Using four wheel drive and lockers

Nope, I hunt with a CZ American Safari rifle. It's a 458 Win Mag. I shoot a 405 grain paper patched cast lead bullet at 1,800 fps out of it for Elk. If the silly bugger you hit runs over the edge of a canyon, you could spend a full day or more finding it and getting it out to the truck. You REALLY want to anchor them as fast as possible. For deer it's a 350 grain gas checked cast bullet at about 2,600 fps. They never run far and little bloodshot meat.
 
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.458 Winchester Magnum, wow. I remember as a young kid reading books and articles by long-deceased famous hunter/writer Jack O'Connor, a writer for Outdoor Life magazine. He wrote wonderful articles and books about taking Cape Buffalos, lions, rhinos, Brown & Kodiak bears, etc. with a .458 which left me in awe. That's a big caliber, I never realized it was also used for elk. The biggest rifle I own is a Remington 700 30-06.
 
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Don't be to impressed with my choice of hunting rifle there Jerry. It's actually a bit of a freak show type thing. A bunch of years back I got into casting bullets and fiddling about with reloading for various rifles and handguns. The gun broker that I have dealt with for years had this rifle on the rack and offered it to me for a really decent price. One of his customers was looking at it and dropped it, damaging the stock cosmetically. I snapped it up because I was looking for a bolt action that shot a straight walled cartridge case for some ballistic experiments I wanted to do. I load it like it was a 45-70 mostly, but have developed some interesting and useful alternative loads for it as well. I have a grouse and rabbit load that mimics a .410 shotgun, a varmint load that uses .45 cal round ball and shoots a lot like a .45 cal muzzle loader, a cast load that puts a .45 cal, 350 grain bullet downrange at velocities from 800 fps up to 2600 fps and then heavy hunting and target loads that push 405 to 475 grain cast bullets of various configurations anywhere from 1200 to 2200 fps depending on what I am trying to accomplish. Just by changing up the powder type and bullet weight the rifle will shoot like a .22 up to loads that will detach retinas and make your ears bleed. I make brass for it from any of the belted magnums that folks leave laying around in the woods at shooting spots. I dig the lead for casting my own bullets out of the berms that folks shoot into. There is a load recipe available using just about any powder on the shelf that is slower than a medium shotgun powder. It works well with black powder or black powder substitutes. It'll shoot accurately from grouse range out to farther than you can see without really good optics.

Having said all of that, I would and have used an 8mm Mauser or 30-06 if I had a lick of sense and didn't own the CZ.

Edited to add: No rational person would use a 458 Win Mag to hunt anything outside of Alaska or Africa. It is fun though, and I get a lot of comments on it.
:)
 
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LOL cool, that clears everything up and describes creative reloading at its best. Your description of making loads for your .458 that would "detach retinas and make your ears bleed" is about what I thought was supposed to be typical for the .458 lol. I'd be nervous to shoot one, my 30-06 is more than enough for me. :)
 
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LOL cool, that clears everything up and describes creative reloading at its best. Your description of making loads for your .458 that would "detach retinas and make your ears bleed" is about what I thought was supposed to be typical for the .458 lol. I'd be nervous to shoot one, my 30-06 is more than enough for me. :)

That is typical for factory ammunition (at about $3 a trigger pull.) Reloading makes the 458 inexpensive and fun to shoot. My 12 year old grandson has shot some of the milder 350 grain loads, and loves it. Remember that this rifle weighs in at about 12 pounds empty and bare. The factory recoil pad is just over an inch thick. It's all in how you load and how you shoot.

I get a lot of comments about the rationality of shooting that beast. I especially love the macho types that tell me that recoil is not an issue for them. 475 grains at 2200 fps will give almost anyone not used to heavy recoiling rifles an instant flinch at the trigger. There are some extreme long range loads that push a 550 grain cast bullet out the muzzle at 2200 - 2300 fps. If you run the recoil numbers on that, they can best be described as brutal. I decided that I didn't want to try shooting that far. I have a scar over my right eyebrow where the rifle bit me when I first got it. Crawled the stock shooting it off the bench. You only do that once. lol

The whole reason that I got started with this thing was some old articles in hunting journals describing bison and bear hunting with the old 45 cal single shots. Remington Rolling Blocks and Sharps mostly. That led to paper patching, and that led to a whole slew of other old reloading techniques from the 1870's and 1880's. Some of the accuracy claims sounded like pure BS, until I actually tried them out. There are a few of us out there that have played with reloading this cartridge in the old school way now, those claims (for 45-70's, 45-90's, 45-110's and etc.) are perfectly reasonable given an experienced shootist and a good rifle. That shot that you see in the movie "Quigley Down Under"? That's a very easy shot to make, actually. Get out past 1,000 to 1,200 yards and beyond and it gets to be a little more work.
 
Definitely remember that shot on Quigley Down Under, what beautiful interesting rifles they had back then!

But ha you and I are in different leagues on shooting accurately at distances. While I managed by some quirk of fate to score Expert in the military with my M16 many years ago, I have trouble hitting anything now at even 300 yards with my 2-7X Leupold scope cranked all the way up. I'm blaming the rifle, the load, the wind, what I ate for breakfast, etc. on my current abysmal marksmanship abilities lol.
 
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Shooting is a perishable skill. It goes away quickly and is hard and time consuming to reacquire. Age doesn't help any either. Every time I'm feeling a little cocky, I walk out my front door and look down the street. The neighbors garage door is almost exactly 300 yards away. I look at the tail light lens on his car, chuckle and shake my head. I'm just lucky that almost all of the shots you get hunting around here are under a 100 yards with most being under 50. THAT I can still do.

If you want to check out some of the old rifle and guys that can shoot them, try to locate a Black Powder Cartridge Rifle (BPCR) competition in your area, Jerry. You'll see some really cool old Buffalo and Target rifles being shot a extremely long ranges. Lots of cartridges and calibers that most have never even heard of. The rifles themselves are true masterpieces of the gunsmiths art. Way out of my league, but it's fun to talk to the shooters. Lots of smoke, lots of flame and some truly amazing shots.
 
Black powder is fun, I built a .50 Hawken from a kit years ago and shot it a bunch of times. It was a more powerful weapon than I expected, it penetrated several layers of steel on an old upside-down burned out Cadillac and left a nasty dent in the frame. I was pretty surprised. I'm afraid to go to a black powder event, I'd end up getting into another expensive hobby starting with that .75 caliber Brown Bess revolutionary war era musket I've always coveted.

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Those old muzzle stuffers are more powerful than most folks expect. And to think that armies used to line up at close range and blaze away! More courage than I can probably muster...

That's a nice looking piece. There's just something that looks right about them. I bet it was a lot of fun to build and shoot that Hawken. I hear that the kits can turn out some really nice looking rifles with a little care and attention to detail. A buddy at work wants me to come over and try his out He's got a bunch of them he's acquired over the years. One of these days we'll go out in his back forty and scare the goats.

This is the one that I covet.

Sharps Lg.jpg


It's made by Chiappa for Lyman. A baby Sharps in 38-55.

Shooting those old rifles is an expensive hobby though, and my TJ is my hobby right now. The last time I went out and looked at the Shiloh Sharps web site a basic rifle was about $2500 and went up from there by leaps and bounds. Then there is all of the loading stuff that goes with it, better sights, various bullet molds...the list is never ending. I don't have the nerves or the eyesight to make it worth while to spend that kind of money on a rifle.

Probably the best rifle I own is an old Mauser that I picked up cheap. Made in Yugoslavia back in the day. Shoots great and is virtually indestructible, as rifles go.
 
Ooohh man I like that one too. I dunno how anyone could not like old weapons like those, they are beautiful hand-crafted works of art. The Hawken I built is now nothing more than decoration over my fireplace mantle, I haven't shot it in years. The one thing I always regretted after it was done was letting my local gunsmith talk me into bluing its barrel instead of browning it like was authentic.