I realize that the 45/70 case is too long to be legal in your state, but living in Indiana I've jumped through their technical hoops for 20 years,,, we started at 35 cal and 1.6 case length so I had Dave Kiff grind me a 357 max reamer with an actual throat and used 180 gr hardcast bullets from a no longer available ranch dog mould. About dead even with present day 350 legend, Next year I had the Stratton brothers who were at match grade machine build a 357 wssm on an encore , that one goes by several different names with a lot of guys claiming it as their own,, wont argue with them , but i was killing deer at 300 yards long before i heard of anyone else's version,,,
Back to the 45/70. In the meantime Indiana changed the law to 1.8 case length, and that opened up a whole new world of off the wall stuff, remember this was before the Legitimate factory calibers, so i started shortening the neck on anything that was close to 1.80, , and lo and behold, anything in a single shot needs very little neck to shoot great, 35 Remington, 45/70, 450 marlin, 458x2, all got trimmed to 1.8, shot out of an encore or handy rifle, the most fun and interesting was a 45/70, trimmed to 1.8, shot with 450 grain cast bullets running subsonic with a can,, the only noise. Is the hammer strike, and the whomp of the bullet hitting the target! Most of the deer we've killed with it don't run off,, they just get weak at the knees and keel over not ever realizing what just happened, just something to think about,, if you want to tinker, the possibilities are endless.
