The Tactical Cowboy

 

What, what’s that you say? A .45-70 loaded hot enough to push a 300 grain bullet at 2600 feet per second is WAAAAY over even the hottest specs?

I’ve done it. Matter of fact, my standard .45-70 load uses the Barnes Original semi-spitzer loaded to just a little slower, 2565fps, because that was the most consistent load in my rifle. Which is NOT a Marlin of any kind, and is at least as strong as a Ruger No. 1. It took me years of experimenting to find that load, and I’m not sharing. But it is safe in my gun.

Yes, the damn thing goes off like the crack of doom, and it hits like God’s own little warhammer. But it’s a .45-70 you could hunt polar bears with, and it has a 225 yard point blank range. For almost everything else, it is Too Much Gun, which makes it so much fun.

Oh, and actual .45-70 hot rodders know the secret: there is no actual top pressure specification for the .45-70. The load manuals all disagree. As long as the brass holds up and the gun don’t blow up, you’re fine. But I will share: even the best .45-70 brass starts dropping primers when loaded to about 10% hotter than the Hornady loads from back-in-the-day. So call it 54,000psi in the best quality rifles. And the real performance secret is in the OAL, but that means custom gunsmithing. Look up the specs on the Army .45-70-500 and you’ll see.

1. So long as the bad guys stay beyond 150 yds they are probably pretty safe! Mind you that 45/70 slug must be pretty effective at close range. A lot of the guides in Canada carry them as Grizzly medicine.

   Posted by LyndonB       07/01/2011  at  09:40 AM  

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