The .458 Lott is a .458 caliber rifle cartridge designed for the purpose of hunting large, thick-skinned dangerous game animals in Africa.

Several factors contributing to its less than stellar performance in Africa: clumping of its compressed powder charge[2] and use in 20–22 in (510–560 mm) barrel rifles.

[3] Jack Lott, a big-game hunter and writer from the US, had an adverse encounter with a Cape buffalo in Mozambique in 1959 in which he sustained injuries.

[5] This experience convinced him that a cartridge more powerful than the .458 Winchester Magnum was required when hunting dangerous game in Africa.

[6] A similar method was used by David Miller and Curt Crum to create cases for their early custom .458 Lott rifles.

The fire-formed cases were then run through a .458 Winchester Magnum full length re-sizing die with a set off of .125 in (3.2 mm).

At present, the 465-grain (30.1 g) Triad (Monolithic Solid, Dead Tough and the Lion Load) for the .458 Lott cartridge is available from the company.

The .458 Lott was standardized by SAAMI in 1995 based on specification provided by Arthur Alphin and A-Square LLC.

However, A-Square and few other ammunition manufacturers provide a ghost shoulder for the cartridge which was not included in the specification as standardized by SAAMI.

Arthur Alphin chose not to include the ghost shoulder to remain true to Jack Lott's wishes and to honor his memory.

[6] CZ chambered the cartridge in their BRNO ZKK 602 rifles based on the Magnum Mauser action.

[10] Since then there has been a slow but steady movement away from the .458 Winchester Magnum towards the .458 Lott among professional hunters heading to Africa.

By 1970 Winchester was forced to deal with the clumping of the compressed powder charge which had been resulting in improper ignition and poor performance.

The .458 Winchester Magnum was originally supposed to duplicate the performance of the .450 Nitro Express which could fire a 500 gr (32 g) bullet at 2,150-foot-per-second (660 m/s).

These energy and velocity values provide the .458 Lott cartridge a gain of between 50–100 yd (46–91 m) over the .458 Winchester Magnum in distance.

This performance increase provides better penetration and stopping power than the .458 Winchester Magnum against dangerous game.

[7][8][17] The straight tapered case of the .458 Lott provides greater flexibility in reloading to lower velocities than bottlenecked cartridges.

[18] Handloaders can take advantage of the wide range of bullet of useful weights are available in .45 caliber for the .458 Lott cartridge.

This, together with the ability to load the cartridge to lower power levels, easily adds to the versatility of the .458 Lott.

What the .458 Lott lacks in velocity and energy compared to the .450 Rigby or the .460 Weatherby Magnum, it more than makes up for by virtue of its versatility.

This is due to the erratic ignition and hangfire issues experienced when large capacity cartridges are loaded with small powder charges.

[20] The range of available bullets provides the flexibility to customize loads for specific game species.

Premium solid bullets from A-square, Barnes, Hornady, North Fork or Woodleigh weighing in the range of 450–550 gr (29–36 g) are all capable of holding together without much deformation and penetrating to the brain.

[26] Lighter, soft point bullets which rapidly expand or fragment at higher velocities are usually recommended for the big cats.

A-Square Lion Load bullet or soft points manufactured for the .45-70 Government fills this niche for the .458 Lott.

Loaded with lighter bullets with better ballistic coefficients at higher velocities the .458 Lott can be used as a medium-range plains game rifle cartridge.

An advantage that the .458 Lott offers over more voluminous cartridges such as the .450 Rigby, .460 Weatherby or the .505 Gibbs is that it can be easily adopted in currently mass-produced and thus commonly encountered rifle actions with little or no modification of the bolt face.

A-Square, Double Tap, Federal, Hornady, Kynoch, and Norma are among several manufacturers of .458 Lott ammunition.

Case capacity and performance is slightly greater than that of the .458 Lott resulting in less 50-foot-per-second (15 m/s) in velocity at equal pressures.

[37] Firing the case in improved chambers similar to that of the Ackley or the Barnes cartridges will result in a slight reduction in performance.