when used on elk, moose, big bears and buffalo.ĭon't over-think this! You are very well armed with a 45-70. The FTX has a reputation for being fairly 'soft' and expanding very violently and for a lack of penetration as compared to many other bullets. The 45-70 is still a fairly popular rifle for Wyoming hunters in the northern and western parts of the state because they kill elk very well, but also because they are very comforting when you are surrounded by grizzlies. One of the reasons you don't see them is the old 500 grain round nose soft lead bullets of the 1870s-1880s and they left the muzzle of 32 inch long barrels at only about 1200 FPS, but killed 1500 to 2300 pound buffalo easily, and at some pretty long distances too. If you look out your window I am sure you will NOT see about 167,000,000 buffalo. In my life (so far) I have never had to shoot twice either. A light load from a 45-70 is the full equal, (plus some,) of any 44 Mag handgun, and I have killed a lot of game with 44s from revolvers. They all worked fine, and some, were used to kill bear and elk too. In fact I have used bullets from 300 to 550 grains at speeds from sub-sonic up to 1900 fps depending on the exact load. Well I have used 340 and 325 grain hard cast bullets on deer in years past and they didn't expand at all. I do have many friends who do however and some of those rifles used to be mine.

But I no longer have any rifles in that caliber. I would think that I should be able to safely duplicate Hornady's factory velocity since even though my case is shorter my overall cartridge length is long, thus yielding similar actual powder volume. Has anyone else worked up a load with this shortened case and bullet and powder? If so what would be sensible max powder charge and velocity? Will this bullet perform well on deer? I sure imagine so but I have only shot paper so far with this bullet. With the 1.8' case I tried 45 grains of H4198 with the bullet seated to 2.52' and crimped and got 1700 fps from my Marlin 1895 SBL with the 18.5' barrel. I only had one bullet left from previous trials with full length cases (seated long at 2.7' and singly loaded). I am thinking to use H4198 powder and CCI 200 primers. I have a shorter custom Lee Factory Crimp Die and will likely seat the bullets to an overall cartridge length of 2.52'. I am thinking about using the Hornady 325 FTX. I plan to reload for my 45/70 using shortened 1.8' long cases to meet the legal case dimension limits here in my part of Michigan.

Reloading hornady ftx bullets data