Bang for the Buck Subsonic 45-70 Loads with Berry’s 350-Grain Plated Bullets

Shooting subsonic 45-70 ammo is fun and useful, but relying on factory ammunition gets expensive. Here’s how to use our “cheat code” to load and shoot subsonic 45-70 ammunition and save a LOT of money doing so.

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Review of Berry’s 350-Grain Supersonic 45-70 Loads

Berry’s .458” Round Shoulder plated bullet is rated for up to 1950 fps muzzle velocity. Keep in mind that this bullet is intended for target shooting and was not designed for hunting applications.

It functions well from both our Henry X-Model and my Marlin lever action rifle. The “round shoulder” design feeds smoothly from the tubular magazines up into the chamber.

This bullet also features a cannelure that is perfectly placed for seating to the correct length. With a tubular magazine, crimping the ammunition is critical to preventing cartridge overall length from changing due to recoil.

Crimping a plated bullet must be done carefully to avoid damaging the copper plating, which can result in poor bullet performance. The Berry’s 350-Grain round shoulder plated bullet performed exceptionally in our previous tests when we loaded 45-70 ammo up to nearly 1900 fps.

We loaded for three different velocity and pressure levels, firing each load from a Henry X-Model. The lowest load is appropriate for weaker “trapdoor” Springfield rifles while the higher velocity loads are intended for modern lever actions such as the Marlin 1895.

Subsonic Loads

Like many long-term 45-70 handloaders, I’ve learned to use pistol powders for some low-velocity handloads. This is an old practice and requires some caution as it is certainly possible to double or even triple charge the case with these light powder charges.

Hodgdon publishes a subsonic load with the 410-Grain Hornady Sub-X bullet, specifying 13.0 grains of Hodgdon Titegroup for a 1,005 fps velocity. We didn’t have any Titegroup on hand, so we used Unique, a powder with a similar burn rate.

We loaded five rounds of three different charge weights— 10, 11, and 12 grains of Unique—with Berry’s 350-Grain bullet.

The rounds fed smoothly from the magazine into the chamber and were pleasant to shoot with very low recoil. I tested all rounds through the same Henry X-Model we had used with our supersonic testing, though it has since been upgraded with a WOOX High-Grade Bravado stock. (Save 10% at WOOX with code UR10.)

I fired at a steel target at a modest range just for fun, with no attempt to assess accuracy. Chronograph data was what we were really after —- and that’s where the mystery began.

The first shot of each of the three strings of five shots had a velocity of 200 to 300 fps slower than the rest of the respective string! Puzzled with these results, we switched to Trail Boss, an old favorite that has worked well with subsonic loads in the past.

Two different charge weights of Trail Boss produced the same puzzling muzzle velocity pattern: the first shot of each string of fire was far slower than the next four shots! Perplexed by the results of our loads with Unique and Trail Boss, I opened a box of 410-Grain Hornady Sub-X factory ammunition.

We’ve used this ammunition before with very good results. Oddly, the same pattern emerged. The first shot in the string of fire was once again 200 to 300 fps lower than the rest of the string of fire!

We did everything we could to try to find the problem.

Fired with and without the suppressor. Results stayed the same.
Tried five different handloads with two different powders. Results stayed the same.
Tried factory subsonic ammo. Results stayed the same.
Shot over two different chronographs: Athlon and Garmin. Results stayed the same.
I tried elevating the muzzle before shooting, to get all the powder to move to the base of the cartridge case. Results stayed the same.

At this point, it remains a mystery to us. Please let us know if you can solve it!

Cost Savings Analysis

Anyone who shoots the 45-70 cartridge quickly learns that ammunition can be quite expensive. For example, Hornady’s 410-Grain Subsonic 45-70 factory ammunition costs approximately $2.50 per round. It doesn’t take many rounds to put quite a dent in a wallet.

However, handloaders can cut that cost dramatically, and Berry’s bullets are key to this. At about $0.32 each, the bullet is the most expensive component of our handloaded ammunition. The brass is essentially free as it’s from once-fired factory ammo. Our cost per round of reloaded ammunition is $0.47 per round as opposed to near $2.50 per round. That is a significant savings! This is best seen in volume reloading, with a savings of over $1900 across 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Most of my 45-70 shooting is marksmanship practice, not hunting, but I do usually hunt with a 350-grain bullet. This makes these 350-grain plated bullets perfect for my practice ammo. They also save my wallet from a beating!

Conclusion

Shooting anything suppressed is fun —and somehow it’s particularly entertaining with a big bore 45-70 lever action.

As with many larger cartridges, factory 45-70 ammunition is expensive, but the Berry’s 350 grain Round Shoulder is key to huge savings. I’m hooked on Berry’s bullets for my training/practice ammo, not just with the 45-70, but with many other cartridges as well. Remember that the biggest savings comes with higher volumes. Use the Ultimate Reloader cost calculator to see how much you can save.

A mystery still remains after this loading and shooting exercise. Why was the first shot of every string of fire hundreds of feet per second slower than the rest of the string? Let us know if you’ve experienced this or have any ideas on how we can get to the bottom of it!