Thought I'd share this with the Accurate Arms community. Going to Africa in September with my 470 double. Have tried various ways to get in practice without wearing out the gun or myself prematurely. Finding light loads to shoot was a real challenge, and I thought I'd share what I found over the past couple of years of experimenting.

First, the bullet: Hawk bullets, 350 grain, .025 jacket and (drum roll, please) 0.474 diameter. Custom order from Hawk, but the price was very fair. I had trouble with the .475 pistol bullets wrinkling my case mouths, but the .474 ones work extremely well. I wanted to stay away from the 500 grain lead bullets, both for the bore cleaning it would require, and for the lesser recoil of lighter bullets.

http://www.hawkbullets.com/


Powder: I use 73 grains of IMR 3031. Tried IMR 4198 also, but the left barrel was shooting 5 inches to the right at 50 yards. 3031 seems to work OK, and I have no doubt I can go higher. Don't need to, for the distance I'm practicing at.

Filler: Using dacron from an old pillow, 5 grains on top of the powder charge to be sure the powder stays where it was put, and to prevent chamber ringing I heard about on this forum.

These loads are easy to load, a delight to shoot and won't speed up the rifle going off the face or just plain wearing out. I'm sure there are other tinkerers out there that have come up with loads too, and I'd be happy to hear about them.

I know there was a magazine article 2 years ago in the Accurate Rifle where the author used 777 powder. I didn't want to fool with blackpowder type complications - measuring by volume, cleaning, etc. - so stayed with smokeless powder.

Enjoy!

H T
I have used a couple of thousand similar loads in my 450 No2. 350 Hornady RN 81 grains of IMR 3031 with 5 grains of filler. Killed lots of deer and pigs with that load.
As the .458 bore is common there3 are many bullets to pick from.

I have used the Hawk .408 diameter 300 gr bullet in my 450/400 on deer and pigs with excellent results.

Those Hawks kill deer sized game very well.
Big mushroom.