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

Sir CTF;

I like this a lot! Had I seen it before, I would have quoted it in my latest blog... but will next time with due credit to you!

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Sir smallfry,

Welcome to the Square Table.
No. 4 Sporter is lightest, and length no more than 23", but 22" would be optimum with such a light contour, considering wall thickness at muzzle..
No. 5 Sporter is best, 24" to 25".
No. 6 Sporter contour would be the heavy weight.
I used to wonder about fluting a No. ^6 but that would probably be silly, and interfere with barrel-sights.
1:14" twist is optimum, but 1:10" to 1:20" may be considered for special purposes ... nah.

Sir Bevan,

Yes, powder coating, excellent idea.
Maybe PC-paint and wrap in paper ?
And keep them slow for accuracy at 10 to 50 yards.

Sir Spruce's opinion is held in high esteem, considering his level of experience in hunting deer with the .458 WM.

Head is great if range is close and you don't care about skull and antler preservation.

High neck, good at close range.
I have killed deer at 50 yards with a .40-cal. flintlock roundball and a neck shot.
That is a .395-caliber, 93.5-grain projectile at about 2000 fps (accuracy load of 40 grains FFFg) in a 41.5" barrel.
The rifle was built by MASTER GUNSMITH AND MECHANICAL ENGINEER Rusty McGee in the J. P. Beck style,
like the rifle that Beck presented to President George Washington.

Double lung from broadside: The high heart shot is exactly that.

Nothing to argue about here.

Sir Jerry,
I hope you have a team with machinery to get those carcasses processed or you are going to kill yourself with 4 deer in a day.
Send pictures !

I got skunked Saturday and rained out Sunday last.
I share the hunting privileges on the farm with a father and son team that are family friends of my old buddy.
He passed on and his daughter sees to his old buddies.
The father and son duo are quite accomplished in deer hunting and firearms.
I was there first, but they have taken over the place quite nicely.

So I was quite puzzled as to why the young son, barely 20 y.o., was shooting MatchKing 150-grainers in his .308 WCF.
Handloaded by his father !
Component bullets being hard to come by is the only idea I have about it, even though that is not a good excuse.
Heck, shoot cast bullets at slower velocity and closer range !

But it made for some interesting activities Saturday with the young fellow hunting deer on the south side of the farm,
while I stayed on the north side.
The young fellow shot his first deer at 7 y.o. with a .30-06 from a ground blind with his Grandfather's assist.
Below is the "Young Fellow" or "Other Hunter" sharing the place with me Saturday last.
He said he has done most of his shooting at longish ranges, and I guess that is the reason he has been getting by with it,
on perfect broadsides at 150 to 250 yards.
Saturday he killed a doe with one such shot.
Then about 45 minutes later he shot a buck at 260 yards, quartering away.
Hit behind the left ribs with bullet aimed for the vitals, the deer did not go down,
and a second rapid shot hit the deer in the left ham as it was moving away.
Thus was the buck gutshot and hamshot:





Look closely and you will see the entrance wound on the neck, the third shot with 150-grain MatchKing,
that finished the buck 5 hours after wounding, as it lay in the woods, not quite bled out, unable to get up.

What follows below is a tale of travail with a whitetail buck and a bullet that brings no luck,
no matter how well placed.

I helped my young fellow sharecropper at the deer farm to get his deer out of the woods.
I went home and got a couple of boxes of old bullets for his Daddy to handload instead of MatchKings.

At next day's end when the rain finally quit

Or just use a .458 WinMag deer rifle:

Do they make SMKs for thr 458 LOL 😆

Sir John,
I will not be a sucker for a .458/400-gr SMK for deer !
OK for varmints !

Good one indeed !

I think I should get a 500 gr mold. Or there abouts . Seems like a 500 gr book it at 1400 fps. Would be fun shooting. And would provide sufficient Thump if something needed thumped. Plus it would make a fun , easy recoiling load. All it takes is time. And primers !

Crapola Sir Ron, i was informed an hour ago work is going to get in the way of my days planned activities, the 1 ton will remain loaded, maybe i can fire her up and head out in the morning, yes, butcher bud hangs my deer in his cooler for five days, really drains the blood out and breaks down the fibers for some really tender meat, i have him leave the loins whole, he runs them thorough a cactus roller LOL, after that they nearly fall apart in your plate!

You'll get on those deer, that sucks about the 150 SMK, glad the buck was recovered, have an old deceased bud that killed a million deer over the decades with his M-14 loaded with 165gr SMK's, never heard or saw any problems from him, all goes back to what i've believed for 35 years, when in doubt, load a Partition ; ]

I killed a Bull Bison that scored 70 1/4 SCI with a 525 grain flat point hard cast flat out out of a 6" barreled 500 Linebaugh. Shot him through the heart bullet exited. Blood poured out of the entrance hole. Velocity 1090 FPS
Hard cast work even on large animals

Amen to Sir Spruce.

Thus was the Nikon BDC reticle of the SlugHunter 3-9x40mm checked,
using BC of 0.380 for the pig with lipstick.
It worked well.
The classic 500-ish-grainer at 1400-ish fps is certainly a useful load in the .458 WinMag.

“ Remember, with proper alloy the RN turns into an FN upon impact.”
And instantly goes nose heavy thus keeps nose forward inside the animal. This is how rn soft lead works where rn hard solids fail.

Sir Dennis,

Agreed !
I start the next page with a perfect bullet for the .458 WInMag,
It is a 525-gr FNGC of .461" diameter and about 1950 fps MV,
cast in 92-5-2-1 alloy that is 25 BHN when water-dropped,
softens to about 21 BHN with PC-painting,
and is sized to .461" as the gas check is applied.
It gets harder with age over a month, and returns to BHN 25.
It is not brittle like Linotype, and it is harder and heavier than Linotype.
Might work for Sir Spruce for deer load at 1400-ish fps with 36 gr of AA-5744,
or be as satisfying as his 510-gr RNSP at 2000 fps, if loaded with 65 gr of AA-2230.