Has anyone used a Henry 45-70? I'm thinking about picking one up. I reload so I can load them down for the range and hotter for hunting. My goal would be to deer and bear hunt with it? What bullets/powder worked well and how was accuracy?

Thanks

Bought one last year. Shot a 8 point buck with it in Dec. on the run at about 60yrd. he went about 30yrd before he piled up. I was using factory loads hornaday LEVER/evolution 325gr/FTX 2000fps which I believe is on the high end of the velocity for the cartridge. I'm no crack shot by any means but was able to shoot 2" groups at 100yrds in practice. According to the charts you should be able to shoot out to 200yrd with minimal drop. When I was reading about the gun before I bought it there some reports of recoil being bad once you went to 2000fps. I thought it was comparable to a 12ga with 2 3/4 loads, not bad at all. I like mine a lot, it's suppose to be able to take down anything in North America.

Not a Henry, bur I got & use a Marlin 1895CB last 2 years for deer. Use the same load as "teepee2" , get about 2" groups shooting off truck hood. Killed 5 deer so far, all but one was DRT, the other one made it appx. 25 yds. It thumps me like a 12ga shooting deer slugs. One thing, mine came with a hard butt plate, tis no fun that way, put a rubber recoil pad on then it's not bad to shoot, if I remember right the Henry comes with a purdy brass butt plate, ya probably don't want to shoot it much like that. But try it first like that.
Dennis

My brother has one and he really likes it. Uses it for moose, and bear.

you'd be wise to ask here http://henryrifleforums.com/ or any of the big bore forums out there
or at least on www.handloadersbench.com
or greybeards

I had best results w/ 4227 powder.

Fine choice. Big fat bullets are wonderful. Sarge

Kinda off topic but I use the 325gr hornady ftx bullets for my 458 socom. Of all the hunting 458 caliber bullets this one was by far the most accurate and about the cheapest. Dug some out of my berm and expansion was wonderful could almost cover a quarter with the expanded bullet. Im shooting them somewhere in the 1800-1900fps range i think. 458 socom is basically a semi auto 45-70.

You have to keep in mind that the 45-70 is not a long range bench rest sort of round. So getting around 2 moa is more then sufficient. In a Lever gun I would suspect that you are hunting in places where it is hard to even see 100 yards. IMHO you will be looking for two different bullets as you are hunting 2 very different kinds of game. For bear you are looking at a bullet that holds together and has good penetration and some weight behind it. That is not what you need for deer. So something like the Hornady mono flex in 250 grain for deer and Speer hot core around the 350 grain for bear would be my choice. Powders : H4198 , IMR 3031, Reloader 17 , H322 and the list goes on depending on bullet weight that you choose.