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Gents,

Although both the .458 Lott and the .450 Rigby use the same .458-calibre bullets, they are actually two very different cartridges.

The Lott round uses a full-length, blown-out .375 H&H case, whilst the .450 Rigby uses the large .416 Rigby case, necked up to .458. The Lott is by far the most popular one of the two, although I know of a few PH's over here who uses .450 Rigby rifles to great effect. A friend of mine also owns a beautiful .450 Rigby on a much-modified Brno 602 action, one of the last magazine rifles built by Rigby in London during the early 1990's. He has used it extensively on elephant and buffalo and is very happy with it. My friend also has extensive experience with most of the English double and magazine cartridges and he rates his .450 (with handloads-500 grain Woodleigh solids and Swift A-Frame softs @ 2450 fps) as equal to the .500 Jeffery and .505 Gibbs (as factory-loaded).

Regarding ballistics, the Lott normally fires a 500-grain bullet at 2 200-2 300 fps, whilst the Rigby number (as loaded by Kynamco) uses a 480-grain bullet at about 2 450 fps. Incidentally, the 480-grain bullet is a throwback to the first Nitro-Express, the .450 NE introduced in 1898, which also fired a 480-grain bullet. The Rigby is quite capable of duplicating the Lott's factory ballistics at much lower pressure (read "easy extraction") but at the expense of a cartridge worth's magazine capacity.

I do not have much experience with the .458 Lott. I have fired one or two (recoil is brisk, as is to be expected), and it is by all accounts a very fine round. From what I've been told, 2 300 fps with a 500-grain bullet is just about the practical velocity/powder capacity limit in most rifles (sounds just fine to me!). The Rigby, on the other hand, is capable of a bit more, thanks to its large case capacity. My friend loads 500-grainers to over 2 600 fps with no problems (just don't ask about the recoil...), and 600-grainers to over 2 300 fps (see previous note about recoil). Making cases for the .450 Rigby from .416 Rigby is easy, but Bertram, Kynamco, and a handful of US makers/distributors offer them in any event, so you should be fine. The Lott is well on its way to replacing the .458 Winchester as the most popular heavy calibre just about everywhere, and that should result in plentiful ammo and components very shortly, even over here in Africa.

The Lott will kill everything, and I mean everything, very dead. The Rigby will as well, but it is capable of more, should you ever decide to need "more". In a similar rifle, and living in a place where components and ammo are getting scarcer and more expensive by the day, I would pick the one with the most available ammo and reloading components.