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

Sir Ron,
I am fully satisfied with my CRF Super Express M70 .458 Win Mag and have no desire to aquire a Lott, since the Win Mag is already more than a Lott, and considerably more than a little. Like you, I'm thinking that in North America, a 400 grain expanding bullet will do everything I really need. I have some AA-2230 and new Hornady brass, and I think the new cases deserve a great bullet for testing. I have only a limited amount of these North Fork bullets, and it pains me to shoot too many, since I don't know when I can get more, but I'm willing to develop a load that could work for just about anything.

LOL, that'll work Sir Ron, Thanks for the well wishes, i want to put that 458 WM+ to work, about the Hammer 400gr gaping HP's, have a bud with a machine shop that could lathe out some tips out of delrin rod?, or call and ask Hammer to tip those things for you, they may surprise you/us, would certainly boost B.C. for flatter flight.

For those that are interested, Lane Simpson published an article in the September Shooting Times ".458 Win Mag, The Complete Story".
There are a few loads and bullet choices covering Practice, .45/70 equivalent and Full Power loads that will be of interest to handloaders.

I think the information contained within this thread has opened a lot of eyes and the simplicity of a bolt stop mod and full magazine box OAL is a whole new world for pennies on the returns. As always, it is just a matter of recoil, or we would all be using .30/378's wouldn't we?.

Sir Bevan it is then, the 14th Knight of the Square Table Crusaders for Truth.
The Fourteen Musketeers, all for one and one for all, the .458 Winchester Magnum.

That North Fork .458-400gr SP is a marvelous bullet to do all but what needs a solid.
I have them on my wish list at www.reloadinginternational.com
Still waiting for the Swedish production.
I unfornutately never got any 400-grainers while I could from USA production, was stuck on 450-grainers then.

Mike Brady loaded his 400-grainer in a SAAMI .458 WM to 2500 fps.
But if one seated it only 0.310" deep, for 3.500" COL on top of a 100% LR charge of AA-2230
or a heavily compressed charge of H4895 ...
so many powders, so few bullets.
A light load of H322 if you only want 2400 fps with the 400-grainer, etc.

Sir Jerry,
I shall take the Delrin rod tips under advisement, buy a donkey for that.
I emailed Hammer Bullets about aluminum or plastic tips, sent them the image of the 402-gr Shock Hammer too.
Will see if anything shakes out.
No word from GSC.
Hammer could easily make something more like the GSC HV, but with the PDR bands, I will inquire about that too,
a custom order.

The gaping hollow point on the 402-gr Shock Hammer is a nominal 0.25" in hole diameter.
Spreading my calipers inside the hole I get 0.248".

I bet a 0.25" (6.35mm) steel ball bearing would make a nice fit into that hole and add about 0.125" to BOL,
with a shiny silver hemisphere sticking out of that hole.
That ball of steel weighs 15.76 grains.
402.7 grains + 15.76 grains = 418.46 grains.

The .458-418gr Ball Peen Hammer Bullet by Bubba Bullet Metamorphosis Technologies Ltd., very limited,
is hereby released to the guntrade. Patented component supplied by Hammer Bullets.

AussieGunWriter,

Worthy information there, worth repeating.
I will look for that Layne Simpson article. He is usually pretty thorough.
If you want the 15th Seat at the Square Table of Crusaders for Truth,
tell us your name for the Knight Title, something besides Sir AussieGunWriter I hope.
Already taken: Bob, Ron, Jerry, Mike, Spruce, Dennis, Bill Bagwell, Russ, Hannay, Charles, John, Scotty, Tony, and Bevan.
Thirteen living and one Saint.

Sir Ron,

Just as a side note, AussieGunWriter is the reason I started my love affair with the .458
Years ago AGW wrote a review for the CZ550 .458 with the hogsback stock for a local magazine and after reading it I had to have one!
AGW was also the person that got me on to the 550gn Woodleigh's and even gave me some loads.
Has a wealth of knowledge and would make a great addition to the square table!

Just read the Layne Simpson article too and I really enjoyed it. Well worth a read guys.

Oh, and I'm heading out again on a Sambar hunt on Sunday and I'm hoping to finally christen the 550gn Woodleigh load on a big stag... fingers crossed.
Of course will keep you all posted with a field report and pics!

Russ

Hi Ron,
The name is John Woods.
Boringly simple I know, may complicate the table with 2 John's? Call for arbitration?
My background was more on the heavier side in writing in Oz, with handloading included within every article to help the readers with some short cuts.
John

PS Thanks for the kind words Russ. (I still keep 550gn Woodleigh loads on hand, because....I can)

Ron,
Did some poking around on my PC and found a pic of the buffalo. He was in a small herd and stood our because his hump was several inches higher that the rest and he had a long stem of dried grass on it which held to visually track him when he weaved through the other animals. The other feature that stood our was the locks flowing from his front legs as he ran because they looked like chaps.

I knew they could reach 2000lbs+ but didn't realize his true size until he scaled over 2300 while bled out. He also had horns that raised above the head mane which is not that common. He measured SCI #20 but I never recorded him in the books as I am not interested in competing.

Hit a snag - Pic is too large to post. Will try to send to you via a PM
John

Many thanks, Sir Ron! My M70 hasn't yet had the magazine spacer taken out and the ejector shortened to allow magazine-fed WM+ rounds, but that doesn't mean I can't load some longer COL rounds to be manually fed.

LOL, that'll work Sir Ron, and you're most welcome.

AGW, with two Johns here, you could be Sir Woods.

Sir Bevan, good for you, a big load of fun is on the way.

Sir John Woods,

The suggestion from Sir Jerry makes hay for me. How about it ? Sir Woods ?
We already have a Sir Spruce.
"Sir Woods" has a great ring to it too.

Say "hi" to Gregor Woods and Nick Harvey for us if they are still kicking. Any relationship ?

I will send a PM for that image of the big bull. Email will handle it and I can size it down to post here if it is a nice file like a JPEG or other like the gallery handles here.

Sir Bevan,

I plan to do the same for my M70 Super Grade .458 WM, and stick it into a Bell & Carlson Medalist stock to save the wood from scratches.
No hurries, no worries, that +3.4" box will handle ammo loaded to 3.4" COL and that is plenty good with most 400-grainers.
And, as you say, single-loading works fine for now, my rifle ejects a 3.54" COL if chambered and not fired.

Thanks Ron, Email will sort it out.
I believe Gregor is South African? not sure, but I have one of his books in my library.
Nick should be a legend as he has been writing since about 1962 so has made an enormous contribution over those literal decades. We talked occasionally at gun shows but never knew each other well. Spent more time with Mike McGuire than anyone else of note. We frequented the same range almost weekly for many years and he was always interesting.
Sir Woods sounds fine.
John

Sir Woods,

Good on email. We are missing Sir Mike here and he founded this thread !
I talked to Mike McGuire by telephone a long time ago, nigh onto two decades ago. Has he quit the boards altogether ?
Sir Bevan is posting images at a different hosting service and gets them to show up here like so:



That is some great bullet porn.
I might look into that site too.

Sir Woods presents the monster plains bison bull:





Sir Woods,

Could you tell us where you shot the buffalo ?

I mean location of the herd of animals on the map.
Also a review of necropsy of the bullet wound track in the bull would be interesting, if you got a chance to observe that,
or simply where the bullet entered the bison and where the bullet stopped,
when you get time, please.

So a 550-gr Woodleigh at 2500 fps does not "over expand" on a big bison.

There are a few giant bison out there, and Sir Woods found one of them with his 460 Weatherby Magnum Mark V.

The heaviest wild bull for B.b.bison ever recorded weighed 1,270 kg (2,800 lb) while there had been bulls estimated to be 1,360 kg (3,000 lb). B.b.athabascae is significantly larger and heavier on average than B.b.bison while the number of recorded samples for the former was limited after the rediscovery of a relatively pure herd.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison

The 550-gr Woodleigh at 2100 fps MV with the SAAMI .458 WM (3.340" COL) would have likely work just as well,
expanded less and penetrated deeper,
and it would have been easier on the shooter's shoulder.
Another good choice for bison:



The North Fork penetrates deeper as velocity increases.

Sir Ron,
The bison was taken in South Dakota from a herd of approx 4,000 on the 60,000 acres used in the Dances with Wolves movie. I recall the ranch was called Triple U. Last I heard, Turner recently added it to his property portfolio. Being aged at 10 and a half when I took him, he would have been a 4 and a half year old bull in the movie so I shot a movie star. Triple U's widow owner would allow hunters every year to take out the oldest herd bulls for a fee, I paid $1200. He was mounted by Jim Field, who did a lot of the SCI member mounts at the time in Oz and this half shoulder mount won first place in that category at the next SCI Convention there. The drop shoulder and legs in gallop as well as the open mouth with teeth exposed was Jim's idea and make the mount really stand out from the front, apart from sheer size.

The Woodleigh did ball up to some degree but was stopped by a neck shot. The audible thump was something that can only be explained by the guide who after stating that he had seen everything in cartridges, delivered the oration "Good Lord" when the cricket bat loud whack came back from the bullet strike. Gravity did the rest.

I have written before that there are 3 commonly noted stages in bullet behaviour, most hunters have seen stage one, where everything either side of the .270 behaves similarly on the common game those cartridges and various calibers are used until you get to stage 2 which is the .375 H&H. At that point you can see a visual difference in bullet impact and the honest summary of "Thump" can be noted. When you hit Stage 3 you are using .458 caliber and the degrees of thump are more noted with larger animals. When the game is heavy, meaning at least a ton in weight, a tremendous thump that demonstrates impact is noted whereas if you cull a lot of half ton and smaller animals that same degree of thump is less distinguishable to the larger stage 1 and 2 cartridges.

I wish I had more experience than I do to solidify those noted results, but that takes more money than the opinion is worth.

John

Damn, hell of an animal Sir Woods, it's past time for me to go get another buffalo [bison], they're absolutely delicious, grilled, smoked or from Wife's favorite cast iron seasoned skillets.

Delicious for sure.

I still remember those packages you slipped me a few years ago.

DF