I look foreward to what loads you come up with.
I'm a patient fellow, and hopefully Ruger will run another batch. I'm fine with One hunting load, be it a Hornady or something made by Hawk etc. The rest of the time I'd be happy to shoot cheaper cast or pistol bullets.

IF Murphy keeps his ugly A** out of my face...hopefully I will be making noise by the end of the month.

450 Bushmaster.net has a ton of interesting data...This thingy is a few years old, very popular in some areas, and a lot of the load development, "how to's" etc., has already been done. There are a lot of very good bullets available out there besides the Hornady offerings...Barnes, Lehigh and other "solids" and a few lead free...check it out.

The AR-15 platform is limited in pressure (wish there were some "cheap" AR-10 barrels...lots of things could be accomplished with the higher pressures) and you can definitely increase velo with a bolt gun and longer barrel...remember energy increases at the square of the velocity and only directly with the increase of bullet weight, meaning 100 fs more velo translates into energy much more quickly than adding a few more grains of bullet weight.

I'm not getting to deeply involved with this AR because of it's limitations, way to many other shooters in my rack, and there are already many wildcats in 45 and 50 cal to go to any "wildness" again myself. AS it stands, it will do a very good job on ANY NA game, but I do want to see just what my chrono comes up with as to some of the heavier as compared to what is already published.

Luck on finding a rifle.

Hawk makes a 300 grn sptz with a .035 jacket. I have used hawk bullets in a few calibers where the vel was in the 18-2400 fps range and they performed beautifully. I keep a Namibian pal supplied with 300 grn Hawks for his .338 for culling eland. His favorite combo.

Hey...brilliant minds think equally brilliant ways...hahahahah...I just ordered a box of Hawk 260 gr, 0.025" H.P.'S.

Wanted to try Hawk pills for a long time but just never got there. Made/experimented with some similarly made bullets a long time ago using Herter's(long since deceased)bullet making tools for my 44 Maggie and put down a few head of messed up cattle. They did the job up close with head shots.

I also have some Barnes XPB and TSX 275 gr on the wish list at Midway because they are on B.O. as of yesterday...I will also order a box of Lehigh 245 gr X-Penetrators and maybe the 135's just to see how fast I can get them moving.

Luck

Someone ....Winchester maybe, made an aluminum HP ammo for the 45 auto. Wouldn't that be fun to see what they could do!

Absolutely...I turned some alum and brass slugs to try in my 458 Am and 450 Marlin. Forgot??? what the AL's weighed,(not very much)and couldn't guess what the velo was because they were all over the target so never tried over my chrono's. Gave up because they were a PITA to make, manual loosey-goosey, sticky lathe and no taper guide, no repeatability whatsoever.

Tried making brass tips for lead bullets with the same results...NO phuc'n' good...now when I win the Lotto and can afford a precision lathe, things would change...hahahahahah

Luck

It's soup now...one 450 BUSHMASTER AR-15 all together except for muzzle brake/suppressor/whatever.

Looks like any fat barreled AR-15 until you look at the hole in the end...TOTALLY BA-DAZZ and mean even.

Hey, back40...Some new custom made bullets online you might want to check out...or anyone else for that matter...www.furycustombullets.com...they do look nice.

I'm Happy, Happy, Happy...

Luck