There is a wild cattle in this area that we were hunting. They were specific breed called Redskins by the locals. There were no more wild cattle in the area except for these, so they were purebred and not mixed with others. I think there might even be a separate category for these of some sort, but they are wilder than the buffalo, and much harder to hunt. I have shot a few in the past, but I took two good ones on this trip, and the last one was a monster of an old bull and perhaps the biggest ever shot....... Certainly the biggest I ever shot....
This was the first one I shot, not the big one.................. But none the less a good one in any book..............
And then later, there was this old bugger...............
I did a long stalk on this rascal......... And hammered him with a few 420 Raptors. I forget how many in the heat of battle. Now on this entire trip we had not recovered any bullets from the 475 B&M, all had passed through. But I had shot a point on the shoulder of this RedSkin, and found a lump of a bullet way back on the hip.
Sam and I started digging this bullet out................That was a hell of a lot of penetration for any bullet, and the base of this Raptor had gone 4-5 feet of RedSkin from the point of the shoulder.
No conventional Expanding bullet could achieve that amount of penetration.
But what we found that was disturbing, the Raptor did not have one bit of rifling engraved into it. It was smooth as could be! HOLY COW--Pun Intended......... Two things came out of this episode.
#1.... Here I was AGAIN, with a damn rifle that was supposed to be .474 caliber, and I had another OVERSIZED BARREL, this time in my own 475 B&M! Barrels came from PacNor! We had never had
issues with PacNor Barrels and used them exclusively in all the .500s........... I could not believe it, my .474 caliber Plague had returned!
#2... Bullet performance was not effected at all. All Solids fired had drove deep and straight, and exited on the mark. All North Fork and CEB Bullets had performed perfectly, regardless of not having engaged
any rifling at all. Common bullets would not have done this once terminals had started. This told me we had taken Bullet Tech to the maximum in our big bore rifles, there was no where to go from here in
that regard. I was very pleased.........
When I returned home I sent the rifle to Brian, he slugged it, it was over sized from PacNor, they replaced it. PacNor offers two twists, we had gone with a fast 1:10 Twist rate on these, but they made a 1:16 as well. We prefer the faster twist, as in all our test work, the faster twist helps stabilize "Less Than Well Designed Solids"....... But, the slower twists were fine, with Proper Designs, solid bullets with over 65% meplat of caliber. I decided to put a 1;16 twist back on this gun, and would conduct terminal test with it, compared to 1:10 twist guns. PacNor of course replaced the barrel at no cost.
I had a few things going on in my mind however during this time. First, I did not think the 475 was one bit better than 458 caliber. I saw zero advantages at all. It was not enough caliber above .458 to make any difference in anything. I was still having some issues with getting the brass to fire form properly. It was being a little hateful in that regard. In the case of 458 B&M you could do anything on the planet you wanted to
do with it and never ever once had head separation no matter how you worked the brass. You could go brand new unfired, formed only, and set the shoulder back so it chambers easy, and never experience a problem in the future with the brass. Not so with this 475 B&M.
Strike TWO against 475 B&M..........
And now this damned over size barrel, exactly like the 470 Capsticks. That was it, that was STRIKE THREE.
I received the gun back from SSK, with new 1:16 twist PacNor barrel. This had to be early 2013. Well, the gun is still sitting there, barrel is still NEW, its never been fired.
Not so long after this, the fellow in TX that bought gun #1 decided it was too much recoil for him, and asked it I would take it back. Sure, I agreed to take it back, so Gun #1 Came back home. I have it here now as well.
The third gun, the black gunkote finish one, I shot some lighter bullets in it over the years, messed with it a little bit, maybe 100 rounds total, and it too sits in the rack.......
There have been a total of only 3 guns built, I have all three. I do NOT recommend them to anyone, those that have asked, I send them to the 458 B&Ms instead. Or in some cases they want 50s.... As far as I am concerned the 475 B&M is a dead issue. There won't be anymore done, and I won't let these three out again. Probably just hand them down to the kids at some point.
But, I did take my most favorite Australian Buffalo with the 475, and with great success............ It is on the B&M website, and I always think I am going to remove 475 from the lineup, but I just have not, mainly because
of that damn buffalo, the one with "one straight horn"...................
Overall, the 458 B&M is far superior in every way.................