[Jeff Higgins]

My heavy .45 Colt handloads consist of an LBT (Veral Smith's Lead Bullet Technologies) 300 grain bullet at about 1,250 fps. I shoot these from my off the shelf Ruger Blackhawk, Ruger Bisley, and Interarms Virginian Dragoon, all standard six shot cylinder single actions. John's five shot cylinder would allow me to exceed 1,500 or 1,600 fps with the same bullet.

I have killed a variety of game with this load. It's achieved full penetration, i.e. with exit wounds, on animals of over 800 pounds on quartering shots. Basically shoulder to far side hip. It even went full length, lengthwise, through a mature bull caribou. What more do we need? Even the increased performance available through switching to the five shot cylinder seems unnecessary.

Then again, Ross Seyfried (out of Oregon, by the way) once regaled us with his story of shooting a Cape Buffalo with one of John's custom Bisley revolvers chambered in his .475. Ross went out alone because, well, it was illegal to do that. Even his camp staff would have ratted him out for the rewards offered by game departments for "game violations". So he couldn't let anyone know.

His first shot had little affect. All it did was was make it kind of look back over its shoulder at him. As Peter Capstick so ably described these guys, "they look at you like you owe them money"... In this case, a lot of money. Ross tried to apologize, but that didn't seem to have much affect either. It was "game on". With only four shots left in the cylinder.

Long story short (it was a really short story, actually), Ross's fourth and last shot was fired with the muzzle of the revolver rattling between its horn bosses, with Ross's left hand on its face. It had dipped its head at the end of its charge the way they like to do, to try to scoop him up between its inward facing horn tips. Ross landed on its back, with its nose between his feet.

Interestingly, the post mortem revealed that every bullet had, in fact, achieved more than adequate penetration. The old boy just didn't seem to give a schitt, apparently. No rifle would have really done much better. Just one of those days.

So, yeah, maybe if there are things like that in your neighborhood, that kind of power in a revolver might be justified. Otherwise, it's all just macho nonsense.