358 Winchester Contender barrels for Bison

When our shop was in Florida we built several 358 Winchester
Contender barrels. One was one of the skinny octagonal barrels, I told the owner it would kick the snot out of him but he wanted it anyway. A few days later he got to use it.
A rancher friend in Utah called me one day and asked me to get 4 of my friends and come out and shoot 5 big Bison that were destroying his fences and equipment. So I called 4 friends and 3 days later we were in Utah. There was a good sized herd and the rancher went along with us and picked out the biggest bulls that were causing problems. My friend Tom Thomason took that 358 Contender with him for the buffalo. He shot the buff 4 or 5 times before it fell. Every time he shot the buff he would rub his hand against his jeans to get some feeling back in it. But he killed that big buffalo with factory 358 Winchester ammo in a 10" Contender barrel.

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Here are the other 4 buffalo we got on that hunt. All with handguns. One was with a Dan Wesson Super Mag. The others with Contenders as this was 1990, way before the Encore.

Mike Thompson with a Dan Wesson 445 Super Mag.

John Charuhas with a big Buffalo that staggered across the little creek and bogged down in belly deep mud. A Contender in 375 Winchester.

Jack Pitcher with a 45-70 Contender.

My Buffalo with the prototype of the 450 GNR. I called it the 450 Express but changed the name after we found out someone else had a cartridge called the 450 Express.
My buffalo was hiding among some cattle and I had to wait until he got past the cows before I could take the shot.


The rancher brought out his front-end loader to pick the Bison up to be able to gut and skin them.

It was a helluva hunt for the 5 of us. It was the first for us hunting a large animal with handgun