In the continuing series on Mega/Magnums, we will explore the 454 Casull cartridge. There was an inordinate amount of traffic on the 454 in SIXGUNNER over about a week and a half....the interest in this cartridge has always been great anyway.

My first exposure to the 454, like many others was the rumors and misinformation that was being spread around in the late 1970s about the powerful round and it’s triplex loadings (Dick used three powders in one case). Dick Casull had been working for may years on the cartridge and a handgun to shoot it. Back in the mid-eighties I was able to handle Dick’s working Colt single action that he had beefed up in a whole lot of ways...it was like the prototype to today’s Freedom Arms Revolver. Dick’s business partnership with the Bakers in circa 1980, brought about the Freedom Arms factory and the manufacture of the world’s finest production single action revolver. And at the time certainly the most powerful... Dick’s design, a beefy but beautiful five shooter has been copied but never duplicated.

The only folks that can bring about this kind of quality and power in handguns is a handful of excellent custom gunsmiths like Linebaugh, Stroh, Bowen and a few others. In my opinion no other production handgun can match the quality and strength of the Freedom Arms revolvers. Yes, I know all about the Raging Bull...nice handgun, double action...but Freedom’s quality, accuracy, and strength is tops....

In 1983/4 working with Holt Bodinson ( then the International Director for Safari Club International )  Freedom Arms sent us about 10 to 15,000 dollars worth of handguns to test. And at $620 a copy in those days (that’s what I paid for mine) that was a lot of guns....Holt and I shot and tested...and reloaded and shot and tested some more. I know in one test, using 100 brand new Winchester 45 Colt cases...I reloaded them with heavy test loads,14 times (1400 rounds) just to test the strength of the 45 brass as well as accuracy and loads. It was widely told at the time that the 45 brass on the market was weak....we disproved that baloney. But we also shot thousands of more rounds...both factory and reloads through those guns.

The handguns were so impressive...especially in there accuracy, that when we ran into one that gave ‘only’‘ 1 and a 3/4ths inch groups at 25 yards....grouping vertically if I remember rightly...we sent the gun back to Dick Casull with the targets because it was inaccurate...and he retired it. Most of us wish a lot of our handguns today, would group that small...but with the Freedom Arms handguns...that was and is unacceptable accuracy. I still have the most accurate of the whole lot of guns, we tested back then. A short-barrel fixed-sight wonder, that is lighter than my Ruger short barreled stainless steel 357 single action! Now Holt thinks he got the best gun of the group...a short-barreled and adjustable-sight 454. But we won’t tell him he got second best. In the 16 years since that fateful testing...I have put more than 70,000 rounds thru my gun....the throat insert has been changed twice...the ejector rod has been fixed twice....and I have had the gun polished a number of times. I just don’t see any other production gun taking that kind of heavy use and still being an active carry and hunting gun with superb accuracy.

We had a reloading store in the late 1980s....my 454 was the test gun for 45 Colt and 454 ammo....for two and a half years, just everybody in our group would take the gun out nearly every day...in one year we recorded over 20,000 rounds (1989) thru my 454. By the way those who think that is some kind of incredible record...forget it..we used to produce more than a quarter million rounds a month at the store, and we were considered a small operation...firing 100 to 150 rounds a day thru a gun was minor. But the point was, this handgun stood up to all of it and more. And it is a handgun I will pass on to my grandchildren, still in fine shape.

My load in those days for hunting was 28 grains of 2400 under a 340 grain cast SSK bullet. The short barreled gun was giving well over 1600 fps and 2000 lbs. of muzzle energy. I remember friend Jim Taylor and I were out shooting at a silhouette steel pig, that Jim had welded to strap steel supports so it wouldn’t fall over when hit. Saving us from running a 100 yards back and forth to keep picking it up.....

I fired one shot that hit this heavy steel pig, reinforced and welded to steel supports, low in the leg....that 340 cast slug actually broke the leg and separated it from the strap steel! That’s power. No wonder all the big game in the world has been taken with this gun and caliber. Lynn Thompson whose company makes the Lexus of fine quality knives, killed the world’s largest Rhino with his 454...also taking lions, elephants and so much more. He once had a cave full of Baboons come after him...but he cleaned their clocks for them. Baboon by the way are very dangerous.

As I mentioned to Chris Ryan a while back...it’s my opinion that we are on the verge of the power levels of the old turn-of-the-century Black Powder double rifles used in Africa on all manner of game animals back then....On page 69 of John Taylor’s famous book African Rifles and Cartridges ...Taylor shows that the 450 BP Express pushed a solid lead bullet of 365 grains at 1700 fps and 2340 ft.lbs. of muzzle energy...My load out of the short barreled 454 comes surprisingly close to that. Taylor goes on to say that the 450BP..."was probably the most popular and widely-used of all the Expresses..." He states he killed rhino, elephant, and cape buffalo with it....that was very early in his hunting career in the late 1920s and early 30s. So killing the largest game animals today with a handgun, is not some kind of stunt. The power is there. All you need is the courage and grace under pressure of the likes of Lynn Thompson, JD Jones, Larry Kelly and others like them....oh yeah and a great deal of money helps....

Though I lived in Africa for over two years in the fifties and got to hunt a great deal, I only killed a few animals with a handgun. In those days handguns were never in sight...some of the natives that helped us in hunting and tracking, had never seen a handgun...I shot a zebra with a Colt 45 commercial load....across a water hole. A frontal chest shot, he died very quickly. And from a moving jeep, I shot a big bag of meat...an eland...with a 45 ACP 1911 loaded with military hard ball. I shot the animal twice into the left side into the lungs at maybe 15 feet, chased it for about a quarter mile before it went down. Then we, the driver and I and the jeep, dragged it back to a starving village...we had run across. There were no men in the village...none...old or young. I never got an answer to that mystery..but did get my butt in trouble because I shot the animal without a permit for it. Even though it was for starving people...I have no doubt today those two animals, one a small horse and the other the size of a very large Angus bull would have gone down infinitely faster with a heavy loaded Ruger 45 Colt or the 454 Casull...

The penetration of the 454 is astounding. I once had occasion to fire directly into a 10 to 12 inch thick dense and heavily treated railroad tie with the 340 grain load....it went completely thru. I have shot all kinds of animals with this load....it always exits.

Early in the elk season of 1984, I shot a good sized elk in the south end...the 350 gr. jacketed .458 slug I sized down to 452...went completely through him and out his chest. It was a product of the bullet as well as the power. In those days heavy jacketed .452 slugs were hard to come by if not non-existent. It was a jacketed bullet meant for the .458 Winchester rifle. Very stiff, heavy jacket...no expansion...we went to 45-70 heavy weights and sized them down. They at least expanded on heavy game.

Still expansion with a 45 caliber bullet isn’t always needed...a 30-06 has to expand like crazy to just get to 45 caliber size. With a flat face, like the cast bullets...expansion isn’t needed. Bud MacDonald has probably killed more elk with a handgun than I have. And I never hear him complain about the lack of expansion in 45 caliber cast loads....but he sure knows the truth about penetration. And a big animal needs a bullet that will penetrate deeply.

Pressure equates to power. And as we all know the 454 uses pressures in the heavy rifle realm. I also have a 275 grain NEI Keith shaped bullet mold. This is a great general purpose bullet...where the 340 is a hunting bullet. With 29.5 grains of 2400 my 4 and 3/4 ths inch barrel gives well over 1800 fps...this load is one of the very few in revolvers that I have actually seen coyote sized animals moved on impact. I hit one in the rear running from me, that flipped him over. I caught another running from me, the bullet went shallow into his side catching the ribs and ripping thru every rib on that side...he spun, tried to run and fell down. The bullet had also gone thru the side of his front leg breaking that. He need a second finishing shot. But the damage was enormous...actually ripping open the chest cavity on that side.

Because this gun is a fixed sight...and I have three different loads I used with vastly different weights...I had to solve the problem of point of aim. I did that by removing the front sight and attaching a short dovetail, rifle front sight base. All I have to do is change the post inserts...and it also gives me windage abilities. Yet acts like a fixed sight. When I go hunting for anything large, like deer and above. No matter what gun I’m going to use, my 454 comes with me. Especially if the animal hunted is big like the feral pigs and boars, large black bears, elk and larger. It’s like having a powerful backup rifle if something goes wrong with the primary gun.