The Ruger American Rifle Ranch editions have always occupied a place in the market near and dear to my heart. Namely, suppressor ready, magazine fed rifles with short as NFA will allow barrels. They’re great truck guns, and for the price, really can’t be beat. For 2017, Ruger is adding a whollop of a cartridge to the lineup.
.450 Bushmaster was designed and built to satisfy that small group of people that wanted an AR-15 but also wanted it to put the big boy hurt on tough animals like pigs. According to our point of contact at Ruger, .450 Bushmaster skirts the various rules around cartridge limitations in the midwest, making it a go to choice for the deer hunter who wants to use an effective round while maintaining a straight wall case – in line with state regs. .450 Bushmaster has recently been added to the approved list for several states, and this particular Ranch rifle was created for those customers.
Shooting the .450 Bushmaster Ranch Rifle with a silencer on the end is a pants browningly good time. The recoil is firm, but not too aggressive, and the way steel reacts by being hit with a 250+ gr. projectile cannot be overstated. At five and a half pounds sans scope, this is about as perfect a quick pointing hog gun as you can get, and one that may have to migrate into my safe while nobody is looking. I still can’t wipe the grin off my face.
Needs a left-handed model and a wood stock, and we’re in business.
I always knew that you were a big lefty. Hehe.
Would have been even more awesome if it was in .45-70 and built to handle the Ruger No.1 loads.
TruthTellers,
As far as I can tell, ballistics (e.g. bullet weight and muzzle velocity) are basically the same between .450 Bushmaster and .45-70 Government. Why the desire for the American Rifle in .45-70 Government?
For high pressure loads that are currently only safe in the ruger 1
For factory loads, I think the 450 BM and 458 SOCOM both approximate typical factory 45-70 performance in the 250-300 grain range. Increase the bullet weight and/or try to give the load a bit more gas and the 45-70 pulls away.
Ahhhhh … thanks!
That’s a real thumper of a cartridge!
Yeah, at 275 yards the bullet should still be humping along at 1,300 fps. A bullet that huge and heavy at 1,300 fps is plenty capable of promptly downing pretty much any animal up to 350 pounds … and certainly able to kill much larger animals although they might take a minute to fall over dead.
At 50 yards, with the bullet still moving at over 2,000 fps and retaining over 2,200 foot-pounds of energy, I have to think that would be pretty reliable for immediately dropping even large moose and grizzlies.
Now if someone would only offer a semi-auto rifle in .450 Bushmaster … something that takes detachable magazines which hold at least 9 rounds … perhaps even something on the AR-15 platform, oh wait!
“Pants browningly good time”. Outstanding. Not only did you give me my big grin for the day, but I plan to steal that and use it every chance I get.
Hey Tyler, if you review one of these could you possibly check to see if the magazine will hold .308 rounds and how many? It doesn’t look like ruger cares to make a decent magazine that holds more than 3.5 rounds for their 308 american so I was hoping maybe the bushmaster mag would be long enough to use for 308 rounds while possibly being long enough to fit 5-6 in there. Yeah I’m probably dreaming but until I break down and start moding some other mag to fit in there that’s about my only hope.
Just hogs? Look at the ballistics – this round is perfect for large deer and in many parts of the wooded and hilly Midwest, you don’t get many kills past 100 yards (mine are all under 50) and in some of these states your only option besides shotgun slugs is straight walled rifle cartridges. Hopefully Ohio will add this caliber to the list.
Add Ohio to the list of States that use 450 BM
Already own an AR in 450 Bushmaster (great gun/bullet combination) and a lever action in 45-70, so adding a bolt rifle in 450 BM to my safe was a no brainer. Bought the Ruger rifle Sunday, cleaned it Monday and will get to the range this week. Only concern thus far is the bolt appears to stick to the bolt release, making chambering a round difficult. Application of some gun grease to the bolt after cleaning helped. Will no more after the range visit.
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