Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN Hard Cast – Powerful 20 Round Box

Description

Most 450 Bushmaster ammunition is built to expand on whitetail. The Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN is built to do the opposite: hold its shape, hold its weight, and go all the way through whatever it hits.

• When You Want Penetration Instead of Expansion
• Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN Specifications
• Honest Notes on This Load

When You Want Penetration Instead of Expansion

Hard cast lead is an alloy, not soft lead. Adding antimony and tin raises the Brinell hardness far above pure lead, and the result is a bullet that does not deform meaningfully on impact. Combined with the wide flat meplat on a Long Flat Nose profile, it produces a straight, deep, full-diameter wound channel rather than a shallow expanded one.

That is the entire design brief of the Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN. At 360 grains and 1750 feet per second it carries roughly 2449 foot-pounds, and because none of that energy goes into deforming the bullet, essentially all of it goes into penetration. On a large animal, or through heavy bone, that is a fundamentally different proposition to a soft point.

The Black Cherry coating is a polymer film over the cast bullet. It reduces bore leading and smoke compared with a traditional lubricated cast bullet, which matters in a semi-automatic where fouling affects cycling.

Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN Specifications

The flat nose is doing real work. A round-nosed cast bullet tends to slip through tissue, while a wide meplat crushes it, so the flat profile is what turns a non-expanding bullet into an effective one. It also feeds well from a straight-wall magazine, which is why this profile dominates in cartridges like the 450 Bushmaster and 45-70.

Where the Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN earns its place is bear country, large hogs, and any situation where an animal may be angled badly or may need to be stopped rather than merely killed. It is also a legitimate choice in the straight-wall-cartridge deer states where the 450 is popular, though the terminal effect on whitetail is less dramatic than an expanding bullet.

Cases are boxer-primed reloadable brass. Underwood loads this in Sparta, Illinois.

• Cartridge: 450 Bushmaster
• Bullet weight: 360 grain
• Bullet type: Lead Long Flat Nose, Black Cherry coated hard cast
• Muzzle velocity: 1750 feet per second
• Muzzle energy: approximately 2449 foot-pounds
• Case: brass, boxer primed, reloadable
• Rounds per box: 20
• Manufacturer item: 872
• UPC: 816874024123

Honest Notes on This Load

Buy the Underwood 450 Bushmaster 360gr LFN if you hunt or hike where black bear or large hogs are a real possibility, or if you want a 450 Bushmaster load that will break heavy shoulder bone and exit. Deep penetration and an exit wound mean a blood trail, and a blood trail is how animals get recovered.

Skip it for whitetail if your shots are broadside and inside 150 yards. An expanding soft point or an XTP will drop deer faster, and there is no reason to over-penetrate a thin-skinned animal in a field where the bullet has to land somewhere.

One caution worth stating: a non-expanding hard cast bullet at this energy will pass through most game and keep going. Know what is behind your target, and be more disciplined about backstops than you would be with expanding ammunition.

A rifle for it: the Bergara B-14 Ridge in 450 Bushmaster. If you reload, the 450 Bushmaster three-die set covers the cartridge. Underwood publishes full 450 Bushmaster load data on its own site.

MAG5 Firearms stocks 450 Bushmaster across hunting and defensive loads. Tell us what you are hunting and whether bears are a consideration, and we can point you at the right bullet.