405 grain bullet at 1300 fps is a 150 yard load.
Not hardly. It's effective farther out than you'd want to use it, with a solid bullet.
For one thing, modern rules of thumb about required energy, based on fast, small, light, expanding spitzers, hold no water with a large, non-expanding, heavy solid. Since you are not burning up energy and velocity on expansion, a heavy bullet poking along at 1000 fps will have the momentum to travel through one buffalo and kill another, if they're standing in a line. I could not tell the entrance from the exit when I used a .45-70 RNL on a buffalo at 80 yards (black powder cartridge). It really works more like an arrow than a modern bullet (this was a 520 grain Lyman Postel).
The reason we use those fast, small, light spitzer bullets nowadays is obvious, though, when you shoot a .45-70. The trajectory is so far from flat, that you can literally miss a
buffalo at 200 yards, if you're sighted in at 100 and don't aim high enough. The drop at 200 is about 2 1/2 FEET when you're sighted in at 100. The old buffalo hunters used to know their trajectories well, and were experts at estimating range.
I've seen an old-timer hitting silhouette of a ram at 300 yards, and he didn't miss even once most of the shots stayed within 8 - 10 " o yeah he used black powder loads, o yeah no optics just iron pip sights...
The top shooters can do that at 1000. It takes them about 8 hours to load 40 rounds, though. Everything has to be PERFECT.
If you are a true marksman, a 400 yard shot on an Elk is not unreasonable.
A true marksman with practice, at range, with
that particular type of cartridge can certainly do that.
