ammo.
Phil Shoemaker thinks the Buffalo Bore 9mm pistol ammo is adequate for brown bear, with hardcast lead, wide FN not pushed too fast:

Yes sir! I’d be honored….

Scotty is my name Ron. Thank you.

I’m just learning and watching. You fellas give me too many ideas!

Sir Scotty,

Buy a donkey for your support of the Crusade for Truth.
The Round Table is full.
We are going to have to get a bigger SQUARE TABLE if anymore Knights come forward.
The squire apprentices can use a card table over in the corner of the round room until then.

Sounds like a solid plan.

Keeping up with you and the other boomer shooters is quite fun!

Arky; how bout I walk you up to about 25 feet away from an aggressive brown bear on a grass flat . A bear whose hump is pushing 6' off the ground when its on all fours.
Course , I'll have The Spruce King in my hands to keep it from getting me. You can have whatever you like. Can't shoot till your 25 feet away.
Then tell all and sundry how great the 45/70 is. Oh and NO CNS SHOTS . body shots only.

Phil still has the after adrenaline look to him in that pic ! 👍
A lot of guy critized him for only having a ccw pistol with him. But his reason was clear and made sense. No one can say he don't have enough experience there , doing what he does.
Would I pack just a 9 as a stand alone gun in bear country, No. But I have and would pack my 10.

Sir Spruce,

You are very observant, maybe familiar with the feeling ?

There is a bit of fading deer-in-the-headlights look on Phil's face,
and I am sure he is a man with sense enough to pour the warm urine out of his hipwaders before it gets cold.

Quite familiar yes. Tho not quite as close as he was. I think my closest was between 15 and 20 feet. Things were still happening pretty fast. Usually in now or die situations (that I'm aware of ) with me , things slow way down. At least that was my preception . Had more of those than I can remember while falling timber in S.E. Ak.
I did have 1 bear charge that I can remember that went into slow motion. My first.
I 416 Taylored him. 325 gr8 X bullet @ around 2600 fps . Bang Flap. Not flop , he was on his way up in a jump when the bullet hit him. He was completely Dead when he hit the ground.

Ah, yes, the .416 Taylor carried the mail for Sir Spruce with a 325-gr X-Bullet at 2600 fps, sectional density of 0.268,
very much like a .458-400gr with SD = 0.272.

Little bigger hole with the .458-400gr so maybe we could get by with 2400 to 2600 fps MV in the SAAMI .458 WM and .458 WM+ ?
This will require use of monometals like the X-Bullet.
Maybe someday a .458-400gr brass hexploder ?

400-gr solids at 2600 fps might gain stability from their shortness.
I guess a 400-gr round-nosed solid might stay straight for greater depth of penetration than a 500-grain round-nosed solid,
but that ain't saying much.
Could a higher velocity .458-400gr FN or HYDRO keep up with a heavier and slower .458-caliber FN solid ?
Probably.
As Sir John suggested, adequate for elephant.

Sir Ron as I see it Mono metal expanding and solids have changed the rules

Sir John,
Yep, acceptance of the lighter monometals for .458-caliber rifles has been slow in coming.
Late last century Art Alphin dared to use 465-grain "Monolithic" brass solids, round nose though they were.
Early this century, Richard Harland announced good reports on 450-grain solids at 2300 fps on elephant.
The time of the .458-400gr elephant bullet has arrived !
I feel a further study and application of .458-400gr bullets coming on.
And I finally got the 45-550P mould from Accurate Molds for some more duplexed-BP-paper-patched shooting.
It is a shiny brass, two-cavity beauty for casting with 1:20 for the .458 WM+ and .45-2.6" Sharps Winchester Throated.
Old tech to spice up the new tech.
Never a dull moment.

Gentleman,
I've truly been enjoying these posts!

I was thinking, that I'm out of Bear grease, and in need of some!
Thought this would be as good a place to post as any!
Not trying to de rail the post!

Any one have a little that they can spare?

If so you can P.M. me!

Thanks in advance,
Tony

Sir Ron, if memory serves Phil Shoemaker preferred the 400 grain TSX in his 458 Win when they were available

Tony,

Welcome, and buy a donkey for your contribution to the Crusade for Truth.
If you are bucking for Knighthood, tell us about some .45-bore rifle related shooting you have done and you are in.
All things .45-bore-rifle-related are .458 Winchester Magnum related, starting with muzzleloaders and going forward.
As for the bear grease, sorry, I am all out too.
You wouldn't want any of the last one I shot, it smelled fishy.
Greasy red meat that tastes like fish is not my cup of tea either.

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.

So, I depend on Bubba to convert the .458-500gr TSX into 400-grainers.









I hope to pull a Buffalo Bore proprietary .458-400gr TSX and photograph it, might even get better lighting and focus !
Tim Sundles has an exclusive contract with Barnes for those 400-gr TSX bullets, which have never been available to handloaders.
It will be interesting to see one of those.

Do you think the 400-450 TSX will expand in whitetail deer RC?

Never thought about plunking one of them into a buck.

Sidetracking to .458-400gr elephant bullet ideas, may have to get a custom designed brass FN,
or Bubba could work on some of the old Barnes Banded brass FN solid,
if he could find them.



Edit to add the Bullet Overall Lengths of above three "solids":

Federal TBSS 500-grainer: 1.400"
T/C Bone Crusher 400-grainer: 1.155"
Barnes Buster 400-grainer: 1.080"



The .458-500gr TBSS is too perfect to molest, but some handgunners have done it to the .475-500gr TBSS.
Otto Candies, Jr. shortened one of those to 400 grains and took a huge bull elephant with a .475 Linebaugh handgun.
A .458-400gr XTBSS could do in a pinch.

I’m betting it will feed sir. If it doesn’t a slight radius of the outer edge will fix it.

Sir Scotty,

Sure it will if it is going 1600 fps or greater.
At that impact speed it would be more likely to expand than the lighter .458-400gr X.
Sectional density drives degree of bullet expansion for any given impact velocity.
But not to worry, if it is a .458-450gr bullet, or a .458-400gr bullet, either one,
the deer will likely fall like this one did:



Probably less meat loss than happens with those rat calibers at high velocity.