45-70 effectiveness at 200yards?

[Jessesky]

With a 150yd zero, you’re 3” high at 100, and 7” low at 200 with a 405gr@1800fps. This seems like the best zero for the combination. You have a point blank range to 150yd, and hold at the top edge of the kill zone at 200.

 

[JeffG]

what's the story behind this Jeff? Farm bull that needed put down?

No, that’s a watusi, wild on a ranch. Good grass fed beef.

 

[CraigC]

That doesn't look like a watusi, more like a yak or a Scottish Highland.

 

[JeffG]

That doesn't look like a watusi, more like a yak or a Scottish Highland.

Ya I think mom had a fling...

 

[Art Eatman]

Re Watusi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankole-Watusi

 

[CraigC]

Might have, they cross breed a lot. MaxP just took a big hybrid in Texas last month. Here's our buddy Jordan's watusi.

 

[Iggy]

Just a point of interest. The midrange trajectory of a 500 grain bullet to a 1000 yard target is 127 feet. Kinda like a mortar and plumb destructive when it arrives.
The first and only shot my wife tried was at a Buffalo Silhouette at a 1000 yards was with the Sharps off hand.. She fired, lowered the rifle and said "Did I mis... Bong!!! She handed me the rifle and said "Best to quit on a hit."

 

[Snidely70431]

For a while when they were new I had an 1895G and shot it alongside my AR15 friends. 0-300 yards, positions, rapid engagement, etc. Only really stopped because I have weirdly fat thumbs and the loading gate was just so not working for me.

.45/70 has a perfectly accountable drop if you know you dope and can range well, to those ranges. But you can't go further than that. I mean, everyone knows now that you have to have a 6.5CM to get past 600. 308 is obsolete and .45-70-405? I mean... oh:

View attachment 799476

Sure, it's a lot of drop, but how about keeping every shot on a 36" plate at 1,000 yards? (Note, it's radius, not diameter so double that for "group size" as we use it today).

http://home.earthlink.net/~sharpsshtr/CritterPhotos/SandyHook/SandyHook.html

.458 SOCOM. Designed to mimic the 45-70 ballistics and replace an AR upper. Bullets to 600 grains.

Now to power? How about penetrating several inches of wood, and then burying itself in sand: at 3,000 yards. Not Three Hundred, Three Thousand.
View attachment 799477

There's a lot of better ways to get a bullet out there, and yes we've made some bad choices of service calibers. The
.45-70 is old, but if you know what it does, it will absolutely do that, every damned time.

More charts at that link including exterior ballistics. A fun read for the .45 Government fans.

I'd have a .45-70 upper for my SBR'd AR if they weren't rimmed so hopeless to feed in a self loader. I do have a .300 BLK, but it just isn't the same.