If you can remember the turn of the 21st century, you will recall States such as Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and a couple of others allowed hunting whitetail deer only with shotguns, muzzleloaders and bow and arrow. Conventional bottle-necked cartridges were not legal. Not being an archer I hunted those states with a Modern Muzzleloader .50 inline, occasionally a 12 or 20-gauge T/C Encore shotgun shooting slugs and either a .44 Mag or .454 Casull revolver once straight-walled handguns were allowed.
Many was the time I longed for a conventional rifle chambered in a round capable of shooting at least 200 yards. Numerous huge antlered bucks lived to roam the woods another day because they were out of range of what I was hunting with at the time.
In time things changed, straight-wall rifle rounds were declared legal. Those such as the .45-70 Government, .444 Marlin, .375 Winchester (much like the older .38/55) and a few other handgun rounds like the .460 S&W Mag. Soon rounds such as the .450 Bushmaster started showing up in deer camps. Then, engineers at various gun and ammo companies got busy and designed such rounds as the .350 Legend, very much like the older .357 Maximum straight-wall round I occasionally shot in a T/C Contender single-shot handgun; the .360 Buckhammer, slightly faster and more energy than the .350 Legend; and more recently the .400 Legend.
Over the years I had hunted a fair amount with a .45-70 and .375 Winchester and to a lesser extent with the .444 Marlin, mostly used on black bear, chambered in both a Marlin lever action and a T/C Encore handgun, but also occasionally on whitetails.
Enter Linda Powell with Mossberg. Linda and I go back to a time when she first got into the outdoor industry when I took her on her first real whitetail deer hunt. Later, in spite of working with competing gun companies we remained close friends. Then came a time when I decided to leave the gun company I was working with, a decision that was far from easy. A few days after doing so I called Linda if I could possibly get the use of a couple of Mossberg’s Patriot rifles to field-test. I really liked Mossberg’s “real wood” stocks, some of which are truly beautiful. I also loved the fact Mossberg guns are made in my native Texas, near Eagle Pass.
The rifles she sent did not disappoint! I was greatly impressed with how they looked and especially how accurate they were with Hornady ammo! Since that time I have shot and hunted with Mossberg Patriot rifles at every opportunity.
While on a black bear hunt in far northern Alberta I sat down with Linda to do a weekly episode of my “DSC’s Campfires with Larry Weishuhn” podcast (available on Applepodcast, waypointtv.com, outdooraction.com, Spotify and many other places such as my YouTube Channel “Campfires with Larry Weishuhn, @campfireswithLarry, and my www.larryweishuhn.net website) and asked what she hunted black bear with more than anything else. She quickly responded, “I’ve hunted black bear many times throughout North America. It’s a passion with me. Of all the different calibers and rounds I’ve used, my current favorite is the .450 Bushmaster!”
Hmmm! Soon as I got home I ordered a Mossberg Patriot .450 Bushmaster with a 20-inch barrel. Using Hornady’s 250-grain FTX loads and 245-grain Interlock SP American Whitetail I headed to the range and was extremely pleased how well the rifle shot both loads, accurate enough to precisely place a bullet into a deer, hog or bear’s vitals out to 200-yards and beyond. I knew once I replaced the two piece scope bases with an appropriate Picatinny rail and put a Stealth Vision scope (www.stealthvision.com) complete with it’s optional operational lighted reticle on it, I just might have a perfect close range hunting rifle. Lighted reticle because I know how difficult it is to see black crosshairs against a black bear’s coat, particularly in less than ideal light conditions when older boars finally make an appearance.
I was happy and content with my combination!
Then I got a call from Linda Powell asking how I liked my .450 Bushmaster. I told her I planned on using it on whitetails here in Texas and then on black bear spring and fall. Said she, “Larry have you considered hunting with a .400 Legend? We’ve got a Patriot with a 20-inch barrel, the muzzle threaded for a muzzlebrake or a suppressor. It’s a fairly new round and I think you might like it!”
I seriously thought about saying “No, I’m going to stick with the .450 Bushmaster…” But those are not the words that came out of my mouth. ”I’ll try one, particularly if it has a prettier wood stock than my Patriot .450 Bushmaster.” I could almost hear Linda smiling, she knowing I love pretty wood stocks.
“I’ll have one coming to your local gun shop. If you like how it looks send us a check, if you don’t, simply send it back.” Sounded good to me!
That afternoon I started doing research on the .400 Legend. I first checked the Hornady website to see what ammo might be able and learn more about the round. There I quickly learned Hornady does not load the .400 Legend. Hmmm… I called Hornady. “No we don’t load for that cartridge. But that company that starts with a “W” does and I think they are the only ones who do…”
More research, I got in touch with a couple of local gun geeks. They told me the round had only been out a relatively short period of time, and there really is no older parent case from which it was developed. They told me the 215-grain Winchester Power Point load the .400 Legend has a muzzle velocity of 2250-feet per second and drops to 1270-feet per second at 300-yards. The Power Point bullet leaves the muzzle with 2416-foot pounds of energy and retains 770-foot pounds of energy at 300-yards. Sighted in just shy of 2-inches high at 100-yards the bullet drops about 5-inches at 200-yards and a bit over 26-inches at 300-yards. They added, in terms of energy, the .400 Legend supposedly produces 100% more energy than a 12-gauge slug, at about 55% less recoil (16.20 foot pounds of energy). When compared to the venerable, though still popular .30-30 Winchester, the .400 Legend produces 20% more energy and 25% more energy than its next of kin, the .350 Legend. Interesting…
What all this told me about the .400 Legend is, if accurate, it was a good deer round out to about 250 yards. After that it quickly loses velocity and down range energy. Often touted as being a 300-yard round; my personal opinion is based on hunting many years with a great variety of rifle and handgun rounds and doing complete necropsies on all animals taken.
The rifle arrived at Schubert’s here where I live in Texas. Before doing required paperwork I asked Charles Schubert, the owner, to let me look at the rifle. Said he, “I looked at it when it came in. Nice wood, fairly straight-grained but really nice.” At that point I asked to simply fill out the paperwork. If Charles Schubert said it was pretty wood, that was good enough for me!
And indeed it was “good wood”, comparable to several of my other Mossberg Patriots. Nice!
Finding ammo for the .400 Legend proved a bit of a chore. I finally found three boxes of Winchester Power Point in southwestern Louisiana, after not being able to find it in Texas.
Back from Louisiana, my intention was to mount a Stealth Vision SVT 3-18×44 scope on the .400 Legend. Unfortunately, I could not find a base that fit the rings I had on my 34mm tube scope. Nor could I find a Picatinny rail to fit the Mossberg’s short action. A couple of gun shops told me they could order me one, but I needed to get a scope on the rifle as soon as possible, and could not wait for an ordered base to arrive. Back home I mounted one of my older Trijicon Accu-Point 4-16×50 scopes on my new Mossberg Patriot. Later that afternoon I sighted in at 100-yards. From a reasonable rest I consistently put shots into a 2 ½-inch group, making the combination a 200-yards hunting rifle; meaning at 200-yards shots would be somewhere within a 5-inch circle, within a deer’s 8-inch or so vitals.
The following morning my brother Glenn and I headed to my lease in western Texas where I knew bucks would be “coming to horns”. We got there in time to hunt that afternoon. I hoped to mostly rattle and move. No sooner had we driven onto the property than an older buck that should have been an 8-point, but had less than inch long browtines walked across the pasture road.
One of my goals for the hunt was to take at least one older management buck. The property is managed under Texas’ Managed Land Deer Permit program. My deer quota on the lease was five bucks and nine does. I am allowed a big 8 or 9-point and one I choose to take as a “trophy”, other bucks need to be management bucks, including those that have 8-points or less and especially those without browtines.
Glenn and I drove around the corner after seeing the older buck walk across the road. We stopped and headed into the brush. I hoped to get ahead of the buck.
A couple of hundreds into the brush I pointed to a small clump of mesquites for Glenn to stand by. I moved twenty steps the east and immediately started rattling, after chambering a round. I had hardly started rattling when a buck erupted out of the brush, ran right toward where Glenn was hidden and nearly ran over him! A second buck burst out of the brush fifteen steps from me, the buck I had seen cross the road. As I brought the .400 Legend to shoulder, I confirmed the buck was at least 6-years old, and he should have had 8-points but lacked browtines. As the crosshairs came upon the buck’s shoulder I pulled the trigger, then watched the buck fall in his tracks.
The .400 Legend did its job and did it quickly. Later back at camp I “took apart” the buck, saving the cape for Double Nickle Taxidermy (www.doublenickletaxidermy.com) who does all my taxidermy. In doing so I recovered the spent bullet on the opposite side, just under the skin on the opposite side from where it had entered the buck’s body; going through the onside shoulder, ribs, heart and lungs, ribs, opposite shoulder. I was impressed.
Later, after Glenn had taken a buck, we started hunting for does. Walking in the part of the ranch that is scattered mottes of juniper and mesquites I spotted a doe 175-yards distant. She stood facing us, but had no idea we were there. I moved forward about five steps, got a solid rest in the fork of a mesquite tree. When the crosshairs settled on the doe’s chest I gently tugged the trigger. The doe pitched over backward and not so much as even kicked. Again, I was impressed with the .400 Legend.
The last days of December I asked my friend whose property I help manage for whitetail, David Cotton, if he would shoot a reasonably sized or big boar with my .400 Legend. His boar was shot squarely through the hog’s broadside vitals. The bullet traveled though thick skin, tough cartilaginous shield, a rib, punctured both lungs, broke another rib but then was stopped by the cartilaginous shield on the opposite side, this at 50-yards. The boar ran thirty steps and died.
My experience with the .400 Legend… Thus far it has killed rather quickly the three animals that have been shot with my Mossberg Patriot. The rifle looks good and the round kills quickly and humanely, a pretty good combination. I suspect once the barrel has been properly seasoned, which usually takes about 50 or so rounds, my groups will become tighter. The barrel too might prefer another bullet and load. There are other Winchester loads, specifically the 190-grain Deer Season XP, and, the 300-grain Super Suppressed. With either of these two other bullets and loads, the rifle might have been more accurate. However, the only ammo I could find was the 215-grain Power Point.
How will it perform on black bear? Hopefully there will a spring bear hunt in its future. Were I planning on hunting in a State where a straight wall cartridge is legal and required, it would certainly be one I would seriously consider using, particularly after trying at least one or more different bullet and load (but only because of greater accuracy not because of the killing factor).
The always constants are Mossberg’s excellent hunter accurate rifles and their pretty wood stocks. Love ‘em!
