Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only bought a 458 win mag

Love the 458. It opened up the imaginations of many hunters of some day hunting Africa, the Dark Continent. Some made the trip, many didn't. But owning and shooting a 458 is special.

Congrats on the rifle! My second centerfire rifle when I was a kid in remote AK was a pushy 70. I shot everything with that rifle. Absolutely no flies on the 458.

thanks for all the replies

Great - a total misinformation debacle.

The 458 (or any other big bore for that matter) generally suffers less throat erosion that almost any other type of nitro powder rifle. If you don't rust out the barrel or otherwise damage it somehow, it will keep shooting as well as it did on day one for a very, very high round count. Certainly more than your wallet will thank you for.

In terms of open sights loads, I would load something like the Woodleigh 350gr BPE bullet at 2100 ft/s with H4895, which works well for that sort of reduced load. Just start at 60% of book max and work up until you hit 2100 ft/s. It should be good to about 200y before drop gets bad, which is plenty for normal iron sight use.

https://imrpowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/h4895-reduced-rifle-loads.pdf

Above was aimed at swiftshot, and was a dead-on bullseye by Llama_Bob.
The rest of Llama_Bob's post was accurate too.
swiftshot is the BS artist formerly known as shootaway at another forum.

Yes Riflecrank swiftshot is shootaway you told us that before.I guess what I consider acceptable accuracy is not everyones.If you put a steel 7 inch plate out at 100yds and you hit it for the most part you may feel that satisfies your needs.I don't.I don't like wounding animals.A rifle has to group no larger than 3 or 4 inches most before I take it hunting to Africa.Riflecrank,you need to take your fat head out of the books, put the ruler down and try real life experience.

Mooshoo,

As I mentioned on another post, I thought 350 grain bullets were ideal for North American game in the West. I loaded 350 grain TSXs using F215 primers and H4198 powder. With 80 grains I could easily get 2700 fps in the 22" barrel of my Model 70. By "easily" I mean the empty cases just about fell out of the rifle. I eventually settled on 75 grains, though, a low pressure load in my opinion. Velocity was 2600. 78 grains yielded 2670. 5-shot groups with both of these loads were 2.25" at 100 yards.

The .458 is one helluva cartridge. If Winchester had any intelligent marketing people, they would have brought out a load similar to the above. I also played with 450 and 500 grain bullets for African dangerous game. I never used 400 grain bullets.

I would also second the poster who recommended Sir Bob's blog. He comes out with something new about every month or so.

"5-shot groups with these loads were 2.25" at 100 yards"
You could have gotten those groups a couple of times but to say what you said above and imply that this is what the rifle would shoot many or most of the time is misleading to say the least.What about the times when those groups were 6,7 or 8 inches large? Those don't count eh?

Trying to included civility in all my comments; I have never had a 6,7 or 8" group at 100 yards from my .458 in the 39 years I have owned it. Shooting for Group to me means a good solid rest and a Scope sight to remove as many shooter errors as possible. I have had a few 4 and 5 inch groups but those were with my cast loads at 200 yards resting over sticks from a sitting position. So I have a 39 year long experiment with a wide variety of bullets and loads that tells me my .458 has held very nice field hunting accuracy over a long period of time and into the thousands of rounds. A bore scope inspection of the bore las summer revealed one a small pitted area about halfway up the bore where my storage sometime in it's past must have left something there to promote rusting. I cleaned it up and it still shoots very fine. Without a bore scope, I would have never known it existed.
Fury01 Out.

Tell that joke to someone else.

Hey braindead just because you have POS rifles and can't shoot doesn't mean that applies to others

Swiftshot:

Perhaps I should explain something to you.

In my sessions with the .458 I was mostly concerned with working up loads to give the best velocity. Accordingly I did not fire five shots of ANYTHING until I had reasonably decided on a range of powder weight. Only then did I fire five shot groups. The two I mentioned are the only two I fired.

I should also explain that I earned the Lifetime Master rating in NRA Highpower when I was 16 years old. I was Ohio State junior champion twice and runner-up national champion. You may not know what that means. One thing it means is that even when I'm only chronographing I use a 1" black paster on a white background, and I KNOW if I'm getting a 6, 7, or 8 inch flyer. I wasn't getting any of those.

I did fire a couple of 3-shot groups of 450 and 500 grain bullets, however, to check if anything might be better than North Forks or TSXs. The size of these groups was not much different than my five-shot groups. While I did not record the results, there were no 6, 7, or 8 inch groups.

As for firing more groups, it is a waste of time and money and firing a heavy-recoiling rifle off the bench is not fun. I don't understand why you think a .458 would not be capable of good accuracy. If you have any reasons, or facts beyond prejudice, we might like to hear them.

As for results, I killed elephant, buffalo, and hippo with my 450 grain bullets. None of the animals voiced any complaint.

The 458 does not have a inherent accuracy like the 308 Win.All I am saying is that its accuracy for consistent 2-3 inch groups, has a curve with a sudden steep drop at ranges beyond 50yds.I base this conclusion from the experience of owning and shooting various 8 458's some of which I rebarreled.

To debate with swiftshot is like trying to debate with someone who is convinced that the moon is made of Swiss cheese... You know what we sometimes get in our email messages: "Do Not Reply", because there's nobody home!

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Here is a 5 shot group I once shot with my Ruger Lott at 100yds.I was using open sights.Groups like this are like getting struck by lightning.BTW the rifle was brand new and did not have a box of rounds through it.I can show you many more targets of the groups I fired over the years but they don't look like that.

There is a very excellent article by Warren Page in (I believe) the 1970 Gun Digest summarizing all of Remington's data for their 40X, fired for group before selling the rifles. The data proves that smaller calibers are more accurate than larger ones due to less leaping, torquing, and blasting.

So...I would be surprosed that a bunch of .308s were not more accurate than a bunch of .458s. .308s are a bit more accurate than 30-06s and .223s are more accurate than .308s.

So what?

If your .458 experiences a sudden opening of group size in terms of MOA at 50 yards, you may have discovered a new and proprietary law of physics.

I discover things all the time.

Wow. Just wow.

When still enamored with accurate shooting with my Winchester pre 64 Model 70 Featherweight .308, I shot 3 shot groups of 3/8 inch and 5 shot groups of 5/8 inch with my handloads AND factory Remington ammo.
Then I realized that was as good as I could do and went hunting. Never looked back. Tossed the targets, but kept the shooting logs, which I recently came across while looking for a forgotten hunting load.

Thanks Indy for the quote by Mr. Page. A better way of saying the same thing is to say that smaller caliber rifles when shot by humans generally yield more accurate results than larger bore rifles when shot by humans. That being because of "due to less leaping, torqueing, and blasting" as he suggested. Agreed.
Also we know from many sources that larger bore rifles that shoot at what is a lessor velocity, suffer far less Throat erosion and sustained barrel heat than the 308 and 223's of the world shooting at 2800-3100 FPS and we know why that is so.
All that seems to lead us down the path that the .458 change in Accuracy that George experiences is not because of the Cartridge and it's level of accuracy. Like most things, George can be the example that lies at the end of the Bell curve and his .458 guns do lose accuracy. If so, I would suggest again that is not the fault of the caliber. It could be the what he shoots; example a sandpaper coated bullet, or cleaning regime, example; using diamond paste and a hand powered drill to clean with, or shooting them until the barrel is very hot and continuing to shoot them. These are just examples ideas intended to show only the direction of the problem not a description of the actual problem. I have no idea what besets George's Big bore rifles or why his results are what they are. I simply disagree about the accuracy potential of the .458 WM and wish him well.