Hi: What is your favorite cast bullet for hunting and plinking in your 458 win mag? Regards Dan

I just got a 1964 vintage Browning Safari in .458WM and have a bunch of 400 gr. 3 groove HC slugs on hand for my two .45-70 lever rifles. So, I loaded 50 of them over H-322 and went to Mission. They are pretty soft-shooting and I am going to order some 450 grs. from Bullet Barn as I will load 450 SAFs and Barnes TRXs in this rifle, over AA2230.

Rayner just shipped me a powder order and will order me some 450 SAFs, plus I am going to customize this with a Sunnyhill drop mag, synthetic stock, Recknagel fiberoptic irons and so forth, so, it should not be very harsh with the slightly heavier bullets.

On a slightly related note, I just cleaned Reliable out of the new Hornady 286 gr. spitzer bullet in 9.3 cal., for anyone interested in a "practice" and deer slug for their 9.3 rifles. They will be ordering more as I took the four boxes from their recent order and this is a VERY nicely shaped bullet; I have four 9.3s and will load this as an "understudy"to my 286NP loads. Rayner is also shipping me 5 lbs. of Ramshot Big Game and I understand that this will give 2500 fps-mv with these bullets where my current RE-15 loads are about 100 fps slower......worth pursuing, IMO.

Kute, keep us posted on your thoughts with the new 9.3 hornady, Im still working my way through the 1000 privi 286's I got this spring in my 9.3's.

Back to topic, I had good luck with the Bullet Barn products in my 45/70 and imagine if velocities were kept to 1700 fps or so they'd work well for you too.

Hi Dan. I have a number of cast bullets I use primarily in my Marlin 1895GS but two of the heavier ones should perform well in the 458wm. I haven't tried them yet and all have the same basic profile which I would classify as LFNGC. I get them from a guy locally and the one I've set aside for the 458wm is a 530gr. Admittedly I haven't tried them in the 458wm but if the big one works as well in the 458wm as the 420gr does in the 45-70, it may be a winner. I'll keep you posted.

420Gr crater lites
http://www.competitor-pistol.com/jb%20home.html

Dan:

I shoot a .45/70, not a .458, but this may help. I found, after trying them all, the most accurate cast bullet in my Marlin GG was the Lee 500 grain, cast in straight wheelweights. I put it behind 32 grains of IMR4198 and the sucker shoots 5 shots into less than .3 inches! Mind you, I'm only getting 1200 fps, but heck, it raises a few eyebrows at the range now and then!

I don't imagine, even at that velocity, it would do a deer or moose an awful lot of good, either!

I've never had that rifle shoot any better than 1 1/2 inches with any other bullet or load, incidentally.

Five shots into 0.3"? Yikes!! I just tried some light loads using a 405gr BB with Unique and a filller and I'd estimate the velocity to be about the same as your loads, 1200 f/sec. Using that load in my Marlin 1895GS with a Leupold 1-4 I just shot a group of five into 1.639" and I thought I was doing well. Sounds as though I have a ways to go yet. Nice group. Good shooting.