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Would like to hear about experiences with a 458 SOCOM. I would fit it on a Bolt gun. I have a both short action (MOD11) or long action 110 to use. My questions include; how accrurate is your rig? what do you consider the range? what bullets have you used? what siziing and seating die have you used? If you have done it do you like it?
Interested in your posting as I too am interested in a build in SOCOM or 450 Marlin.
I have several .458s, .450s and 50 BEOs with barrel lengths from 9” up to 18”. For your range question, it’s short. .458 seems to do about the best but with a 100 meter zero you have 14” drop at 200m and around 32” drop at 250m. That’s based on a pretty hot Barnes 300gr TSX. Accuracy wise, inside 150m you should be able to hit a 4” gong all day long.
I think you and I are sort of alone. My second choice was a bushmaster. As you look at the large bore choices the Marlin uses a modified belt. I was thinking the bushmaster must headspace on the case mouth. That must be the weakest of the three, however, the one a lot of people chose for the those states with straight wall cartridge restrctions. The socom has a shoulder Thus I thought it must be the best in that regard. I was hoping someone with real experience using a bolt action would come along and enlighten me/us.
Like the .300 Blackout, 6.5 Grendel, and others this was designed/optimized specifically for the AR-15 platform.
All of them can of course be run in a bolt gun, but there are always "better", more efficient choices when you're not limited to the constraints of the AR.
Why is the .458 Socom your choice for a bolt gun?
I thought about this round but went with a full size 458 win mag since er shaw had barrels on sale. I chose to reduce load it, basically down to hot 45/70 loads and it works great.
Ideally i would have wanted the 458x2 american. A more short action based gun for a brush woods setup.
After a review of what would be involved with getting a 458 SOCOM up and running I am backing out of the proposition. A new barrel, dies, brass, bullets, etc. comes out to about $450 or so. That would apply to any new caliber. When you really think about the application, hunting deer in PA, a 35 Rem can do about the same thing and cost about the same. I already have a good 30-06 barrel and with normal bullets ( 150 - 165 grain) would do a great job of thumping anything I would likely meet at greater range. If I really wanted a larger bore size I would probably go with somethiing like a 338 Fed or 358 Win.