I bought a Windham AR in .450 Bushmaster a couple years ago and have been really taken with how accurate the combo is and how easy the cartridge is to reload. It will digest just about any .452 bullet with several powders that work well. So far H110 is the winner.
I ended up with a couple hundred rounds of Hornady subsonic ammo, that's quite accurate in the AR but obviously won't cycle the action. I'd been thinking that one of the many single shot or bolt actions in .450 would be interesting to work with and had been eyeballing a Bergara.
Stopped by one of my favorite hangouts where an old friend works the gun counter on his days off as a firefighter and asked to look at the .450s they had in stock. Looked over the Bergara, really nice rifle, smooth action, adj. trigger etc. Then my guy says, look at this one but don't look at the tag. Rifle was nice and light, adjustable trigger, etc. but just not quite as smooth. Looked the at barrel and it's stamped Mossberg Patriot. Well, I'll be. Looked at the price tag and it's on sale for less than half the price of the Bergara.
Stuck a Bushnell target scope on it that I had in the closet and took it out this morning. Once I got it on the paper, I am even more impressed with this cartridge! Five shots into 1 1/4" at fifty yards off the bench with the factory subsonics.
The rifle itself is on the lighter side, but recoil is on par with the .30-30/ .35 Rem crowd. After the first twenty rounds, the action was starting to smooth out. Empty cases just about fly out of the receiver. The best part is the trigger. Out of the box, it measures just over two pounds on my Wheeler gage. Now that it's close to where I want it, I'll sight it in at 100 yds and play around with a couple different loads.
Jay,
The weather this morning was @ 45 degrees. Better than last week's 29, but it was upper 70s yesterday!
jb
--gave me a group about like that at 100 yards with a handload of 42 grains of 296 (same as H110) under the Hornady 225-grain FTX. I couldn't believe it would perform so willingly.
