Dan makes some good points about bullets sliding off the powder which is caused primarily by poorly designed and undersize bullets - a properly designed and sized bullet takes a tremendous amount of force to dislodge from its seated position.
The maxi also has a dismal record as a hunting bullet, thus the "maxi-hunter".
The same can be said for most ML bullets since everyone seems to think they need a "pointed nose" (same with the majority of CF shooters - just ignore the facts or performance in favor of sales hype pushing the "sexy looking") I've done quite a bit of testing too and when you read reports of Maxi's, REAL's, ect. going in the side on a broadside shot and coming out the front, bottom or top, it isn't BS trying to cover poor shooting because it can readily be duplicated on the range; even when they go straight, the wound channels are not very impressive either. And, you can just click over to the modern forums and read all the "hit it and it ran away" and "don't know what happened" stories.
I disagree with the complicated loading in the field because the right conical is no more complicated or time consuming to load than a PRB. Conicals do have their place in the field and the benefits of a properly designed conical for certain applications cannot be ignored but that by no means implies that there is anything wrong with the PRB. I've shot deer and hogs with many different guns from the .222rem to the .375 H&H mag and not a single one of them put critters down as hard and quick as the 0.715" PRB with a boiler room hit. So, why mess with conicals? Answer is simple and for the same reasons they did back in the day ... more range and more options. The right conical will easily provide in excess of 40" penetration and punch through heavy bone with ease while still creating an acceptable permanent wound channel.
Like it or not, there are many hunting areas and conditions where one needs to make an anchoring shot or loose the game to either the environment or another hunter. I don't dispute the fact that the right PRB chunker can do the same thing but many people don't have the desire for a 16 to the pound or bigger rifle and others prefer to punch steel or paper at 300+yds in the off season.
Where the problem arises with conicals and ML's is with the "for hire" stupid rantings coming from the likes of Toby Bridges, Randy Wakeman and the other gun rag prostitutes. Conicals in ML's are nothing new, they've been around for centuries but the problem lies with the BS "numbers on paper" associated with the gun rags. Since the 1980's there been a constant drift in two different directions: 1- is the excessively heavy and lesser-performing shotgun loads; 2- the focus solely on velocity in rifles by using lighter bullets. The lies and BS have been carried over to the ML community for many years including by those like Toby Bridges who didn't seem to have any problem bragging on PRB's when Dixie and other traditional ML'ers was paying his salary but now that the money is coming from the modern in-line side, suddenly the tables are shifted and the lies get bigger and the BS deeper.
It doesn't matter if you look at the .45-70 or the .50 flintlock, it's a continuous hammering of lies and dis-information fueled by whoever happens to have the most advertisement money. Several years ago a well known gun rag printed an article written by one of their staff writers. It was several pages of bragging on this new shotgun shell load and even included pictures of the wonderful patterns they produced from the author's "test gun". Months later it leaked out that the company paying for the article didn't even have that ammo in testing at the time the article went to print and when they finally did get to testing it, it proved to be completely useless.
This is the kind of stuff that has transformed into people associating conicals in an ML with something like the .300win mag just as the original 500gr round nose bullet in the .45-70 has shrunk to a 250gr pointed plastic tip and those who take the gun rags as gospel don't have a clue why they suck. The belief in this gun rag BS is what killed Winchester starting with the .375 big bore that was an absolute failure simply because they designed it around a too-light bullet.
I've put a lot of mass-production and custom conicals down range from the ML's and there are those that work and those that don't. Pointed bullet may be fine for ringing gongs or punching paper but normally they ain't worth $#@* for creating an acceptable wound channel. REAL's that will cut holes at 50yds are off in never-never land ten yards beyond that and if you don't put 120+ grains of 2F behind 'em, they won't even make 50yds without tumbling. Premium sabot bullets at $1.65 each consistently broke apart on impact giving less than 8" penetration yet in the same exact test medium at the same range, the plain old 0.535" PRB consistently produced in excess of 18" penetration and a ball cast from WW drove holes 24" deep - of course the traditional style .45 cal 500gr conical punched through the 36" of medium and another 5" of dirt before coming to a stop; permanent wound channel from the conical was slightly larger than that of the 0.535" PRB.
As for the twist, it must be a match between the bore diameter, bullet design and velocity. Conicals can be made to shoot from 1:48 or slower twists but they will always suffer from performance issues on big game because of the associated weight and design limitations. I run deep cut 1:18 in my .45 cal's.
This by no means is meant to imply that I'm discounting the PRB - I'm merely pointing out that properly designed and used conicals have their place and one needs to cut through the lies and BS in order to see the truth and accept the facts for what they are.
Side note, I'm also in agreement with Roger and Tom, nothing annoys me more than seeing the range or field littered with trash including plastic sabots and wads! Okay, I'm off my soap box now.
