AUSTRALIA: First Bull Hunt With The 458WM

Anthony George

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I’d just finished building my Winy M70 Feather Weight in 458WM, so was a great time to test it out and to boot just finished loading some Woodleigh 550grn RN SN with 78grns of ADI AR2208 behind to push it along.

Anyway with the rifle sighted in for 1” high at 100 we were off to find a suitable candidate


I spotted 3 Bulls out on flood plain around 500m and made a plan to stalk in and try my luck

Clearing the tree line there was PHK All to hide behind, besides tufts of grass etc

A few tricks come in handy for these “Footy Field” Stalks !!


Pepper potting, grass tuft to grass tuft until there was nothing left, had me crawling out through the mud and shin deep water until I managed to close the distance down. My Bushnell rangefinder had the Bulls at 203m, I chose the Bull on the driest ground as we had plans to take the meat.


I settled in to a seated position in the " Driest " spot I could find, wriggling my butt and feet into the mud, sitting in water up to my waste, quick recheck with the range finder still had them at 203m. Well this was it !! preparing for my longest Big Bore shot ever, I judged the drop of these big 550grners to be around 6 inches at that range, as I'd only shot it at range to 100m the day before hand. So settled my breathing and placed the cross hairs of the old Vari X 1.5-5, dialled up to 5x, level with his back and inline high the high shoulder shot. I envisaged the projectile smashing the spine at this distance.

With the shot I barely felt the recoil, but could hear the whistling/buzzing sound as the heavy projectile lumbered its way along and with an almighty thud, I watched as the Bull took the brunt of it and ploughed into the mud. I sent off another 550grner as a security that passed through ribs a bit far back, but it wasn’t needed

A few kicks and the Bull passed

I waited for the two other Bulls to clear off, I just sat there and pondered on what had just happened, taking in the experience.

Got up and trudged back to the car, as I got there the boys commented on how they could just see me and hear the Boom ZZZZZZZT Thud !!

We proceeded to get the car as close as we could to the Bull to recover the meat, by coming in from another angle.

Bit of an effort for the carry out but definitely doable

As we approached the entry point of the projectile was clearly visible and it had done exactly what I had envisaged, but dropped around 8-9"

The Bull went down that hard his horn was buried in the mud to the state we had to dig it out


Rolling him over the projectile was easy to find mushroomed under the skin, it had done a massive amount of work to smash the spine at that range and that impact velocity

We took a minute to admire the Bull and give thanks as he will be feeding a few our our families that night.

He later measured 99 inches, a great Bull and great hunt.

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Man, that was old school. I love it. What kind of velocity were you expecting out of that load? Where did you get that load from?
 
Man, that was old school. I love it. What kind of velocity were you expecting out of that load? Where did you get that load from?

I love the old stuff, tried and true...well proven

Average of 2070 fps over a RCBS chrony

I worked up the load from the load Data out of my Woodleigh Reloading manual

Then just kept adding powder till I couldn't fit any more in, got to 79grns but pressure signs are there so backed it off.
 
Can you help me out a little bit? I recently purchased the QuickLoad software program and still learning how to use it. To date it has been reasonably accurate when compared to chronograph data for my loads. Just for giggles I ran your load data and saw serious over pressure warnings. I'm now wondering if I got all of the data correct. 458 Win Mag, 550 Gr. Wooldeigh RN SN and 78 Gr of
ADI AR 2208. What is the barrel length on your rifle? The program calculated a velocity roughly 300 FPS faster than what your chronograph showed. When I reduced to load to 68 Gr. of powder everything fell into line. Just wondering...
 
Can you help me out a little bit? I recently purchased the QuickLoad software program and still learning how to use it. To date it has been reasonably accurate when compared to chronograph data for my loads. Just for giggles I ran your load data and saw serious over pressure warnings. I'm now wondering if I got all of the data correct. 458 Win Mag, 550 Gr. Wooldeigh RN SN and 78 Gr of
ADI AR 2208. What is the barrel length on your rifle? The program calculated a velocity roughly 300 FPS faster than what your chronograph showed. When I reduced to load to 68 Gr. of powder everything fell into line. Just wondering...

Yes the little 458WM is working very hard to do it's job for sure, but I've done the same for my 416 Ruger in the same rifle. I actually built this 458WM to be a twin of the 416 Ruger

I seat the projectile way out and 1.4mm off the lands and it still functions through the magazine easily


Barrel length is 562mm
Case capacity is 84.296grns
Cartridge OAL is 91mm

Mate over here did the QL prediction for me, I'll try and find it

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Great job on that fine buff! I just fail to understand how you managed to get it out of that swamp! Lots of hard work and some help I presume?
 
Great job on that fine buff! I just fail to understand how you managed to get it out of that swamp! Lots of hard work and some help I presume?

Thank you
Was an awesome start to our trip and a great way to prove the Winy 458WM

Yea sorry
I mentioned it in story above
We managed to drive the car around and in a bit closer
I butchered the Bull where he fell and we carried the legs, fillets, Chuck etc ba k to car
There were four of us but mate an I being both Ex Army are very motivated to achieve our aim
Two other lads looked on and helped out by carrying my knives and bucket back to car
 
Anthony, you seating that bullet out made a significant reduction in pressure. If you can, I'd like to see the QL work up your mate did for you. Like I said previously I'm still learning how to use the program. After plugging in your increased OAL I came up with 81.081 gr. of H2O not the 84.296 gr. you mentioned. Do you by chance have the maximum capacity of grs. of water in a fired case? If it is over 95 I can see where the additional capacity comes from. once again, thanks for your help.

How many buffalo and or scrub bulls have you taken? By your actions in this instance it is obvious to me that you are willing to do whatever it takes to put meat in the freezer. Which rifle do you like the most for this type of hunting, your 458 WM or your 416 Rigby? I'm just getting into larger calibers. I own a Ruger No.1 in 416 Rigby and a CZ 550 in 404 Jeffery. I just got back from Africa where I dropped an Eland in its tracks with the 404. I must say that I'm impressed with its performance.
 
Anthony, you seating that bullet out made a significant reduction in pressure. If you can, I'd like to see the QL work up your mate did for you. Like I said previously I'm still learning how to use the program. After plugging in your increased OAL I came up with 81.081 gr. of H2O not the 84.296 gr. you mentioned. Do you by chance have the maximum capacity of grs. of water in a fired case? If it is over 95 I can see where the additional capacity comes from. once again, thanks for your help.

How many buffalo and or scrub bulls have you taken? By your actions in this instance it is obvious to me that you are willing to do whatever it takes to put meat in the freezer. Which rifle do you like the most for this type of hunting, your 458 WM or your 416 Rigby? I'm just getting into larger calibers. I own a Ruger No.1 in 416 Rigby and a CZ 550 in 404 Jeffery. I just got back from Africa where I dropped an Eland in its tracks with the 404. I must say that I'm impressed with its performance.
 

Attachments

  • Farmboy 458 Winny.pdf
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Hopefully that attachment worked out

Ah shit, just realized I attached the 480grn data
I'll try again

Yes I seat the projectile way out to suit the chamber
The projectile is still 1.4mm off the lands and it still feeds through the magazine and the action will eject a loaded cartridge
I don't recall the case capacity in water but I can measure it again

I really really like these Winy Push Feeds, The first one was the 416 Ruger built on an M70 in 308 and I did most of my Bovine and pig hunting with that until I built this Winy M70 in 458WM as a twin to the 416 Ruger. Hard to say which is my Fav, but the 458WM is lighter. Both are very accurate, the 416 Ruger will put 3 x 450grn Woodleighs into a 15mm x 12mm hole at 100 off the bench with the little Leupold 1.5-5 scope set on 5.

I'm very lucky to be able to access alot of very good hunting land, we take almost 100% of our meat from bush, so we live off what we can fish and hunt. A month ago I took my 54th Buffalo Bull in 4 1/2 yrs. So add to that over 20 Bantang Bulls and rest scrub Bulls, so be 80 or so in 15yrs. As I said very lucky.

The 416 Rigby is a great cartridge and so is the 404 Jeffery,
My hunting mate hunts with a custom built 404 Jeffery on a CZ 550, I've had pleasure of hunting with him and watching the 404 Jeff in action

I'll post up a story of his first Bull and then his biggest Bull when I can

Eland hunt would be great
 

Attachments

  • Copy of Farmboy 458 Winy 550grn (003).pdf
    274.6 KB · Views: 242
Good stuff!

Thanks for sharing your hunt and data.


Tim
 
Congrats and thanks for sharing!
 

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