I bought a new 45-70 today along with some 405 grain remington sp ammo,and this ammo can only seem to penetrate about half of what I can do with hard cast in a hot load in my 45 colt levergun!!!.I was only shooting into 2x4's but this load only shot through 4 damned 2x4's!!!Not very impressive for a supposedly bear defense gun.Must be loaded very light and did not have noticeable recoil.I have about 200 405 gr bullets to load,jsp,not sure if the bullet is the main problem here or the pissy little bit of powder in the case from remington.

45 70 Govt. loads are developed to be safe in the old black powder rifles like the Springfield Trapdoors. They do make loads for modern rifles but you have to check what you are buying.

muck

Not much selection in canada,cannot seem to find any of the hotter "garret" type loads here,will have to load my own.I am finding a big difference in powder charges off of imr/hodgdons website for loads of 3031 and 4064 for the lever action 45-70's.Kind of odd.

Factory 45-70 ammo is not loaded to high pressure. SAMMI specs for factory ammo is right at 18,000 PSI. If it was loaded to higher pressures and loaded and fired in say a Trapdoor Springfield (or other older, low pressure firearm) it is possible to damage the rifle and possibly cause injury to the shooter. Put simply, they're covering their asses and at the same time covering the asses of those out there who are unaware of the varying pressure limits of different firearms.

I load my marlin with a 350 grain harnady flat point bullet to about 1900, with IMR 4198.
I have gottn very near MOA with this load.
...tj3006

Much like the old 45colt, if you want performance in the 45-70, you need to handload unless you can find & don't mind paying for BuffaloBore or Garret.

Barnes 400gn FNSP are nice as well as the 400gn Kodiak's. And 49gns of RL-7 is just about perfect for mine. I've been playing with the new Barnes TSX FN in 300gn too. One mean looking bullet and should rip the insides out of a mooose very nicely

I've been loading my Marlin 1895 cowboy with two loads. One we call mild and one we call wild. The mild is 350 g. cast using Varget for about 1350-1400 fps which is fun to shoot and if the atmospheric conditions are right you can actually see the bullet flight on a long shot. Fun to see. The wild load is 405 g. cast using H332 for a velocity of just under 2000 fps. This is not a fun load to shoot with substantial recoil but the payload is impressive. Needless to say we shot far more of the milds.

I found a shell holder today and loaded up a bunch of 405 rem sp and 405 hard cast with a case full of 3031,51 gr.will try these tomorrow should be a sight better than the factory fluffy loads.

I used to load speers 400 gr fnsp over 50 grains of H4198. It was impressive but I cut back due to recoil. It cracked the stock in the wrist area. So I glued it and then bedded the stock. Haven't had any problems since but I still backed off since it's really overkill for the Black bear, deer and hogs I hunt with it.

The loads in the load manuals vary so widely because they all selected different pressure cut off points for lever guns with pressure range maximums ranging from 28,000 cup to 43,000cup. Some manuals stop the ruger #1 at pressure levels other manuals consider mid range for lever rifles.

I penetration test into wet newspaper and phone books. While I will not restart old arguments The previously mentioned load will penetrate as deep as my 375 H&H handloads 300gr solid bullet over 76.5gr H414. And it expands to .76 caliber. Should be good for bear defense. And recoil is very noticable.

My 45/70 kicks too hard.

The factory ammo chrony'ed at 1065 fps,out of my 22" barrel.The handloads hit 1800 fps,and they did kick with the 405 gr bullet.Did just what I wanted this little gun to do!!I think I am happy now,accuracy was great as well for open sights especially.

I learned very fast when I started handloading for my 45/70 that firing from a shooting range bench where you are leaning into the butt, hurts. Standing is much better. I have one of the original Marlin 45/70's and cannot bring myself to cut the contoured butt stock to add a decelerator pad. So I just shoot 10 or so at the range and then move to another gun.