Hello All,

New to this forum, but have been reading everything I can find on the 45/70 and the Marlin 1895, as that is what I have recently purchased. Thank you for all of the great info. This seems to be a great resource for people like me who have taken the "red pill" (matrix reference) and come out of the world of super magnums and hyper velocities.

I have recently purchased a Marlin 1895 GS in a 45/70. I am super excited and cannot weight to get it to the range or start reloading. Due to schedule, I am not going to be able to ge to the range for a couple of months. After all of the reading that I have done, I really have two questions, that I cannot seem to get answered by scouring this board. So I would like to present them to you all. One concerns Recoil and the other concerns "hard cast" bullets.

1. RECOIL: After doing alot of reading, I am still a little hazey as to what kind of recoil I can expect from my hunting loads. I have purchased the 45/70 to be my goto elk rifle for WA state. Where we hunt is really brushy and having moved here from Montana, I am used to being prepared for 350 to 450 yard shots. However, in all of my hunting scenarios that I have been presented with here in WA, the shots have been under 150 yards, so I am switching over to a big bore that will have a little more authority in the heavy underbrush. I currently shoot a 7 Mag, a 300 Win mag and 338 Ultra that I have muzzle broke. What should I expect from my 45/70 loaded with 350 grain bullets and desiring to push it around 1950 to 2100 FPS? I realize that this is an extremely general questions, but ballparks are all I am really looking for. Should I expect my 45/70 to recoil similar to a 30-06 with these loads? Or rather a 300 Win or 338 Win? If it's anything heavier than a 300 Win, I will probably have a custom recoil pad installed on it. I am not really a plinker, and certainly not really interested in "cowboy" shooting events, but do most of my practicing with hunting loads. I am dedicated enough to mucho practice before huntintg that I will shoot hunting loads all year, but am looking for 1 go to load that I can settle on and become excellent at shooting. Should I expect something between a 30-06 and 300 Win for recoil? Or should I expect more or less? I wouldn't classify myself as a recoil wimp, but am not a fan of it either. Any ballpark type comparisons would be welcome.

HARD CAST BULLETS: I see the offerings of Buffalo Bore and I have a question. I realize that the pile driver and Jr. are designed to penetrate as deeply as possible, thus not really expanding, but do some of the other bullets expand, or are they also not expanding? I would really like to have some expansion on the hunting bullets that I choose. Are different alloys used for the piledriver and jr. in comparison to some of the other buff bore offerings or are they all cast from the same alloy recipe? I have purchased some Northforks and believe they will perform well, but I also want to play with some other bullets and check into some of the cast lead alloys. I may stick with the copper jacketed, but not before I at least give the others a chance to see how they perform, and to what enjoyment level I experience while loading and shooting them. So in a nutshell, are all hard-cast bullets by Buff Bore designed to not expand, only penetrate?

Thanks in advance for any info, stories or opinions you may have!

I know that I am going to enjoy being a part of this forum.

Sincerely,

Autumn Pulse

AutumPulse
Welcome to the Board;you came to the right place.
We have 45/70 shooters here.
I suspect that a full house hunting load with a heavy bullet will kick a little more then either of those two rifles.
I would'nt worry about bullet expansion in the 45/70.It's pretty much "expanded" already.Justuse a bullet with a large meplat.
I know nothing about that particular bullet,but our sponser,right here,has an excellent bullet for yor consideration.
Frank

I'll add my welcome to Franks. I'm not into the lever guns, but I'd go along with Franks assessment. The last 43-70 I had was 35 years ago and I loaded it hot and it whacked me better than my 308 Norma mag did with 180 grainers.

Expansion was never an issue, it killed anything I hit well including elk out to 200 yards. Never shot anything further away than that. I went back to the old Norma mag when I got a 375 yard shot that I had to pass up on.

Check out the Beartooth bullet section at the top of the page.

I can help a little.

Welcome.

The 45-70 with 350 grain bullets at around 1950 fps will not recoil as hard as your 300 win mag with 200 grain bullets. If you handload you can get some really good combinations for your Guide Gun. My Guide Gun's favorite fodder is the Hornady 350 grain RN bullet over 58 grains of Varget using CCI 200 primers. I can't speak to your question about the Buffalo Bore ammo as I have no experience with it.

FWIW - With regards to Remmington factory 405 grain ammo, it is mild by comparison to what you can do with handloads for the Guide Gun.

You don't need expansion. There are a few threads around here with pictures of the insides of critters that went down with cast bullets.

A .45 cal flat-nosed bullet will kill stuff. Dead. :D

And so will a lot of smaller ones, too.

Welcome, and look around and read all you can. We'll convert you :D

The main reason for hard cast is to get the bullet to spin up and stabilize, so there's no slippage, and reduce or eliminate leading the bore.

The secondary effect of hardcast is that it doesn't deform much, even punching thru tough bone structures, and it doesn't deflect much inside the animal because of the meplat shape.

You don't need an expanding bullet. The hard cast 45/70s take anything and every thing. Read up on Randy Garrett's web site about Vince Lupo's African DG game trophies taken with 45/70 and hard cast bullets.

You could check out Marshall's load for 425g hard cast and probably never need anything else. Here's his recipe from another thread:

"Well, I'm very obviously opinionated and biased towards wide-meplat hard-cast bullets, but none the less, you asked for a 200 yard load for your Marlin .45-70, and I consider this about the optimum balance of penetration, trajectory and velocity for the purposes you intend.

Beartooth Bullets .460"-425gWLNGC (PileDriver Jr.), 53.0g H322/WLRP/Starline Brass

When sighted in 3.25" high at 100 yards, this load is nearly dead on at 200 yards. The wide meplat gives excellent permanant wound channels, and to date, we still have not had one single customer report to us one of these bullets recovered out of game!

This bullet has been used on all manner of N. American game, the larger plains game of Africa and in Australia as well. I'll bet my life on it in the situations you describe.

Once again, this is only my very biased and opinionated view of this subject, not the final word by any stretch of the imagination."

This load is pretty much going to penetrate all the way thru any animal it hits from any angle. You can reach the vitals from any shot presented and know it's going to work.

Recoil is a very subjective thing. Try out the recommended loads and see if you find the recoil pad satisfactory. I think the stock one is very good. It works for my daughter, who weighs about half what I do, and she shoots the 525g load with no problems. I shoot the same load from 45/70s with steel butt plates and depending on the gun that can affect you.

I think you are going to be enormously surprised at how easy shooting the 45/70 is and how devastating it is on the business end.

All the best with your new rifle and keep us updated as you get aquainted with it.

Regards,

Grizz

I agree with grizz, don't need, or want expansion with my .45-70s. EVER! They are already big enough, and will penetrate thru and thru big game from about any angle. The .300s need expansion beacause of how too small they are from the get go. They perform completely different then the old big bores. Recoil differs depending on the load you use. You can load the .45-70 up to make the .300 feel puny. But it's not needed. Non of the jacketed .458s with punch as deeply as a good heavy hard cast; which is exactly what makes the .45-70s as good as they are. The reason we have jacketed bullets at all, is because as Americans, we are so into faster in anything is always better. So we had to come up with a way to magnumize something that was already perfected. Americans have become too lazy and time strung to actually hunt the game. We want to just shoot it at looong range. Good luck with your new big bore. I'm betting you will be as the rest of us that use them, and will never be without one. I'm wanting a double rifle in .458 Lott so bad I can taste it. But I will (if I can ever afford one), use extra heavy, hard, home cast LBT style bullets in it, at a moderate velocity.
Wondering how much 5744 to load behind it. . . . .Hmm, where's that accurate arms manual anyway. . . . . .