Daryl, a very well written post, outside the sarcasm, and you may well be correct in you paper ballistics, but Bears and moose aside, the big "bite backs" can't read you post, so disregard your expertise. Do you really believe the loads you are spouting are safe in the little Biakal enough to recommend them to a guy shooting one? If you do you have more guts than I think you do. Claims that are dangerous being recommended, without disclaimers and warnings of risk, from behind a key board on line are, IMO, a risky business. The misguided sarcasm I can live with, but the safety issues are another thing all together!

My whole objection to this thread is the smoke and mirrors that involves severely overloaded 45-70, in a thread that is not IMO, a safe load to use in a little tin can rifle, without making it clear that these loads are to be used in stronger rifles. That is more important than my opinion, or yours, but whether one wants to risk his butt using a 45-70 on animals that are likely to stick that little rifle up his butt, and kick the stock off it before he dies!

As I said earlier the results you get on paper, doesn’t necessarily translate to effect on a live targets. You are most likely correct on the new powders but I would still say any load in a 45-70 case that comes close to a 375 H&H in terminal effect is certainly going to be above 28.000 PSI. The difference in the effect issued by a 300 gr bullets on an animal at 2550 fps, is a zebra of a different stripe from a donkey 400 gr bullet at even 2000 FPS which, I might add, is very high for a 45-70.

Your assumption that I don't hand load is another assumption from you that is wrong, as I have been hand loading for every one of the couple hundred rifles, and handguns I have owned over the last 63 yrs.from age 10 years when I started loading. Now I probably have not pushed near as many bullets through paper targets as you, but I have poked a hell of a lot of holes in large animals with those hand loads. Paper targets don't run off and die a lingering death, or bite you in the butt when you piss him off. Research and development is fine for a starter, but the quality of that research is when the rubber meats the road, or in this case when the bullet hits the animal in the field.

If I'm wrong then I can live with that, but there is a reason why the 45-70 is illegal for the top three in Africa, and that is because it doesn't develop the required ballistics to qualify. The 375 H&H does, and doesn't have to be overloaded to do it, end of the story. A .22 hornet will kill a cape buffalo, or the largest bear in the world, but that fact doesn't make it a buffalo, or bear cartridge, and the laws are not made on what you can overload to but what the newest average factory ammo is capable of. Because a PH allows you to use an illegal cartridge for hunting dangerous game doesn't mean the cartridge gets more powerful for that purpose.

........................SOooooooooooo you can make all the sarcastic remarks you want but that doesn't make you right, and it doesn't make the 45-70 anything more than a novelty deer cartridge. The Bison actually taken with the old 45-70, are probably 1/3rd of the number shot with it and not followed up. I assure you neither a North American Bison nor the brown bear, is in the class of Cape buffalo. Simply because someone pokes a bullet through one set of Cape's ribs, into the chest of a cow behind also doesn’t make it a cape buffalo cartridge, an illegal 300 Win Mag will do that and it doesn't make that legal either. I guess we will simply have to agree to disagree, and we certainly do!