The Best Brush Busting Bullets Put to the Test
BY Herschel Smith
2 years, 1 month ago
The .45/70 outperformed everything else in penetrating brush and delivering a bullet that’s still flying straight and true—something that will surely inflate the egos of its contemporary fans. I expected the .45/70 to yield the best results simply because of the mass of the bullets, but it exceeded my expectations substantially. With extensive enough testing some other big-bore cartridges might outdo the .45/70, but when it comes to common and available brush rifles today, the .45/70 wins.
The best brush bullet in my testing was the 325-grain, .458-inch Lehigh Defense Extreme Defense bullet. It was in Black Hills Ammo’s Honey Badger factory loads, traveling at 1900 fps. These are solid copper machined bullets with a nose that’s fluted and resembles a Phillips screwdriver. The bullet is designed for zero deformation, and to penetrate deeply. The fluting at the tip is designed to cause cavitation and a wound channel like expanding bullets. I’ve seen bears shot with them, and they are formidable. This load had an average deflection of only 0.63 inches, without a single key-holed bullet in 15 total shots.
You can see all of his testing protocol at the link, but the bottom line is that it’s the venerable 45-70 for the unqualified win.
On November 3, 2022 at 4:47 am, Russell G. said:
You’re correct on the mass issue.
Those medium weight 45-70s slugs, like the FTXs, get about up to about 1900fps with IMR4198. The books have the loads.
Iraqvet did a Utube video way back doing the same thing in some pretty thick Georgia stuff and basically got the same result.
On November 3, 2022 at 11:11 am, Bradley A Graham said:
I love my old original 45/70 Marlin but I think I will hang on to my 9.3 x 62 Mauser just in case….