.45 Rossi lever gun

[Sawbuck_Slim]

I have a 45 Rossi-20 inch barrel-.45. Xast my own 200 grain lead RNFP. At 50 yards this shoots eellent. I use Red dot and Unique, red dot seems a bit tighter group. I am disabled and have not got out to see what this will do at 100 yards. Is anyone shooting this rifle at 100 yards using this 200 grain or even 250 grain.? Right now Im using 8.5 grains of Unique or 6.0 of Red dot-at 50 yards they are right on the money, Im dying to knpow what they will do at 100. Also, does anyone have any experience in shooting 45L out of a 454 asull. was wondering about the acuracy, was thinking about buying a 454.

[azrednek]

I was shooting my Rossi 45 using 10.0 grs of Herco with 200-250 gr slugs. Haven't had it out in a few years. Most my shooting was at 50 yards.

[w5pv]

I have a Rossi 92 that shoots about 1 inch groups at 75 yards out of a 24 inch barrel.The load is 10.2 grains of HS6 under a 255 grain RFN lee cast mold.The bullet cast a little on the heavy side with waterdropped wheel weights.I have no leading and this is shooting off sand bags.I use Ben's Red for lube.

[firebrick43]

I have two rossi 45s. Both have spring kits and I have tuned them to be very smooth and reliable. One is a stainless 20" with lyman buckhorn rear sight. Wife shoots this mostly for cowboy action. The other is a 24" stainless octagon barrel with a lyman tang peep sight. I shoot this normally for cowboy action. It's been drawfiled flat and bead blasted and wood refinished.

For or cowboy action we shoot mcb number 4's which is a 200 grain 11bhn with 5.6 grains of trailboss. Little dirty as they don't expand the brass enough to seal but light recoil. I take the peep out and use the tang as a ghost sight. Heavy weight and low recoil allows me to run almost as fast as the good shooters with 73's. Accuracy in both at 50 yards is 1.5" with these loads.

I have hunted with both for deer in indiana. Load 300 grain hornady xtp's. (Don't use xtp mags, they won't expand even at 2100 fps out of my 209 encore muzzle loader in sabots). I load a warm ruger only load of 21 grains imr 4227 (use at your own risk, do not use in colt or colt clones, small frame rugers or s&w 625.).

Recoil in the 20" is pretty brisk. Damn right brutal from a bench. My buddies won't shoot them more than once or twice. The 24" is a little better but the steel crescent buttplate has to be positioned correctly. I have entertained a slip on buttpad.

Both the rifle group sub 2" at 100 yards. The 24" will reliably ring my 200 yard 8" gong but the 20" is harder due to the lack of peep sights. These loads with pass thru deer, never recovered a bullet except one coup degrais I dug up. On even went thru both shoulders on a 130lbs doe. Never had a deer make it more than 50yards and a few were DRT. Shot two out of three does on the run about 30 yards three years ago with three shots with the 20" gun.

Also load 255 lees over 7 grains of win231/hp38. Tumble lubed ww. I found water dropped lead in my revolvers (not rifles however). Think they are too hard for low velocity. This load replicated the factory loads pretty close.

[azrednek]

I've put some hot Ruger Only loads through my Rossi using the 45424 and the SAECO clone with a gas check. Never launched enough out of my Rossi to test the shot to shot accuracy. Well within minute of deer at 75 and 100. I worked up to the hot loads reaching published max with no problems with extraction or any indications of over pressure by eyeballing and using the expended primers as a guide.


As much as I hate to admit it. My best 50 yard accuracy were with factory Winchester Silver-Tips. No reason one could not achieve the same accuracy using home cast. I just never took the time. After shelling out major bucks for the factory ammo. I loaded various 45 cal cast as well as some jacketed all left over from previous hand loading of 45 ACP, AR and LC. Best I recall everything functioned with only a few being a bit sticky going up the snout. I don't have any idea why my Rossi 44 is finicky about nose shapes and over-all length but my 45 seems to swallow everything so far.

[Sawbuck_Slim]

Thanks to everyone for all the info, found it intersting.

[Mgderf]

I have a Rossi M92 in .454 Casull and I've put a variety of .45 Colt through it, all with more than just acceptable results.
I actually found a small ammo company locally that loaded me up some jacketed .45 Colt (250gr HP-XTP) loaded to average 1000fps!
She said they were right at .44mag pressures/speed.

My whitetails had no complaints. I took 2 doe last year in about 4 seconds. Boom, lever, boom.
One went east about 20 yards. One went west about 20 FEET.
Both dead before I could get out of my stand.

[azrednek]

One went east about 20 yards. One went west about 20 FEET.
Both dead before I could get out of my stand.

Don't you feel greedy??:bigsmyl2: Just kidding and wish I had a similar story to share. In Arizona less than 10% of deer tags are filled. Last season all I saw was a buck hanging in somebody's camp. Thought I had one opening morning right at sun-up. Took a knee, looked through my scope for antlers only to discover it was a heard of Elk. Naturally 5 months later during Javalina season I saw so many desert muleys I lost count. As much as I like Rossi levers. I'm only deer or any big game hunting with a scoped long range rifle.

[Mgderf]

Don't you feel greedy??:bigsmyl2: Just kidding and wish I had a similar story to share. In Arizona less than 10% of deer tags are filled. Last season all I saw was a buck hanging in somebody's camp. Thought I had one opening morning right at sun-up. Took a knee, looked through my scope for antlers only to discover it was a heard of Elk. Naturally 5 months later during Javalina season I saw so many desert muleys I lost count. As much as I like Rossi levers. I'm only deer or any big game hunting with a scoped long range rifle.

I feel for you, I really do.
I'm in Indiana.
For decades we were not even allowed to hunt whitetail. They had been all but decimated in the 1920's and 30's. The depression era bode badly for the fauna in Indiana.

Back in the stone-age, (1981) when I started hunting whitetail here you were only allowed one deer per season (year) and that was a buck. This was the rule for about 15 years after I started.
I was extremely lucky to take a very nice, if not on the small side, 7-pointer 20 minutes into my second day of ever hunting deer.

I did not see another buck for 7 years.
When I finally did see another buck I was not worried about how big it was. It was legal, venison on the hoof, and I needed meat in my freezer.

Fast-forward a few years and the regs began to change.
Seems decades of NOT hunting whitetails in a perfect environment for them to flourish was not the ideal solution.
The Indiana herds were exploding. Car/deer collisions rose dramatically, with corresponding injuries.

Something had to change.
Dnr first opened the bag limit to include one doe per year. Joy oh joy! More meat!
A few years passed but the DNR felt there were not enough hunters to keep the herds managed, so they devised a "Bonus County Antlerless" system. The bag limit for the Bonus County Antlerless areas were decided by the number of car/deer collisions in the previous year.

During this same period of time, our DNR began to change dramatically in their view of what types of firearms were deemed "safe" by the powers that be.

For the first 10-12 years I hunted whitetail we were restricted to shotgun only. 12ga or 20ga. That was it. NOTHING else.
After much lobbying the DNR finally opened up hunting with handguns. For deer our regs today require a round at least .357" in diameter (.357mag, .44spl,.44mag...)
I applauded the addition, and continued my efforts to "Thin the herd"
About 6 or 7 years ago Indiana added the "pistol-caliber rifle" to the line-up.
I went out and bought a Marlin 1894 .44mag and never looked back.

I picked up the Rossi .454 Casull a couple of years ago because I didn't have one.
This past season I took my first ever "palmated" antlered deer.

Now, as I type, Indiana is poised to allow center-fire rifles for deer season. Praise be!
I'm all set.

This past season I only took the one buck. The year before, as I said, I took the two doe. The year before that I put 4 deer in my freezer via the gun.
I put another 4 in my freezer from my counties "road-kill" list.

For the past 5 or 6 years my county has been included in the "Bonus County Antlerless" program.
Our bag limit is,
1-Buck (antlered deer w/antler at least 3" long)
8-Doe on the Bonus County
but wait, there's more...

The above each require a separate tag. One per deer, at $24/per for residents.
There are still more opportunities to harvest even more deer if you want to use a bow and arrow...