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

Sir Jerry, much appreciated verification of ABE.
They need to sign you up as celebrity endorser,
like Jim Shockey used to do for Nosler, Leupold ... and too many other companies to shake a stick at.

Would CEB consider adding another band on the 400 grain to allow seating out the bullet farther, or would that be against their design parameters?

Sir Bevan,
I am not one to ask for a mile when allowed an inch.
3.250" COL with 2.5" brass length gives seat depth of 0.476".
3.350" COL: 0.376"
That is good, more neck on the bullet than in a .500 Jeffery.
Also allows surpassing 3.340" COL with regular crimp, by a whopping 0.010".

To go to unconventional "belt & suspenders" crimping below the third band
gives COL of 3.450" and seating depth of 0.276".
I like that.
No need for more.

Would need more bullet to go longer.
For the FN solid it would mean more weight,
destroying the "non-con" magic of the 400-grainer at 2500-ish fps.

The 404-gr Shock Hammer is "more bullet" in length. No need to mess with that magic either.

Two perfect bullets that together will do all.

No need to limit ourselves, however,
as there are nearly infinite numbers of satisfactory propellant and bullet combos with King Four Five Eight.

Understood, and thanks.

Honored to serve behind Sir Bob. 🫡

With no objections to Sir Dennis' Chaplaincy of the Square Table as backup for Sir Bob,
onward to new business.
I have been out of touch for a few days, now putting bandaids on my briar scratches and resting my geriatric joints.
Ten more days of deer season remain, modern gun here.
I am all for making the highways safer for motorists by accessing a no-limit season on does in an area I have access to next.
Some enlightenment was obtained at the latest outing where the limit was four deer, or one buck and three does.
More to follow on my latest .458 WinMag and 404-gr Shock Hammering of a doe at a mere 50 yards.





I had to get on my brakes and horn as Bucky's twin crossed the highway that night, headed home, after I shot the doe.
I would rather bag one with the .458 WinMag than with my truck.

I sat in this condominium with 88 y.o. "Geri Harry" (not Dirty Harry mind you) on Saturday and Sunday:



Saturday Harry shot this small buck about 100 yards:



It was a spine shot with a .243 Winchester (born in 1955 a year before the .458 WM)
Ruger M77 and Leupold 1.5-5x20mm in Ruger rings,
handloaded with Speer 100-gr 6mm GrandSlam SP and enough StaBall 6.5 to give +2800 fps MV from the 22" barrel.
Rifle and ammo provided by McGee Acres Game Farm proprietor.
The deer dropped like a sack of rocks.



No outwardly visible entrance wound and a small spot of blood visible as exit wound.
Small bit of backstrap meat loss.
Sunday Harry shot a doe, again at about 100 yards.
It was hit in a single lung(right side) and then into gut on left side.
It went down then bounced up and ran off, about 100 yards into a cedar thicket and dropped for good.
Harry was satisfied with enough backstrap for taking back to the Florida Keys by return flight Tuesday,
allowing Monday for solid freezing of meat.

So Sunday afternoon I left Harry in the condominium blind
and walked a few hundred yards west to a ladder stand:



Right before sundown a doe popped out of a cedar thicket only 50 yards away and was reflexively shot with the .458 WinMag.



She was hit in the left side, low in chest, getting only both sides of lungs and ribs, no heart, great vessels nor shoulder bones nor meat.
She went straight up in the air a few feet upon bullet impact and then ran as if uninjured, back into the cedar thicket.
I blood trailed her for 50 yards up a low hill and then lost the blood in the darkness,
and besides, Harry showed up. Making sure he did not fall in the woods,
I decided to let the deer wait until morning, since it was frosting heavily overnight.

Entrance wound of 404-gr/.458 Shock Hammer at 2468 fps MV, 50-yard impact:



Exit wound may have been augmented overnight by a 'possum nibbling on its edges,
but otherwise no meat was lost. Doe was found lying like this, exit wound up:



Moral of the story is that a double-lunged deer might go 100 yards whether shot with
a .243 Winchester and 100-gr Speer GrandSlam impacting about 2700 fps
or a .458 Winchester Magnum and 404-gr Shock Hammer impacting about 2400 fps.
Whitetail does are about as tenacious to life as a cape buffalo,
they just do not offer as much resistance to bullet.

Freki the Doeslayer leaned against a big cedar tree:





Of course, the .458 WinMag is more capable of dropping a cape buffalo DRT with one shot,
as proven by Sir Jerry and Sir James, than is the .243 Winchester.
There is that to recommend it, the .458 WinMag.

Glad to see the mighty 458wm out in the deer woods of old Kentucky again. Mine will be out on the Great Plains end of November and first of December.

F01

It appears no lacking of a hole through the 458 Winchester doe.

Sir Dennis,
My 55"-long Jet Sled got some use.
Nice size for a doe. Don't you think ?



Sir Larry,
Weird exit wound.
One broad rib exposed in center of 3"-wide oval of missing hide.
One rib rearward had a chip off its edge adjacent to the hole.
The lungs were a bloody mess.
Suggests a doe is pretty narrow chested and the petals had not spread out much by the time the bullet base and all petals
passed out the offside hide, between the ribs,
except one petal or the bullet base grazed/chipped a rib ?
The clean hole suggests a 'possum chewed the edges of the exit wound,
maybe got scared off the carcass by me returning early AM.
Tender, succulent venison.
I have made three meals of the meat already.
'Possum got merely a nibble. I got the rest.

Got rained out today and probably tomorrow.
I shall be gunning for more meat, Lord willing and the creeks don't rise, and the holiday, etc.

I have a new CVA Scout in .45-70 Gov't.
Bob Mitchell pioneered the .45-70 Long Throat on a Ruger No. 1.
He could shoot 500-grainers at 2200 fps with that, pressure tested sub 60K psi by Western Powders lab.

There is another cartridge called the .45-70 Elko Magnum, a CIP homologation of the 1990s.
I discovered that after I re-created the wheel with a .45-2.6" Sharps Winchester Throated, my reamer name (from Dave Manson) was ".45-100 SWT."
Ruger No.1 X2 for those, a 22" light barrel (1:20" twist) and a 28" heavy barrel (1:18" twist).

The CVA Scout is factory-marked simply ".45-70" so it will be easy to add "Elko Magnum" to the barrel.
This brings honesty.
The .45-70 EM came before the .45-2.6" SWT.
I can no longer copycat without giving Mr. Elko his due.
It would be akin to stolen valor.

The "70" means 70 grains of smokeless powder in the .45-70 Elko Magnum, versus 70 grains of BP in the .45-70 Government.
Whatever the .458 WM+ can do, the .45-70 EM can do, despite the 0.100" longer COL.
No problem in the single-shot rifle, of course.

Sir Ron, no telling what feasts upon prime immobile venison at night.

I suppose this is where I have to question, is a 458 Winchester adequate for use as a whitetail stopping cartridge 😂 ??

I see on the Hammer site where there were a couple of folks seemingly concerned they did not have immediate drop on the spot shots, on deer. Heck, some were surprised at the animal moving less than 50 yards.
Edit: This was with smaller caliber fast moving bullets.

My take is if the bullet did its job, and poi was suitable, the reaction / action is animal specific. Some animals just do not give up, and distances traveled are impressive considering damage done.

Sir Ron
Nice doe and I too have the xl Jet Sled as my retrieval tool. I have an old camper shell / topper on my old 1986 Chevy 4x4 with about 3” lift on it. I can no longer grab a big floppy dead buck and hoist into the back but I can load the deer and the jet sled as a unit by lifting the front onto the lowered tailgate and then getting behind the load lift and lever then push it all in! Keeps me able to hunt and retrieve alone!!
Note: yes the 458wm is an excellent deer stopping rifle. I was charged by a fleeing doe a few years ago. When she exited the thicket right at me I placed a 485 fn cast bullet in her neck Chest junction whereupon she hit the ground dead with her entire stomach existing her body through the exit hole. Since the stomach was not penetrated, I think the bullet vacuumed it out. Never seen anything like it. 👍🏼👍🏼

True. . . and bullet specific.

I've done a significant amount of testing .458-cal bullets in various media - the last two in glossy dry magazines wedged tightly in strong cardboard boxes. That was not to simulate penetration in live game, but to compare bullets with each other in penetration, weight retention and expansion.

Date:Oct 31/17
Rifle: Ruger no.1 in .45-70 LT
Test media: 2 boxes of dry magazines + some hard-cover books + two 2" softwood planks. Total lenth of test media = 21". Firing distance = 5 yds., and MV to simulate impact on game at 75 yds.
Bullets fired in this order and results:
500gr Speer AGS: MV = 1750 fps. Penetration into 1st box only = 6". Retained wt = 62%/310 grs.
480gr DGX (non-bonded): MV = 1785 fps. Complete penetration of 1st box (14') missed 2nd box and wood, impacted ledge behind and left a perfect imprint of the nose at about .458" . Bullet lost.
500 Hornady SP Int.: MV ~ 2000 fps (from a previous handload) Turned box upside down, no pieces found and no exit. A lot of confetti though!
400gr Barnes Buster: Mv = 2250 fps. Complete straight-line penetration of both boxes and 2 planks. Lost in background.
330gr Barnes Banded: MV = 2400 fps. Complete penetration of test media, in straight-line. Lost in background.
350 Hornady RN: MV = 2250 fps. Penetration 3.5 - 4". Lost core and retained 51% (jacket only)
350 Barnes TSX: MV = 2470 fps. Complete penetration, stopped at last panel of 2nd cardboard box, fully expanded and retained 100%. It did more damage than any of the other bullets, with the possible exception of the solids that just kept on going.

For my bear hunt in May 2024, I'm thinking of using the 400gr Barnes Buster at about 2250 fps from my Ruger No.1H in .458 Win.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

And that happened with a bear I shot using a 500gr Hornady RN. It was from the Ruger No.1 in .45-70 LT mentioned above. MV was 2185 fps. It was quartering to me, and from 40 yds I hit it behind the left front shoulder and the 500gr Hornady took exit in the offside flank with a two foot loop of bowel on the outside, not ruptured, punctured or torn. What a time I had getting it back inside through a nickel-size hole! The Hornady was too tough and never expanded but it killed the bear that went about 20 yds.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Thanks Bob for the supporting evidence. I think the force involved to be vacuum. I can’t see how it would happen any other way as the doe went straight down and dead.
F01

Sir Larry,
Ditto.
There is no reliable DRTRN (DeadRightThereRightNow) upon bullet impact unless the CNS (brain or spinal cord) are smacked.
This does lead me to wonder about hydrostatic shock delivered to the heart or great vessels
that could be transmitted to the brain and stroke the animal out in the brain
by sudden massive hemorrhagic stroke, brain bleed.
Not just any heart shot, has to be when a valve is open and the valveless great vessels are always an open conduit
for the "blood hammer." Top of the heart and great vessel area hit is most likely to blood hammer a brain.
Shock Hammer bullets don't always do it, even with a high heart hit on a whitetail deer,
not quite the cape buffalo DRTRN's we have seen from Sir Jerry and Sir James.

My latest on Thanksgiving Day morn was an unlucky duo of a button buck I thought was a doe
and a larger buck with a deformed knob for his left antler.
The little guy got his heart touched and both lungs deflated and three ribs trashed on the offside
He simply wheeled around 180 degrees and bounded back into the woods,
went 10 yards and collapsed.
The bigger knobhead buck had been right behind the button buck, hence enforcing the idea of the doe.
He froze at the edge of the woods, then turned to sneak away slowly between the trees.
Freki is a voracious wolf of a rifle, she lunged at that deer too.
He got a similar though mirror image shot just behind the heart since he was creeping slowly away.
Both lungs and three broken ribs on the off side. He went 30 yards at a run after being hit.
No leap straight up as I have seen two cape buffalo do, as well as that first doe that I reported on earlier this season.
She was double lunged and went straight up off the ground on impact.
No explaining except reflex reaction of intact nervous system.

Laser range from my stand to the button buck was 133 yards. Knobhead was on the same latitude line.
Bullet was 404-gr Shock Hammer at 2468 fps MV with Benchmark 78.0 grains in Norma brass,
a moderate load for the .458 WM+ at 3.380" COL.

First use for my unfinished 10'x20' he-shed is for home-processing of this meat
with temporary suspension at back end of shed,
processing tables, grinder, slicer installed since this photo:



The other two deer were commercially processed.
This button buck gets more respect.
I suspect the knobhead buck was a homopedophile who
tricked me into thinking he was following a doe.
He needed to be removed from the gene pool.

Another mishap, it happens. Day before Thanksgiving I was aiming at a doe 200 yards away.
My scope looked right over the top of a tree branch ten feet from the rifle muzzle:

Sir Dennis,
Ah ha. DRTRN deer.
Wish you had a picture of the stomach exit after straight-on neck-chest-juncture frontal shot.
Spinal cord shock or autonomic fainting from vagal nerve trauma along its course down the neck to stomach ?
I would faint too if my stomach suddenly popped out of my body.

Jet Sled. Yep, I am getting the biggest one I can find.
The knobhead buck was a poor fit in my medium: