Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Marlin 45-70 vs 375 Ruger Hawkeye

In order for me to respond to your post I would have to say the situation would depend. The 45-70 is a great lever gun round, but the 375 Ruger is really in a different arena. With that said you have two great guns.

Ray,

Would you please write some more about this. I've read several of your comments about the 45-70 and they always leave me wondering.

I've read many stories about how the new smokeless powder cartridges(30-40, 30-30, 30-06) killed game so much better than the old black powder cartridges. But when the 45-70 is loaded to the same velocities as the 30-30 and 30-40 with bullets of double the weight, I believe it is very different cartridge than when loaded at 1200-1400 fps.

I wonder, too, how much the problems you've seen may be due to poor bullet selection when better ones could have been chosen for the particular velocity, range, and game.

There are so many 45-70 load variations that I feel I'm lacking information whenever you mention your poor experiences with it.

Thanks,

Bruce