I had just set down my favorite coyote call—a Dan Thompson’s Red Desert Howler—and was regaining my breath after screaming like a tortured cottontail. My dad—Ol’ Grumpy Pants—was with me, sitting about 150 yards over a small ridge, watching the edge of a thicket. It wasn’t 30 seconds until I heard the sharp crack of his .22-250 Remington—only one shot—and I pretty much knew what that meant. I gave it five minutes, waiting to see if perhaps more than one dog had come to the call that morning, but knew his shot had cancelled the party for all others, not to mention ruining the day of that large female coyote. “Good rifle, this,” G.P. confirmed, “dropped her in her tracks.”
Coyote hunting is a great late-season activity, and if you’ve ever seen a live deer, with its hocks and haunches bloodied and half-eaten, you’ll have little issue in pursuing these creatures to the ends of the earth. Let’s take a look at my personal top five choices for a coyote cartridge, in no particular order.
.243 Winchester
Doing perfect double-duty as a deer/coyote rifle, Winchester’s 6mm cartridge—based on the .308 Win. case—offers a great selection of bullets for the coyote. It will drive a 55-grain bullet to over 3800 fps, and that short bullet at that velocity will provide enough hydraulic shock to plant a coyote where it stands. Introduced in 1955, the .243 will also use the 95- and 100-grain bullets—perfect for the really windy hunting days—at just about 3000 fps. The .243 Win. may be a little heavy for long days on a prairie dog town, but for the selective shooting involved with coyote hunting, it makes a perfect choice.
.17 Hornet I like the little .17s—from the .17 WSM to the .17 Remington—but my favorite among them is the .17 Hornet. Simply the good old .22 Hornet necked down to hold .172” bullets, the .17 Hornet uses light-for-caliber bullets to achieve respectable velocities. Ammo is currently produced by Hornady, Federal and Winchester, with bullets ranging in weight from 15½ grains to the huge 25-grain pill; I’d opt for the 20 and 25 grainers for coyote hunting. While not the speed demon that the .17 Remington is, the little Hornet has a good sting to it, and actually fares decently in the wind. Keep the shots inside of 250 yards, and you’ll have no problem killing even the big dogs of the Northeast. The .17 Hornet has virtually no recoil, and is plenty accurate enough for head shots.
.223 Remington
It’s no secret that the .223 is among our most popular cartridges for a number of different reasons, and among those reasons sits the coyote. With the capability to propel a 55-grain bullet to 3000 fps, and equipped with a twist rate fully capable of using the heavier 77- and 80-grain bullets, the .223 Remington in any gun makes excellent coyote medicine. It offers a trajectory flat enough to take coyotes out to 400 yards, and hits hard enough to anchor them. Some hunters prefer the FMJ ammunition, to best preserve the hide, while others like the frangible hollowpoint stuff, for the shock factor. I’ve used both, and probably lean more toward the hollowpoint stuff these days, especially in the lighter bullets.
6mm Remington
Born into this world as the .244 Remington, and receiving a bad rap due to a twist rate that wouldn’t stabilize the heaviest bullets in the caliber. A slight revision to the twist rate—and a legal name change—on the part of Remington yielded the 1963 release of the 6mm Remington. Being the grandson of the 7x57mm Mauser is in no way a bad thing, and the 6mm Remington certainly lives up to the family reputation. As a coyote rifle, the 6mm Rem absolutely shines, as the case can really drive the 6mm bullets. For a deer hunter who wants a gun to cover more than one season, the 6mm Remington may be among the best choices. It will equal and sometimes better the velocities of the .243 Winchester, and coyotes have every reason to fear it.
.22-250 Remington
I’m saving my personal favorite for last. Immediately after shooting my first coyote—with a .308, during deer season—I sought out a proper coyote rifle. I pored over the ballistic tables and reloading manuals, trying to find what I considered just about perfect for my own hunting situation here in New York: a combination of close shots in the woods, and the potential for shots of about 400 yards maximum. After much debate with Ol’ Grumpy Pants (we’re Sicilians; read arguing) I settled on a Ruger 77 MkII in .22-250 Remington and topped it with a Leupold 6.5-20 Vari-X III. While I like other rifles and calibers for this class of hunting, I’ve yet to find something that tickles my fancy as much as this gun. I installed a Timney trigger and a Hogue Overmolded stock, but that’s all I’ve ever done to it, and it still prints wonderful little groups. It’ll push my favorite Sierra 53-grain hollowpoints to 3,650 fps—lights the funk out on coyotes. Based on the .250-3000 Savage, this little gem and I have accounted for a good number of coyotes, foxes, skunks, woodchucks et al. It does have one drawback—if a drawback it is—in its twist rate. The .22-250 uses a 1:12” or 1:14” twist rate, limiting the bullet choices to 55 or 60 grains at best. In my opinion, the .22-250 case would serve the heavier .22 caliber bullets very, very well, but alas, it’s not to be. Nonetheless, I like my .22-250 Remington as a reach-out-and-touch ‘em coyote cartridge.
There are other viable choices—the .220 Swift has a helluva following, and the .17 WSM has no flies on it—but these choices are what I like. No matter what you prefer, being afield in pursuit of coyotes is always a good time.
Now in their 20th year, the Golden Bullseye Awards are chosen annually to recognize the firearm industry’s best new offerings. Here is this year’s winner as selected by the editors of “The World’s Oldest And Largest Firearm Authority.”
A 56-oz., 15″-long pistol chambered in 5.7×28 mm FN that feeds from the quirky, horizontally mounted 50-round magazines used in FN’s P90/PS90 platform, the P50 exemplifies Kel-Tec’s penchant for creating novel and unorthodox firearm designs. But despite what an odd duck the P50 would seem to be, once he got his hands on one, Field Editor Jeremiah Knupp was impressed by its adaptability, and he expounded upon the pistol’s qualities in “Kel-Tec’s Radical P50.”
“The P50’s compact size, ease of use and capacity … would certainly lend itself to home defense with the addition of an electronic optic and light,” Knupp said. His testing revealed the P50’s accuracy to be excellent—partly attributed to its barrel being fixed to its receiver and partly due to its crisp trigger—and also noted the pistol’s potential as a close-range varmint-hunting tool. For thinking so far outside the box in creating a truly innovative gun capable of a broad range of applications, we determined that the Kel-Tec P50 was deserving of our Tactical Product Of The Year award. keltecweapons.com
About the Golden Bullseye Award: The Golden Bullseye Awards were created two decades ago to recognize quality, innovation and value within the firearm industry, with the editors of the NRA Publications Division convening annually to nominate and select the standout performers from the previous year’s crop of new products. The discussions can get animated at times—as each year there are always more new guns, ammunition, optics and accessories worthy of accolade than we could possibly call out—but consensus eventually results in winners being selected, with the passionate back and forth serving as evidence of the firearm industry’s health and innovative spirit.
Introduced in 1956, the .458 Win. Mag. (right) is a direct descendant of the .450 Nitro Express 3 1⁄4 inch (left) and the .450 Watts. (center).
The .458 Winchester Magnum is a fairly modern cartridge, but its story begins back in 1898. That’s when John Rigby, an Englishman famous for building high-quality double-barrel rifles, loaded the case of the old .450 Black Powder Express with 70.0 grains of a then-new high-nitroglycerine-content smokeless propellant called cordite and renamed it the .450 Nitro Express 3¼ inches. Advertised velocity for three styles of 0.458-inch bullets weighing 480 grains was 2,175 fps, but since they were from 28-inch pressure barrels and mixed with a pinch of exaggeration, actual velocity from the 26-inch barrels of double rifles usually ranged from 2,025 to 2,075 fps. Cordite had a tendency to become less potent as it aged, with velocity sometimes falling short of 2,000 fps. Even so, that level of performance obviously proved to be quite sufficient for taking on the biggest game Africa had to offer.
To quote professional ivory hunter John Taylor from his classic book “African Rifles & Cartridges” (1948), “The .450 Nitro Express 3¼” became the most popular and widely used caliber for all heavy and dangerous game throughout the world. It took the big game hunting world by storm and immediately became a standard caliber in the British gun trade. The full-patch (solid) bullet is excellent for elephant; the soft nose is quite effective when taking side-on shots at buffalo and frontal chest shots on lion. For a broadside shot on lion, the split-jacket soft nose is preferred.”
During about the first three decades of the 20th century, the cost of an African safari was beyond the reach of most Americans. That eventually began to change, and among American manufacturers, Winchester was first to respond to the demand by offering the .375 Holland & Holland Magnum in the Model 70 in 1937. In the hands of a cool-headed hunter and good shot, the rifle was capable of handling all African game, but when the chips were down, larger calibers had proven to be more reliable stoppers of elephant, buffalo, and rhino.
When seated with the front edge of the crimp groove aligned with the mouth of the case, the bases of Hornady and Swift 500-grain bullets rest 0.625 inch into the case. After shortening a case by that amount, Layne used a 7-inch drop tube to determine the charge weights of various powders that filled the full-length case to the bases of those bullets.
During the 1940s, Alaskan school teacher James Watts began planning a lengthy safari in Rhodesia and decided to duplicate the performance of the .450 Nitro Express 3¼” by necking up the .375 H&H Magnum for 0.458-inch 480-grain bullets made by Kynoch and fireforming the case to straight taper with no shoulder. He called it the .450 Watts, and obtaining a rifle was as easy as switching barrels on a Winchester Model 70 in .375 H&H Magnum. Except for being 0.050 inch longer, the .450 Watts case is identical to the .458 Lott introduced about 30 years later.
Jack O’Connor wrote about using a custom rifle in .450 Watts on buffalo and other dangerous game, and the cartridge took off like a rocket. Fully formed cases with the proper headstamp were offered by Dick Speer of Lewiston, Idaho, who founded Cascade Cartridge Co. and was a brother to Vernon Speer, founder of Speer Bullet Co. Today, .450 Watts cases are made by Quality Cartridge of Hollywood, Maryland. I have rifles in the Watts and Lott chamberings and use Hornady .458 Lott cases in both. Reloading dies and load data are interchangeable.
During the early 1950s, Winchester began planning a new family of belted magnum cartridges for the Model 70, with .45 caliber first on the list. The .450 Watts was seriously considered, but at the time, military-surplus 1898 Mauser rifles were abundant and cheap, and gunsmiths across the country were busy building custom rifles around them. So the entire family of Winchester cartridges was made short enough for the Mauser action. The .450 Watts case was shortened from 2.850 inches to 2.500 inches and introduced in 1956 as the .458 Winchester Magnum.
The original goal was to match the performance of the .450 Nitro Express, but in the spirit of one-upmanship, bullet weight was increased to 510 grains for the softnose and 500 grains for the solid, both at 2,125 fps. Claimed muzzle energies of the two loads were 5,140 and 5,010 ft-lbs compared to 4,110 ft-lbs for the .450 Nitro Express. Advertised velocities of the two bullet weights were later reduced to 2,040 fps.
Photo Gallery
Not long after the .458 Win. Mag. was introduced, complaints of drastically reduced velocities caused by excessive compression of the powder charge in factory ammunition began to trickle in from professional hunters in Africa. Winchester eventually corrected the problem, but it would haunt the cartridge for many years.
SEE PHOTO GALLERY
Many of today’s hunters have switched to 450-grain bullets. With a sectional density exceeding .300, along with higher velocity than is possible with 500-grain bullets, penetration on large, dangerous game is about the same and recoil is noticeably less.
Despite that very large bump in the road, the “four-five-eight” became a favorite among sport hunters headed to Africa and among professional hunters there who used it for backing up their clientele. Various African game departments adopted the Model 70 and other rifles chambered for the cartridge for animal population control. Many thousands of elephant and buffalo were taken over the years. During my first hunt for buffalo in Rhodesia during the 1970s, I saw several tons of biltong drying on racks in the sun, all of it harvested by government-employed cullers using rifles in .458 Win. Mag.
Shoot 101 – How To Handload Ammo
There are several reasons why the .458 Win. Mag. eventually became hugely popular around the world and remains so today. For starters, when Kynoch ceased production of all calibers of rifle ammunition in 1970, an abundant supply of .458 ammo was available from Winchester and Remington at far less cost. Once Winchester sorted out the velocity variation problem, the performance of the cartridge on large, dangerous game left nothing to be desired, at a level of recoil easily tolerated by experienced hunters. Last but certainly not least in importance, the Winchester Model 70 African was durable, reliable, and accurate enough, and for the money, it was the world’s greatest big-game rifle. It had a 25-inch barrel and weighed 9.25 pounds. There is some recoil, and the Model 70 Super Express I have today, weighing 10 pounds with a 1.5-5X scope, leather sling, and three rounds in its magazine, is none too heavy. A custom rifle on a Weatherby Mark V action
I used to take a dozen buffalo weighed 10.75 pounds, and carrying it on 25-mile treks under an African sun was never a task.
SEE PHOTO GALLERY
Everything including charge compression, accuracy, and velocity considered, Accurate 2230, Hodgdon H335, and Accurate 2460 are the best choices in powders for use with 450-grain and 500-grain bullets.
Handloading Tips
Hornady, Swift Bullets, Federal Premium, Barnes Bullets, Norma Shooting, and Winchester continue to catalog ammo, and it is not unusual for some to exceed the long-standing 2,040 fps rating from a 24-inch barrel. Handloading the .458 increases its versatility by making an elephant rifle suitable for use on deer. Hornady and Winchester offer unprimed cases, and since the mouths of cases have to be belled slightly prior to bulletseating, die sets contain a third die. To ensure a uniform roll crimp, virgin cases are trimmed to the exact same length. Cases can lengthen slightly with each firing, so keeping them trimmed to 2.490 inches is important.
Due to the limited capacity of the .458 Win. Mag. case, only a few powders of fairly high density have the correct burn rate for producing the desired velocity with 500-grain bullets. As illustrated in various reloading manuals, many powders of lower density can be used, but charge compression is often excessive. Some compression is needed. It is important to keep in mind that a heavy roll crimp alone may not prevent bullets in cartridges in the magazine from being pushed more deeply into the case due to recoil. In addition to increasing chamber pressure, this can cause feeding issues, something that cannot be tolerated with ammunition to be used for taking dangerous game. Choosing a powder with a density that allows a maximum charge to be compressed just enough to prevent bullet shove-back while delivering adequate velocity is important.
When the Hornady and Swift 500-grain bullets are seated with the front edge of their cannelure aligned with the mouth of a case measuring 2.490 inches long, their bases rest 0.625 inch from the mouth of the case. In other words, 25 percent of the powder cavity is occupied. After shortening a case by 0.625 inch, I used a seven-inch drop tube to determine the charge weights of various powders of the correct burn rates that would fill the case to the bases of those bullets.
Layne has been hunting potentially dangerous game with the .458 Win. Mag. cartridge since the 1970s, and he says that when the right bullet is placed properly, it does an excellent job.
Beginning with H335, 71.5 grains filled the shortened case to the brim, and increasing it to a maximum of 74.5 grains for a 500-grain bullet resulted in just enough compression in a full-length case to prevent bullet movement during recoil. Moving to Accurate 2230, 68.0 grains filled the case to the base of the bullet with a maximum of 72.0 grains, resulting in about the same amount of charge compression as with H335. Only slightly less dense, 66.0 grains of Accurate 2460 was a 100 percent density load with a maximum charge of 74.0 grains compressed only slightly more than H335 and Accurate 2230.
Everything considered, those are the best commonly available powders for use in .458 Win. Mag. handloads. Accuracy is quite good, and when loaded behind a 500-grain bullet, they are capable of exceeding a velocity of 2,100 fps as promised by Winchester back in 1956. Regardless of which is chosen, the Federal 215 and CCI 250 Magnum primers ensure uniform ignition.
Handloading properly constructed 450-grain bullets in the .458 Win. Mag. has become popular among many hunters because they take up less space in the short case and recoil is noticeably less. A sectional density of .300 or greater has long been the benchmark for bullets to be used on large game, and due to the .307 rating of a 450-grain bullet along with its slightly higher velocity, penetration on the largest game has proven to be equal to that of a 500-grain bullet of the same construction. From my rifles, the Swift 450-grain A-Frame and the Cutting Edge Bullets 450-grain Safari Solid shoot to the same point of impact at 100 yards.
Moving down another step in bullet weight, the Swift 400-grain A-Frame is constructed to perform at .458 Win. Mag. velocities. One of my brown bear guides carried a .458 for backup, and its magazine was filled with the 400-grain Swift handloaded to 2,375 fps. He called it the deadliest little bear-stopper in Alaska. For those who do not load their own, Federal ammo is loaded with the 400-grain Trophy Bonded Bear Claw.
Winchester hit a home run with the .458 Magnum back in 1956, and for close-distance stopping of elephant, buffalo, Alaskan brown bear, and other big animals capable of hurting you, it remains one of the best friends you can have on your team.
Gun makers and dealers in California will be required to block firearms sales to anyone they have “reasonable cause to believe is at substantial risk” of using a gun illegally or of harming themselves or others, under a new law that Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday that he had signed.
It’s a subjective requirement that goes farther than current background checks or prohibitions on selling guns to people prohibited from owning them.
The regulation is part of the new law creating a good conduct code for gun makers and dealers that also allows anyone who suffers harm from violations to sue.
The bill was one of more than a dozen adding to California’s already strict gun regulations that were sent to Newsom, a Democrat, by state lawmakers before they left for their monthlong summer recess.
The National Rifle Association said the requirements are vague and represent an attempt to hold gun dealers and makers liable for the actions of others. The new law, the group said, “seeks to frustrate law-abiding gun owners” with the goal of driving gun makers and dealers “out of business with frivolous litigation.”
The state’s firearm industry standard of conduct, starting in July 2023, will require those making, importing or selling guns to “take reasonable precautions” to make sure the weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands through sales or thefts.
That includes having “reasonable controls” to prevent sales to arms traffickers, straw buyers, those prohibited from owning guns, and anyone deemed to be at “substantial risk” of using the gun improperly.
The law is patterned after a New York measure that took effect last year to skirt a 2005 federal law blocking most liability lawsuits against gun-makers or dealers.
The New York measure declared such violations a “public nuisance,” taking advantage of a federal exemption that allows lawsuits when gun makers break state or local laws regulating the sale and marketing of firearms.
Delaware and New Jersey just enacted similar laws, and all contain provisions requiring firearms dealers to act responsibly, said Tanya Schardt, senior counsel and director of state and federal policy at the Brady gun control advocacy organization that sought the laws.
“There may be indicators or things that you see beyond just passing the background check that indicate to the dealer that they shouldn’t sell the gun,” she said.
“I would say the California law is more specific,” Schardt said. “But substantively I think it creates the same set of requirements, the same standards with regards to engaging in safe business practices.”
“It’s not asking someone to be psychic,” she added, but to take reasonable precautions in the same way that an automobile dealer could be liable for selling to a customer who is clearly drunk, for instance.
“It’s not creating liability, it’s not expanding liability beyond what’s reasonable … which is really the same standard that every other industry is measured against,” she said.
A federal judge in May rejected a challenge to the New York law by gun manufacturers and sellers.
Sam Paredes, executive director of Gun Owners of California, expects the California law will be challenged on the argument that it violates the federal law.
“The ability to be sued for doing something bad is already there,” he said, noting that gun makers and dealers are liable for any illegal activity. “This is the anti-gun side’s way of looking for a deep pocket.”
The law will allow the California attorney general, city and county attorneys and victims of gun code of conduct violations to sue gun retailers or manufacturers for civil damages.
“Nearly every industry is held liable when their products case harm or injury. All except one — the gun industry,” Newsom said in a video Tuesday announcing that he had signed the bill on Monday.
With the new law, he said, “gun makers will finally be held to account for their role in this crisis.”
California’s law allows gun makers and dealers to also be sued for alleged violations of other laws, including false advertising, unfair competition or deceptive acts or practices.
“Hitting their bottom line may finally compel them to step up to reduce gun violence by preventing illegal sales and theft,” said the bill’s author, Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting.
The law will also prohibit manufacturers and retailers from making, importing or selling guns or related products that are “abnormally dangerous and likely to create an unreasonable risk of harm.”
That could include kits for building untraceable “ ghost guns,” “ bump stocks ” that increase the rate of fire for semi-automatic weapons, or “ bullet button ” assault weapons that allow for rapid reloading.
