Obviously, the common sense approach didn't work.

In that elephant story, and I am familiar with a couple of them, the shooter used Garrett ammo loaded with the former Speer African Grand Slam with a round nose and a tungsten core, IIRC, and not the Hammerhead hard cast bullet.

Newsprint is a favorite medium of those who want to argue against physics and try to make slow moving solid projectiles look good all out of proportion to their performance on game. The Linebaugh test are similar. In addition, it is cheap and readily available in the US, unlike DG. If you were to search here on this forum you will find penetration test of various bullets from various rounds in elephant skulls. Unfortunately for this thread the tester didn't hump a 45/70 to Africa when he had better alternatives.

Personally I am not biased against the 45/70, what I am biased against are the arguements of its supporters that fly in the face of pysics, history, experience and common sense.

There remain, for all practical purposes, only two members of the big five for which a stopper type rifle is often employed. These are elephants and cape buffalo. I would use a 45/70 on cape buffalo, with Garrett or similar ammo, if say, my rifles were out of commission and the 45/70 was there. I think its performance would be adequate with a little discretion given to shot placement. But there are so many more apropriate rounds available, each with a well proven history, I just can't understand the all consuming drive to advocate a cartridge which physics, history, experience and common sense places in the marginal at best catagory.

JPK