for fun
for big stuff that needs deep holes
for subs

Friday while out to buy cheese my son said lets stop in and see what they have at the gun shop. We have a shop with some very interesting consignment finds.

I had been looking at 44mag Ruger-Marlin 1894 trapper ss , then a June 2020 Remlin 1895 dark series up and followed me home from the gun shop.

June 2020 puts it near the end as they stopped all production in September 2020. Rem had actually done a lot to straiten out production by the very end but too late for the brand.

when it was made played less of a part but it is interesting

I had been looking at a 44 but thinking about a 45-70 because I could see myself traveling to bear country and was thinking maybe 44 while nice and great to have ammo compatibility with the revolver , 45-70 just has more room to go big and go home.

also something about all the features I wanted and a nice price swayed me over to the dark side and 45-70.

16 inch barrel , threaded , large loop , XS peep sights and a rail
this one had 40 rounds through it apparently they must have been all single loaded because not one scratch of brass on the loading gate till I put it there.

going to be a day or two before I can get out and shoot it.

just have to be there on the right day some times , the rifle was still on the counter hadn't even gotten a space on the rack yet , he had just logged it into the book and I had him log it right back out to me.

sold the truck I hit a deer with 5 months ago on Wednesday so you could say I turned a deer wrecked truck into a deer wrecker.

I personally think the classic Remington 405 gr.core lokt is adequate,at least for me.I've shot numerous deer and 1bear with it.I bought Hornadys leverlution in 325 gr.when it came out,it did everything they claimed it would accuracy wise but I thought it was overkill.on whitetails,never took a bear with it,but would imagine it would make a great bear round.

Hornady 325s did fine on buffalo.

When I bought mine I read and read and went with that leverloution stuff and never looked back. 325gr I think they are. Its sure gotten pricey over the few years its been around too.

Mine doesn't have the large loop and its easy to get too many fingers in there.

Mine is the longer cowboy octagon barrel, is long and heavy, and still kicks like a mule. That and it being short is most likely why not too many rounds have been through it.

If you can range your distance and have a way to adjust elevation (not sure you can with ghost rings) its accurate at an accurate range.

Of all that I have... It'd be top 3 picks for bear protection. A 12ga with extended mag tube 12/15 2.75" slugs and 00 buck would be right up there too.
Actually my 45-70 has ejection issues sometimes and would be poor choice for bear protection due to that. You can't dig your pocket knife out to clear brass when a brown bear is crunching on your skull.

Majority of the people I'm around use that leverolution stuff. I don't like it, but I'll admit that the biggest reason I don't like it is because most of them will give me their brass because they don't reload. And Hornady 45/70 brass is a 1/10" shorter than everybody else's, so this can a)cause hot loads, even overpressure loads if you use the same recipe you do in other brass and b)you have to readlust your dies to seat bullets deeper in the shorter brass c)if you don't have Hornady dies, most other brand dies are made for the proper "book length" brass and you can't adjust them to put a crimp on your bullets when seating them.

Those 325 bullets tend to blow up also, they do a lot of damage and blow big flipping holes, destroy lots of meat on body shots, particularly shoulder shots, but all you'll ever recover of them are bits and pieces, I can't recall ever recovering a bullet that hadn't blown apart.

I loaded lots of bulk Core-lokt bullets on top of 39 grains of IMR 4198 and found that to be a deadly bear load. But I have went back to loading my own cast bullets. 405 grain lead put on top of IMR 4198 again. I can run it at 39 grains and it works great, but I can back them clear down to 33 grains which is a factory duplication load (and safe to shoot in any of the old falling block rifles, if you have one of them around and are worried about mixing ammo) and still get good expansion on those cast bullets (straight wheel weights) where as using the Corelocs the reason I bumped it up to 39 grains was to get reliable expansion, anything under that an the jacket is too thick on them to reliably expand. I've seen a lot of bear shot with those 405 cast bullets, and they are good medicine.

For Practice, I'm shooting 12 gr. of Red Dot with a 350 gr. Berry's flat nose bullet, this recoils at about the feel of a light 7/8 oz. 20 ga. load. For hunting, the same 350 gr. flat nose loaded with 49.0 gr. of IMR 4198 gives me around 2,000 FPS. This tends to kick a bit more than is comfortable to shoot for practice. You won't find the Red Dot load in any manual, so take it with whatever cautions are necessary for safety. These loads are being shot in a Remington/Baikal SXS rifle that Remington imported a while back. I'm not recommending them for any gun without doing your own research, but doing the research is half the fun

I settled on the Speer 300 gr Unicor (aka "Plinker"). I use 55.0 gr of IMR4198

Works great on the Michigan bear and deer I've thrown them at.

a 12ga with an extended tube still only gets 8 rounds in an 870 with a 20 inch barrel and the tube a flush with the muzzle and it turns it into a beast to carry

one argument against 12ga I have heard is , shotshells , buck and slugs are not water tight , so turn your canoe over and then question your ammo, that could be mitigated by vacuum packing 5 round packs of ammo and keeping some spare ammo with in a pack.
where 45-70 a little primer sealer on the primer and at the crimp you mitigate the worries of moisture in your ammo

the other 12ga argument I have heard and experienced is that standard foster slugs not so much blow up but turn themselves inside out I have seen this on deer several times where shot from short distances like 10 yards there was not good penetration and the slug was recovered flattened out like a half dollar coin.

one buck had been shot twice like this a 12ga and a 20ga and the only reason it didn't get up from the 20ga shot was it got the spine , it still had to be put down neither made exit nor had much penetration.

the best argument for 12ga is can be light , can be relatively short , low cost and can be fast handling. you can get better slugs that penetrate better , and maybe someone makes a better sealed slug.

We enjoy shooting cast bullets over trail boss for plinking loads, puts a hurting on the local chipmunk population. We used to kill all our bears with the 300 grain Nosler Partition until it was discontinued. We load the 420 Cast Performance now, and it cuts a nice wide hole, and really penetrates.

I have one box of the Leverevelution stuff 325gr to try it

I was looking at getting 100 pieces of Starline brass and the 350gr berries bullets

I ordered dies for it last night.

I would also be up for casting for it

definitly plan to make some milder rounds , I am thinking sort mild from wild by the bullet used so that it can be easy to see.

this is my first 45-70 so not worries about ammo finding a trapdoor around here.
plan is to use 1895 load data i have a few manuals

probably try H4895 first as I use it in several other loads and I have 45-70 data for it, but open to other powders. I saw H4198 listed in several loads.

I found tightgroup data for plinkers and we use a lot of tightgroup in pistols so that is an easy one to try.

total length is just 34 3/8 inches

Starline brass is good brass for the 45/70, I have Starline, Remington, Hornady, and a few miscellaneous Winchester brass. Starline is my first choice and Hornady my last, due to not being able to crimp the bullets in the Hornady brass. My 45/70 is a Marlin 1895 Guide Gun, old enough it was before Remington got them or they had the different options with the shorter 16" barrels, so it has the 18 1/2" barrel and 37" overall. Still a nice light, short gun to pack through the brush and I've beat it around for 20 years. One thing I learned, if you oil it much and then haul it around on a gun rack on a fourwheeler in the dust all summer (probably spends 100-125 days a year on the fourwheeler) you need to tear it down and clean it every year or so, or it will collect so much dust in the oil it will get really, really stiff to operate. And if you don't oil it and get it wet enough times without bothering to take it in and clean it up... even stainless steel will rust some.

And yes I meant trapdoor, even though I typed falling block. I don't have one either, just something to keep in mind if you are around one. My cousin has a Contender pistol that he loads 350 gr bullets for and he shot a bear with me with it one day, and it performed well. I have two molds for mine, Lee molds, one is a 405 and the other is a 500 gr gas checked bullet. I prefer the 405 because it casts bullets just the right size to load without sizing and unnecessary to add a gas check to them. They shoot well, about 1 1/2" groups at 100 yards with open sights off of sandbags. Probably as accurate as I could shoot with open sights on any rifle. I used a couple different powders when I first got mine, but I don't remember what the others were, IMR 4198 is about the standard for 45/70 though, easy to get, loads well and shoots good in my rifle so that is what I've stuck with. I do remember it is much cleaner than one of the other powders I tried.

Recoil is comparable to a 30/30 on mine, I have shot a few Buffalo Bore loads or another brand that loads those Garrett 540 gr bullets and they are hot with that big chunk of lead and have significantly more recoil, still manageable, but not as pleasant for plinking with.

I like, depending on my gun, say if it's for a falling block or lever gun. For the falling blocks I like a 400 -450 grain lead core bullet like Barnes Originals . Bullets shape can be flat or spitzer in a single shot. For my lever gun I use a 400 grain flat nose bullet and both loadings I use 3031 or SR4759 .For the falling blocks they can take a strong heavy load so about 45 grains of powder 3031 and closer to factory loads for the lever. I don't like bullets lighter than 400 grain in .45, Been shooting 45-70 since high school really like them, load it easy or hot it kills just fine with very little waste of meat

Buffalo Bore 430 grain hard cast lead is all I use in Alaska for moose and bear. When I lived in Florida, Hornaday 325 grain Leverevolution worked well on hogs and deer.

I haven't started loading for mine yet but I shoot the Remington 405 factory loads for deer and they do fine. I have both the trapdoor loads and the full pressure version although the full pressure load is only 1600fps. About SAAMI max I think and not for trapdoors. I don't want any more recoil than that. A 45-70 doesn't need to be loaded hot to kill big game.

Hornady's reloading manual states 40Kpsi is the safe max for the modern 1895 rifles.

Most manuals have three sections for 45-70. Trapdoor actions, modern lever actions, and single shots such as the Ruger #1.