458 Winchester Magnum

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458 Win Mag

The .458 Winchester Magnum is a belted, straight-taper cased, dangerous game rifle cartridge. It was introduced commercially in 1956 by Winchester and first chambered in the Winchester Model 70 African rifle. It was designed to compete against the .450 Nitro Expressand the .470 Nitro Express cartridges found in big bore British double rifles. The .458 Winchester Magnum remains to this day one of the most popular dangerous game cartridges. Most major ammunition manufacturers offer a selection of .458 ammunition for rifles chambered in the cartridge.

The .458 Winchester Magnum was designed for hunting dangerous game animals by emulating the performance of powerful English double rifle cartridges in a bolt action rifle. The use of a bolt action rifle offered hunters a cheaper alternative to the big bore double rifle and ammunition could be manufactured using available tooling. The .458 Winchester Magnum soon became a success as dangerous game hunters adopted the cartridge. Soon game wardens, wildlife managers, and professional hunters switched to the .458 Winchester Magnum as their duty rifle. The cartridge would become the standard African dangerous game cartridge in short order.

By 1970 issues with the cartridge began to surface. Winchester had been using compressed loads of ball powder as a propellant for .458 Winchester Magnum. Due to clumping of the powder charge and the erratic burn characteristics associated with such loads, performance of the cartridge came into question. While Winchester addressed this issue, the stigma remained and the cartridge’s performance on dangerous game was suspect. However, the .458 Winchester Magnum remained the standard of measure for dangerous game cartridges.

Recently there has been a slow ebbing of popularity away from the .458 Winchester Magnum as the .458 Lott and the various .416 cartridges have been gaining in popularity as ammunition and rifles have become more available to the public.