4seventy, you are absolutely correct in everything you say! I think everyone has the mistaken idea, that I don't like the 458WM, and that is not the case, I do like it, and as stated, own, and have owned many more rifles so chambered. Just because I like and use the cartridge, doesn't change the fact that the cartridge was not designed in the best way it could have been.

I have never had any problem with this cartridge, but the reason I didn't is, because I reccognized, early on, that this cartridge was ill designed for the slott Winchester stuck it, and thier factory ammo was not only crap, but dangerous in the beginning! That is all I'm saying! It makes no difference what velocity, and reliability, you can get through trickery,50 years later, the cartridge could have been better designed! There was no need for it, in that configuration when it was made, given the componants available then! The only reason LOTT did the wildcat 458 LOTT was, because of the problems people were haveing with the 458 WM! That alone should tell you somthing.

If you want to dup a rimmed cartridge ( the 470NE, or 450NE)with a rimless one, so it may be used in a bolt rifle, one would think, common sense would tell you, to build it with nere the same powder capacity,as LOTT did, as long as it would fit in a rifle you can use it in! In the case of the 458 WM, they chose, for what ever reason, a standard length action, when they already had a 375 H&H length action available. To me this was a mistake, and if the long action had been used, the LOTT measurements would have been perfect! It would have worked like a charm,from day one, because it had the capacity to handle 500 gr bullets, without any problem whatever! You can't tell me the cartridge is a good design, when it has taken 50 years to finely get factory ammo to come up to what the factory said it would do in 1956!

We all played with this cartridge, and everyone I know, had their own load to get the thing to act right. To me, any cartridge that required that much experimenting from day one to get it to work was an ill-designed cartridge. NOW, in 2004, it has finaly been saved by Norma, it seems! I would like anyone here to name any cartridge that has taken 50 years to get it to work properly,as Winchester said this one would in 1956, every time, with factory ammo!

It is true , with new good bullets in the proper weights, and new powders that develope the pressures needed to push the big bullets at the 1956 advertised velocities,but it wasn't designed TODAY, it was designed to use the powders of that day in 1956. It finally works, but not as effeciently, as the LOTT, the cartridge that should have had the name 458 WINCHESTER MAGNUM in the first place!

I guarintee you, if the LOTT had been used instead of the 458WM, every one of those PHs would have been useing it all these years, and without the problems experienced over the years, and the longer version would be as common today in Africa as the 30-30 is in North America!