Shooting Times cover Shooting Times
February, 1999
by Dick Metcalf, Technical Editor


.45-70 GOES HANDGUN HUNTING

For plain raw power in a hunting handgun, it's hard to top the venerable old .45-70.
 
Some years back J.D. Jones sent me one of his SSK Industries' customized 14-inch T/C Contender Hand Cannons chambered for the .45-70 Government cartridge. I shot four or five rounds of Garrett Cartridge's high-end 405-grain JSP commercial loads through it, decided that was about all the fun I needed for one afternoon (or month), and set it on the shelf. Heavy handgun recoil is generally not something particularly bothers me, but neither do I enjoy hitting my thumb with a hammer or stubbing a bare toe on a doorjamb in the dark.
 
On the other hand, the .45-70 is a darn food round or else it wouldn't be the oldest centerfire rifle cartridge still factory loaded in the United States (it was introduced as the official U.S service rifle cartridge for the Trapdoor Springfield in 1873, a month or two before the .44-40 Winchester came out for the Winchester Model 1873). And for a serious handgun big-game hunter it will deliver as much punch and accuracy for a short-range woods and brush cartridge as anything else made.
 
Consider this: A full-power 300-grain .454 Casull factory load (generally considered the most powerful of all "conventional" handgun cartridges) generates a whopping 1560 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) of muzzle energy when fired at 1530 fps from a 7 1/2-inch revolver. Fired from that custom 14-inch SSK/Contender of mine, Garrett's 405-grain JSP .45-70 yields 2237 ft-lbs. of energy (more than a ton!) at 1577 fps. That's pretty good for a 12year-old original blackpowder round that started out by losing the Battle of Little Big Horn when it was only three years old.
 
The fact is if you want a really serious-power 50- to 100-yard handgun cartridge for anything from deer up through grizzlies that?s capable of heart-shot accuracy anywhere within its range, then the big old .45-70 is as good as it gets (about the only animal in North American that's marginal would be the Alaskan brown bear).
 
Plenty of Guns Are Available
Surprisingly, to some eyes, there are plenty of current-production handguns chambered for this grand classic round. Besides SSK's custom Contender versions, Thompson/Center itself provides factory-standard .45-70 chamberings both for the original Contender format and the newer Encore break-open single-shot pistols. In the Contender line offerings include both a blue and stainless 14-inch bull-format. Hunter's Barrel that?s integrally equipped with T/C's Muzzle Tamer compensation system, so sights, and drilled and tapped for standard T/C Contender scope mount bases. Also available are blue and stainless .45-70 Super 16 Contender barrels equipped with fully adjustable open sights and the Muzzle Tamer system. Plus, since the Super 16 barrels are actually 16 1/4 inches long, you can equip any of them with a Contender Carbine shoulder stock and have a perfectly legal short-barrel, single-shot .45-70 brush rifle. On the larger frame Encore pistol side, the .45-70 is an available chambering for the 15-inch blued barrel system only; open sights are standard with no compensator.
 
Plus, in addition to these single shots, there is also a brand-new factory-production single-action .45-70 revolver on the market.  That's right, I said revolver. The gun is being marketed by Magnum Research Inc. (MRI), the maker of the massive Desert Eagle .44 Magnum and .50 Action Express auto pistols as well as other "fun" guns, and it is called the Magnum BFR (for "Biggest, Finest Revolver"). This long-cylinder, five-shot, 7 1/2-inch gun is being domestically manufactured by D-Max Inc., employing Super Blackhawk grip frames purchased from Sturm, Ruger Inc. and utilizing the familiar Ruger-design single-action transfer bar ignition system and loading gate/cylinder rotation release mechanism with a beefier upper frame and barrel enclosure.
 
D-Max in fact offers several extravagant chamberings in its revolver family, including .444 Marlin and full-length .410 shotshell/.45 Colt in the long-cylinder Maxine format and .22 Hornet, .454 Casull, and .50 Action Express in the short-cylinder Little Max platform. I have already briefly discussed the .22 Hornet version of the BFR within a larger .22 Hornet overview ("New Sting For The .22 Hornet," October 1998), and you can expect a detailed review of all the varied revolver formats and chamberings in MRI's BFR lineup in a forthcoming issue.
 
In fact, this present feature got its start when ST Executive Editor Jim Bequette called to give me that assignment and suggested that I might want to include one of my 10,000-round endurance runs on the .45-70 version as part of my project. I respectfully demurred, allowing as how my schedule was a bit full the next couple of weeks, and I didn?t see how I could fit it in. But it did make me think about the dust-gathering 14- and 16-inch .45-70 Contenders I had shelved in the gun vault, and I decided that when the big BFR sample did arrive, it would finally be time for me to give the .45-70 its due process treatment as a handgunner's round.
 
The gun itself actually whetted my appetite. With its monstrously long cylinder it is definitely a BFR (everybody's first look involves a dropping jaw), closely fitted, tightly gauged, with satin natural stainless-steel overall finish and black Pachmayr rubber grips (the standard Ruger SBH versions.) The hammer has a grooved and slightly widened semitarget spur. Trigger pull on the review sample measured a smooth 3.88 pounds, with the slight creep inherent to all SA transfer bar ignition systems. The adjustable sights are from Millett, with a white outline notch and visible fluorescent orange Baughman-style ramped front blade. The five-shot cylinder is not counterbored, and the straight bull barrel has a flat cut muzzle.
 
Normally I would not mount a scope sight to review any hunting handgun, but MRI does not yet offer any proprietary mount for the BFR revolver series. D-Max says that any standard frame-attach mount base system for the Ruger Super Blackhawk series can be used, as dimensions of the rear sight slots on both the Ruger SBH and the BFR are identical. However, I was not inclined to drill and tap the topstrap of the sample revolver, and the modified B-Square aluminum Mono-Mount I had used to review the zero-recoil .22 Hornet Little Max version would not stand up to the ultra-severe recoil shear of the .45-70 cartridge. So I decided, in light of the revolver?s applicability to relatively close-range woodland hunting, to leave it with open sights for my .45-70 load testing and put scopes only on the SSK Contender Hand Cannon and T/C Super 16 barrels.
 
In addition to reviewing the performance of existing .45-70 factory loads from Garrett, Federal, Remington, and Winchester (one each), which do not offer great range of bullet variety (and, with the exception of the Garrett rounds, are loaded to milder, 19th-century rifle specs), I decided to use all weights of .458-caliber bullets available from the leading component makers for handloading and push the envelope a little. Several major load manuals contain .45-70 data specifically for the T/C Contender/Encore, and the MRI BFR is specced to handle the same pressure levels. Plus, according to their makers, the .45-70 load listings in the Lyman, Sierra, Hornady, and Speer manuals for modern-strength .45-70 rifles are also within pressure tolerances for these handguns.
 
Loading for Bear
My colleague Richard Window and I loaded up a series of heavy .45-70 recipes using six different bullet weights and types ranging from 300-grain JHP to 500-grain FMJ. We chronographed and fired all for benchrest accuracy at 50 yards with the 7 1/2-inch BFR revolver, 14-inch SSK Contender, and 16 1/4-inch Contender Super 16. After reviewing, refining, and discarding what we didn?t like, we were left with the selected performers listed in the accompanying chart (click here).
 
Understand that this testing took a while. Shooting a .45-70 handgun involves substantial hand-slamming recoil and simply isn't something you do at an all-day stretch. By comparison, shooting a full-power .35 Remington load in an XP-100 is cotton candy. There's no real way to make the .45-70 pleasant. The Mag-na-porting on the custom SSK barrel and the T/C Contender barrels so n excellent job suppressing muzzle flip, but they cannot prevent the straight-back pounding of the grip into the web of your hand, and even with a cushioning Pachmayr grip and a flexed hold you definitely feel it. The SA-design grip on the BFR revolver rotates even more abruptly against the palm than a Freedom Arms .454 Casull and with high-friction rubber grips will abrade the skin right off. Firing an individual round or two—as would be the case in a real-world hunting situation—will not jar you greatly nor leave any lasting tingle. But even with tape-wrapped hands, padded shooting gloves, and cushioned elbow pads, so 20 to 25 rounds is all you're going to want to endure in a single benchrest sitting. I admit we cheated; I shot all the Super 16 load groups using the Contender Carbine shoulder stock. (Unfortunately, it would be a federal felony to do the same thing with the 14-inch barrel.) Handload development and accuracy shooting is the same as with a heavy magnum big-bore rifle—it's best done in small doses. If you decide you want to pursue .45-70 handgun hunting, the first thing to learn is patience. Take you time: careful loading, shoot a little, think a lot.
 
Superb Performance—
Within Limited Range
Overall, I was pleased by the outcome. It was no problem at all getting beyond the ballistic performance levels of traditional factory-issue .45-70 loadings (although nothing we could concoct really surpassed the power and accuracy of Garrett's superb heavy-duty 405-grain JSP), and none of the guns showed any stress at all from handling any of the ammunition we fired. All bullets loaded shot very well, easily within any reasonable standard for 100-yard big-game hunting. For accuracy my cutoff threshold was performance that at least met the minimum standard I hold up for conventional scoped big-bore hunting revolvers like the .41 Magnum or .44 Magnum; that is about 2 1/2 inches at 50 yards. In the scoped Contenders all handloaded bullets and factory loads easily surpassed that, and even the open-sighted revolver was right on the bubble with the loads it liked best. Mount a scope and it would shoot right there with the single shot.
 
A couple of awareness point. First, I strongly recommend limiting any handgun hunting with the .45-70 to within 100 yards. Even in the "milder" factory-standard loadings its retained energy certainly remains enough for whitetails or black bear out to 200 yards, but the problem would be hitting the target. The trajectory of the .45-70 is a true rainbow; at these handgun velocities the classic 405-grain bullet will drop from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 feet below a 100-yard zero by the time it gets to 200. Sorry, that's more Arkansas elevation than anyone needs to deal with in the field. The same 100-yard zero will give you a 50-yard rise of only about 3 1/2 to four inches, so keep it inside 100 yards.  
 
As for 500-grain bullets, well, none of the load manuals offer recipes for them in their .45-70 T/C handgun sections, and the Hornady .45-70 T/C pistol page actually says," Due to severe recoil and wear and tear on both the shooter and the firearm, data is not listed for the 500-grain bullet." They're certainly right. There is definitely severe recoil. But there is no safety or pressure problem involved, and for some big-game hunting situations the extreme penetration capability of the big FMC slug could be a real blessing. So we included it, taking data from the rifle manuals as our start-point guide. Of course, the extreme length of the 500-grainer yields a cartridge too long to chamber in the BFR revolver when case-seated to a safe pressure-balance depth, so its use is limited to the single shots.
 
The six months I've spent working with these guns and loads have certainly been an experience. I wouldn't particularly relish having to do it all over again, but I'm truly glad to now have a good selection of high-performance loads and hunt-ready .45-70 handguns sitting at my call. For single-shot handgun hunting aficionados, the .45-70 is a powerful selection, and the addition of MRI's new revolver to the game makes things even more interesting. For myself, I'm not thinking that making a close-in stalk on a trophy forest elk with the SSK Contender and Garrett's dandy factory load might just be the real thing.
Reprinted by permission from the February, 1999 issue of Shooting Times. Copyright 1999, PJS Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Shooting Times is not responsible for mishaps of any kind which may occur from use of published loading data or from recommendations by staff writers. Any prices given were the suggested list prices at presstime for the printed issue and are subject to change.