Buffalo Bore's 450-grain TSX Load for Cape Buffalo and Hippo

The .458 Winchester Magnum has breathed new life with better powders and bullets available today. It's one great dangerous game cartridge if only looks hard at the benefit of new components. But the lengthened .458 Lott is a generally regarded as a better option than the .458 Winchester Magnum when 500-grain bullets are used.

Despite several 500-grain loads being available for my vintage custom Gil Van Horn .458 Lott, I chose the Barnes 450-grain TSX for hunting Cape Buffalo recently.

This all-copper TSX is longer than the typical premium lead-based cup and core bullets of 500 grains or more. And because it is longer, it consumes case capacity that could otherwise be used for more powder, potentially reducing velocity.

But penetration kills. I felt that the TSX bullet’s reputation for terminal effectiveness is worth losing some muzzle velocity at typical ranges that I would be shooting at buffalo.

The Buffalo Bore load launched the 450-grain TSX at around 2300 fps.

The bullet shown above was recovered under the skin on the far side of a Kakuli bull after blowing out the heart.

The same load was used to drop a bull hippo with an 80-yard brain shot.

Kufa.