Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Stopping power

You know, a .45-70 makes a pretty good truck gun. And I'm using the term in the same way I might say a .22 makes a good rabbit gun or a .30-06 makes a good deer gun.
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3 comments:

  1. tomAugust 26, 2009 at 8:48 AM

    I reckon a .45-70 makes a good pistol round. Took a near 600lb wildebeest with my BFR with the .45-70 wheel (got the .450 Marlin wheel too) in it at about 75 or 80 yards. Didn't range finder it, but that's a fair estimation. He fell down and could not get back up.

    Just wandered over from 3Boxes to say "Howdy" from the Hill Country,
    Tom

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  2. KeithAugust 26, 2009 at 7:20 PM

    I've never had the chance to hold a BFR, although I've heard they are very well made. How to the feel in the hand? They look a little unwieldy. Not that that would stop me from getting one.

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  3. tomAugust 30, 2009 at 7:31 PM

    Nicely balanced. Everybody should own one and the advantage of the .45-70 is you can also get the .450 Marlin wheel to go with it for an extra 125 bucks either when you buy the BFR or later on but one caveat mentioned further along about not getting it all at once.

    If you buy the extra wheel later, you have to mail the BFR to Minn-ee-soda to have the wheel you didn't get fitted up and timed. It's 125 either way and they won't let anybody but themselves do the cylinder fitting of the secondary cylinder, not even reputable gunsmiths, so you're best off ordering it with both wheels. Think it's a liability thing because if somebody mis-timed the wheel it'd be a bad thing at best.

    As a .45-70 it's easily one handable with normal loads and still so with brisk loads, especially compared to Encore or Contender pistols, being as the BFR has more mass (although this noticeably changes, as does point of balance, as you empty the 5 shot wheel :-)

    With the .450 Marlin wheel it has what one might term "brisk" recoil but still one handable with lighter loads. This factor was what led to Mike Bellm and I discussing the viability of building MY "Baby", the .45-70 Encore barrel that ate it's vitamins and became a .458 Lott Encore Pistol.

    In Africa, depending on the window of shot opportunity, I used shooting sticks with the BFR. I killed an African tree squirrel with it for camp meat for the girl that did my laundry with a head shot one day when I was bored. 405 grain Remington green box plinker ammo. As you can see, the bullet didn't seem to meet enough resistance to upset it or expand to amount to anything. Not sure what that says about me but it was funny at the time. Was at about 25 or so and I had all the time in the world to aim. Knocked him out of the tree onto the boulder and no follow up shot was needed on that bit of African Dangerous Game to protect the ones around me. One shot stopper! :-)

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