Everything I've read and my limited experience too tells me that Mac is wrong about stopping a charge.

A 375H&H, 450/400, 450NE...are all equal in stopping a charge when the brain is hit. But stopping a charge or turning a charge without a CNS hit becomes more likely the larger the bullet in weight and diameter and the faster, within reason, that it is going.

Referenced in the 45/70 thread and available on african-hunter.com is the article by Ganyana reveiwing statistics of bad encounters with elephants by citizen hunters in Zim. The short version is that those with 375H&H's got killed or injured every time, those with 450NE class crtridges got injured less that 40% of the time and those with even larger cartridges, even less.

The 450/400 may be more than a 375H&H but it is a whole lot less than a 450NE class cartridge.

See Buzz Charlton's video, and count the number of times when he says, "...that elephant would have dropped if a 500 grain bullet had been used..." or something similar. He says it regarding his own shooting and failure to hit the CNS while turning a charge with his 416 Rigby. This is not coincidence, and the 450/400 is no 416 Rigby either.

JPK