.450 Bushmaster

The canonical cartridge dive: the current SAAMI standard read off the page, every factory load on its maker's own page, what the barrel and twist do to it, how far it really reaches, and the straight-wall laws in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois as their own texts stood in October 2026.

Firearms

.450 Bushmaster · Deep Dive

.450 Bushmaster

Federal prints the number everyone says nobody publishes: its Fusion stops promising expansion at 1,400 fps, which it reaches at about 200 yards.

The canonical cartridge dive: the current SAAMI standard read off the page, every factory load on its maker's own page, what the barrel and twist do to it, how far it really reaches, and the straight-wall laws in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois as their own texts stood in October 2026.

Photo: Straight-wall lineup: .350 Legend, .360 Buckhammer, .400 Legend, .450 Bushmaster by Gato63 · CC BY-SA 4.0

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    Volumes

    1. Vol 1 Origins: A Thumper Brief, a .284 Case Head, and a Name Nobody Registered Where the .450 Bushmaster came from, what can be pinned to a dated document and what cannot, and why the company it is named after sells no rifle for it today
    2. Vol 2 The Specification: What SAAMI's Current Drawing Says, and the Case Head It Borrowed The 2025 standard read off the page, what changed since the 2015 edition, a fourth reference load that is subsonic, and how to tell the .450 from the straight-walled cartridges that now crowd it
    3. Vol 3 Factory Ammunition: Every Load on Its Maker's Own Page Sixteen loads from five makers, read on 19 October 2026, with what each maker publishes and what it does not, the expansion floors the cartridge's literature says nobody prints, and two tables that are really one
    4. Vol 4 Inside the Barrel: Test Barrels, Barrel Length, Twist and the Subsonic Loads Why no two published .450 velocities come from the same barrel, the only measured barrel-to-barrel figures that exist, the twist split between Savage and Ruger, and what a heavy subsonic bullet asks of a rifle
    5. Vol 5 Downrange: Trajectory, Wind, and How Far It Actually Reaches The path of each factory load from the makers' own numbers, a solver that reproduces those numbers exactly, why the subsonic load drifts less in a crosswind than the fast ones, and three independent limits on range that mostly agree
    6. Vol 6 On Game: What the Published Record Says About Deer, Hogs and Bears The makers' own descriptions of their bullets, the two floors and one ceiling they put numbers on, the field accounts a maker chose to publish, and the independent test that does not exist
    7. Vol 7 The Straight-Wall Laws: Michigan's Rise and Repeal, and the Four Other States The rule the cartridge was bought for, from its 2014 amendment to its 2026 repeal, read in the Wildlife Conservation Order's own text; and what Ohio, Indiana, Iowa and Illinois require in October 2026, from each state's statute or agency
    8. Vol 8 Rifles, Suppressors, Availability and Cost What the rifle makers list in October 2026, the twist and muzzle thread each one uses, what a .452 bore asks of a suppressor, and what a round costs on the makers' own pages
    9. Vol 9 Cheatsheet The .450 Bushmaster on one page: the standard, the loads, the ranges, the law and the rifles, each figure dated and sourced in the volume it comes from