Accuracy of .460 chambered with a .454/.45?

A

ArkansasGunFan

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Hey fellow shooters

I am in the market for a hunting revolver and the Smith & Wesson .460 xvr has caught my attention. My particular attraction to this revolver is the wide variety of calibers it can handle, which brings me to my biggest question.

Although the .460 xvr can fire the .45 long colt and .454 Cassul loads, is it any less accurate when these cartridges are used? I have seen plenty of accuracy reviews with happy shooters testing with the .460 round, but none with the others. Can anyone shed some light on this subject?

I love the gun, but if I'm sacrificing accuracy for versatility I will probably head in another direction.

Thanks in advance for the help!
 
I don't have any experience with one of these, but I would think that the jump the bullet has to make from the case mouth to the barrel with the shorter cartridges would impact accuracy at least a bit. With the .45 Colt the jump is over half an inch (.515). Of course, those revolvers that work with both .410 shotshells and .45 Colt still manage to hit things, so I wouldn't imagine it could be too bad.

All of them use .452 bullets.
 
Dont have the 460 butI do the 454.THE big boys are harder to control & to learn to shoot theyre not for everybody.The 460 & the 454 tend to make you develop a nice flinch factor with full power loads.Mines seems to shoot the same groups with either load but getting used to the different recoil now thats a different story. I think it will be more your accuracy than the chambered round. Most folks can handle the 45 colt pretty easy but the big boomers are a little more of a challenge. Nothing alot of practice wont fix

good luck.

OH one more thing when changing from 45 colt to the 454 or 460 clean the cylinder the powder rings left by the 45 colt can make a jump in chamber pressure that can be unsafe. Im sure that someone else will chime in on that also.
 
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Altho my .460 shot .45 LC and .454 Casull quite well, they printed so much differently than .460 ammo, that once I started to reload for it, I gave up on them. Nowadays, for the rare times I may want a reduced recoil load, I just download standard .460 brass. The .460 really shines when ammo is handloaded for it. Factory ammo is limited and is either the lightning fast explode on impact 200gr SSTs or some 400gr $4 a pop Bubba bore offering that is more appropriate for Stegosaurus than for deer. If you are considering a .460, seriously consider reloading for it if you don't/haven't already. As for the so called "flinch factor", I've found that full house .460 loads shot in the heft of an X-Frame to be much less punishing on the shooter than a .454 in the standard Ruger offering. The recoil of my comped PC .460 isn't much more than one of my 629s.
 
It seems the people I know who have these and like them have aggressive porting done on them.
I read b/c I am in the same boat, although for an encore, with the same questions. I think encore might be worse b/c the forcing cone difference.
 
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