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

Sir Ron, well done on making a better version of the Barnes 400gr X bullet a reality. Your persistence has been rewarded.

It looks like a great bullet for many uses.

Thanks Sir Ron;

I'll do as you say using 26 grs of AA-5744, then try a few until I get a keyhole.

We've just had the worst winter storm so far this year. Looking forward to spring to get out and try some of those 550gr Woodleighs at about 1800. I expect to give a few a flat point of .25".

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

The gel is helpful in tracking the damage down by the petals and where they shed


I used the 220 HH in my 35 Whelen at 2911 FPS on deer this year shots were 180 to 200 yards. Their were very accurate and terminal damage was very large.

[quote=Riflecrank]Sir Bob,

That is sort of like my old Berry's Bullets 409-gr/.459" FN grease lubed bullets,
except mine are plain-base, have no copper-washed/plated base treatment.

Your Ruger No. 1 is .459"-grooved like mine, I reckon.
It will shoot those bullets with OK accuracy only if you keep the velocity down to about 1200 fps.
Mine key-holed at higher speed too.
I used 26.0 grains of AA-5744 for a 7-yard instrumental velocity of 1172 fps
and 3 shots into an inch at 50 yards.

Nice plinker, barely supersonic.
Accuracy will get worse until keyholing assuredly at 1500 fps instrumental.

Alternatively: Degrease them and powder-coat paint them to make them 0.460".
Still not the desirable 0.461" for best accuracy.

Alternatively alternatively: Shoot them in a .45-70 with .457" grooves using smokeless loads.
SAAMI spec for .45-70 is 0.456" minimum groove,
so you will find them with groove diameters from .456" to .459" and hopefully no greater than that

Too hard and Too small. Too hard to bump up with powder to the rear so you will have to ride the bore at low speed. Or if your good with a Hammer, take them out to the anvil in the Blacksmith's shop and whack them with a Two Pounder until they are .460+ enough to size again. The Hammer Test 2.0

Sir Bob,
I enjoyed P3 of your blog on the Single shot Big Bores. I've never had a Ruger #1 in .458 but I did in little brother 338WM. I held two rounds between the fingers of my left hand on the forearm and one between the second and third fingers of my shooting hand. I always wear very light leather gloves and had grooves in them and my fingers I think for a few years. No problem reloading the #1 in 2.5 seconds for the second shot while leaving the butt on my shoulder. I would just lower the barrel as I hit the lever sending the brass either over my shoulder or it would hit me in the shoulder, and dropped the single out of the trigger handle in the hole and sweep the lever back as the bore came back up. I wasn't hunting charging buffalo but fleeing Elk so there's that but as you mentioned in your Blog; never had a failure to eject, load or fire with the old #1.
dmw

From Col. Craig "Shill" Boddington in the March 2022 edition of SHOOTING TIMES magazine,
"Boddington's Top 5 for the Big Five" pp. 38-43, starting on page 42,
so as not to drown in the rest of the drivel, just consider what he says about the .458 Winchester Magnum.
My interpretive comments on his ramblings will be in bold.

"The .458 Winchester Magnum arrived in 1956, at a time when Kynoch was discontinuing the big Nitro Express cartridges.
It quickly became the world-standard big bore and probably accounted for more elephant than any other cartridge.
TRUE.
Its problem was that with propellants of the day in its short (2.5-inch) case,
it was difficult to get it to the promised speed of 2,150 fps with a 500-grain bullet.
FALSE.
General Hatcher published the H. P. White Laboratory data showing HiVel #2 propellant of 1955 vintage
did exactly what Winchester claimed for the .458 Winchester Magnum:

76 degrees F, Relative Humidity 59%
Winchester brass/case
Winchester No. 120 primer
71.0 grains HiVel #2 propellant ... NO COMPRESSION
COL 3.340"

25" barrel, 0.4582" groove diameter, 0.4500" land diameter/bore

Bullet: 500-grain WRA full-metal-jacket round-nose "solid", bullet diameter 0.4573"

Velocity recorded at 20 feet, average of 10 shots = 2160 fps

Chamber pressure average of 10 shots = 50,410 psi

PROPELLANTS HAVE ONLY GOTTEN BETTER SINCE 1955.

"Reports drifted in of erratic ignition and compressed powder charges pushing bullets out."

In other words, the demand for .458 WinMag ammo was so great that the factory had trouble supplying
such vast quantities and Quality Assurance went to hell.
This smacks of the possibility that Democrat Party voters may have been hired at the factory
during a shortage of good help.

"Even earlier, there were .458-caliber wildcats based on the full-length H&H case, including .450 Ackley and .450 Watts.
Craig must prefer alphabetical rather than chronological order of those two wildcats.
Why Winchester chose to shorten the case remains a mystery."
Most mysterious to a small mind.

"My old friend, eccentric writer Jack Lott, experienced problems with the .458, including getting tossed by a buffalo!
Craig does not mention that Jack's first shot on that buffalo was a gut shot with a soft nose bullet,
and his second shot was with an FMJ solid that deformed and did not track true.
Any higher velocity would have likely made that FMJ failure even worse.
Moral of the story: The bullet construction matters and so does the bullet placement, especially on the first shot,
before all hell breaks loose.
Jack continued to hunt with his .458 WinMag after that 1959 incident in Mozambique with Wally Johnson.
He continued using it until he was so original as to rechamber one of his .458 WM rifles for 2.8" brass.
So his cartridge, the .458 Lott, developed in the early '80s, is ballistically identical to the Ackley and Watts.
BALONEY !!! Jack shortened the .450 Watts Magnum (2.850") of 1949 and called it the .458 Lott (2.800") in 1971.
Lott simply extended extended the .458 Win.Mag. case with little taper, so then-ubiquitous .458 Win. Mag. ammo could be
safely chambered and fired and would generally feed.
WHOO HOO !!! Craig makes it sound like it's a dirty thing that .458 WinMag ammo was "ubiquitous."
It was still the standard bearer despite having killed more elephant than any other cartridge, like the 5000 or 6000 killed by one Ron Thomson,
ditto Richard Harland, etc., two of many wielders of the .458 WinMag in conservation and other shooting.
Case capacity easily allows 2,400 fps with a 500-grain bullet,
Here Craig is confusing the 465-grain A-Square .458 Lott load data in which a 26" barrel barely made 2,421 fps at 62,300 psi, NOT A 500-GR BULLET.
He wrote that section of the A-Square manual about the .458 Lott.
but current factory loads are more conservative at about 2,300 fps, yielding 5,800 ft-lbs.
Yes, 2,250 fps with a 500-gr bullet from a 24"-barreled .458 Lott at 62,500 psi is "about 2,300 fps."
Power and penetration are amazing; the Lott is a thumper on both ends! I took an early .458 Lott to Zambia in 1984,
barrel work done by Jack Lott himself.
Ho hum. If it was an early wildcat then it probably had a .458 WinMag throat on it, the .458 Lott like Jack built.
By the time Craig was writing it up in the A-Square manual of 1996, it had probably been re-throated to its present SAAMI chamber,
which has the fingerprints of Art Alphin all over it.

"It was, and is an awsome cartridge. Craig says about his beloved .458 Lott.
However, modern propellants and lighter bullets (for buffalo, not for elephant) (arguable)
have cured most of the .458 Win. Mag.'s shortfalls.
Shortfalls my adze ! There never were any shortfalls for the .458 Winchester Magnum.
But at least Craig is getting close to honesty here.
Unless hunting brontosaurus (or small armored cars), few of us need the power and recoil of the .458 Lott,
much less the the several faster, larger-cased cartridges.
In a big bolt-action rifle, primarily with elephant in mind, the .458 Lott is an easy choice.
It still offers the option of using .458 Win. Mag. ammo in a pinch and for lighter recoil practice."

Well !!! That is some sort of faint praise for something, but I am not sure what.
Poor old Craig, seen on his cable TV appearances, is starting to resemble Joe Biden tottering about,
shilling first for this and then for that.

Sir Joe,
Buy a donkey for your excellent discernment of a good bullet.

Such discernment reminds me of what a national treasure, nay world treasure was the prodigious Ross Seyfried,
all around Gun Crank Extraordinaire and superb writer.

That was until he went whacko and denied the .458 Winchester Magnum.
He denied it as surely as Peter's denial of Jesus, three times before the cock crowed.
"In Defiance of the .458 Winchester"
by Ross Seyfried, RIFLE 211, Jan-Feb 2004
Yet Just in the previous year he had been anthropomorphizing his love for the .458 WinMag onto a Ruger No. 1,
saying that it loved paper-patched bullets:

"Paper Patched Bullets" HANDLOADER 220 Dec-Jan 2003, pp. 58-65.

"Modern rifles are often quite happy to use patched bullets.
Once again, where it might be difficult to get reasonable accuracy
from a .30-06 with bare lead bullets and velocity over 2000 fps,
it can be very easy to approach the magical inch groups with paper patches.
Further, while I have not pushed the system as far,
others have achieved reasonable accuracy out of 'magnums' with velocity over 3,000 fps.
I had a stock Ruger No. 1 .458 Winchester Magnum that was absolutely in love with patched bullets.
Inch groups were the norm at 2,100 to 2,200 fps, even with pure lead bullets.

"One more bizarre use of paper patches, in conjunction with 'modern rifles'
is making undersize jacketed bullets fit the rifle.
I have successfully fitted .458-inch bullets to .470 Nitro rifles ..."

Is there hope that Ross will repent?
Peter wept when the rooster crowed, and Jesus looked at him.
I will weep for joy at the repentance of Ross.

Good summary of the problem by Sir Dennis, but I suggest using a bench vice to squeeze the bullet to fatten it, instead of the 2-pound hammer.
Put a torque wrench on the vise handle for repeatability.
Just kidding.

Sir Ron,
I think Bob and I can join you in praying for Ross to have a change of heart, including the truth of the magnificent 458 WM. He really was a masterful shooter and terrific writer. Worthy task for Knights of the Cross to undertake wouldn't you say?
Along the lines of searching for the truth; maybe you could help me. I was a Guns and Ammo subscriber for a couple of decades 80's and 90's. In that time period a story appeared titled "The Witness Tree" or "Trees" maybe. The Author was Norm Nixon. All this from memory so... Terrific story and I have always thought from the writing style that it was really written by Ross Seyfried. I have looked and looked on Google without success.
Thank you Sir.

Your new 400gr Hammer bullet is going to be a 2500+ fps five points of contact carpet bomb Sir Ron.

Ross Seyfried was one of mt favorite writers - perhaps my favorite until he wrote nonsense on the .458 Win, basically saying the .416 Remington would bury it. I've written about his folly in that prognostication at least a couple of times. Then he disappeared as a writer from Wolfe Publications - what happened?

Thanks Sir Dennis for your support. Actually, when I was really into shooting my Ruger No.1 .45-70s, I was quite a bit faster than 5 sec mentioned in my last blog, but that was in my prime, not today!

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Sir Dennis,

I will keep an eye peeled for anything "Witness Tree" or "Tree," with Norm Nixon or Ross Seyfried relationship.
What was the story about ?

Yes, all Knights of the Four Five Eight must semper fi on prayers for the soul of Ross Seyfried.
Surely the devil made him do it.
Did he have a pact with the devil that was called due when he defiantly "denied" the .458 Winchester Magnum ?
A .458 Win Shaman exorcism is in order, unless our prayers work.
Have buffalo robe, will travel.

Actually, it was Ross who got me interested in the .340 WBY. I never regretted that. And he was a very good writer.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

But no one has helped the cause of the GREAT .458 Winchester Magnum in recent times as Sir Ron has!

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

YES !!!

Bubba Bullet Metamorphosis Technologies, Ltd. (very Ltd.)
has announced it is discontinuing 400-gr/.458-cal X-TSX production,
now that the 400-gr/.458-cal Shock Hammer bullet is available from Hammer Bullets.

Barnes 500-gr/.458-cal TSX bullets will not be cut off at the base anymore, by BBMT, Ltd. (more limited now)
Instead, those too-long-for-caliber bullets will only be shortened to 480-grainers by rhinoplasty.
That makes an extremely tough, semi-soft nose FN bullet for magazine filling of .458 WM and .458 WM+ rifles.

BBMT, Ltd. will now shift operations to shortening of the 500-gr/.458-cal Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer Solid
and remaining stocks of the brass Barnes Banded Solids to produce 400-gr and 450-gr FN solids,
to match preferred "soft" bullet weights.

We can also use the semi-solid 400-gr/.458-cal Barnes Buster FN as a "tweener" bullet.
It is in between soft and solid and will bulge its nose into a nicely stable shape with heavy impacts.

Sir Reverend Bob,

Ditto on Ross and the .340 Wby. When I first hunted Alaska in 1986 as a resident, it was with a Weatherby FiberMark .340 Wby,
and a Freedom Arms .454 Casull Field Grade 7.5" with fixed sights.
I had some adventures with those, feared no evil.
Weatherby and McMillan were the first ever FACTORY combo for a synthetic-stocked big game rifle,
Started circa 1984-1985, IIRC.

Would you be willing to travel for an exorcism if we can locate Ross ?
If we fail with the religious approach, we can throw the 8-foot-square bison robe over him and
threaten a blanket party if he does not repent.
Better see if Sir Jerry can come along too as another spiritual inspiration with some muscle. LOL

I went to Alaska in March 1984 and left 7 years later.

This is the exit in a deer of a 220 Hammer Hunter at 2911 FPS from my 35 Whelen with a 28" barrel 1885 Highwall

Hail yes Sir Ron, pain petals shearing off at 2, 4, 8, and 10 o'clock, pinwheel center dogknot solid shank plowing on through! i'm going to take one of those 450gr TSX's you gave me, rum em at 2450+ fps from my 458 WM+ and smash a Cape Buffalo in Africa this fall, i'll have it filmed and send you a copy,

Sir Ron , you make this thread great . and funny😀😀😀👍👍