.454 Casull
- Less expensive
- More readily available
- Vastly larger selection of .452/.454dia bullets available for handloading
- Powerful enough to take all North American Game
- Utility to shoot .45 Long Colt for cheaper practice with more pleasant recoil
You'll never hear anyone who's actually shot a .454 Casull say that it's not powerful enough, but you'll hear plenty of folks say that .475 Linebaugh is downright brutal to shoot. And with .454 Casull you can also shoot .45 Long Colt, which is a powerful round in its own right, with ballistics roughly on par with .45 ACP/.44 Special on the low end with CAS loads, .45 Super/10mm Auto with full-power Standard Pressure loads, and right up there with .44 Magnum in overpressure loads, making it a much more pleasant alternative for range use when you just want to take your new gun to the range and have fun shooting it.
A lot of folks make the mistake of buying an overpowered Super Magnum Revolver only to discover that the blast/recoil is excessive and unpleasant to them, so they end up selling it at a loss. Alternatively, you'll often hear stories from the old-timers about how they used to shoot Magnum Revolvers, but now they just shoot Special loads out of it because the recoil is just too much anymore, so to me it just makes more sense to choose a Magnum Revolver that can shoot less powerful cartridges as an alternative, should full-power Magnum loads prove to be to much.
Personally, I would never buy something like a .475 Linebaugh or .500 S&W Magnum Revolver, even if I thought that I needed that kind of power, I'd sooner opt for a .460 S&W Magnum or .454 Casull and leave it at that.
Heck, if I had the money right now, then I'd actually just get a .44 Magnum 629, because I can't see myself ever needing more, and if I do, I have a Mossberg 590 Shockwave for that which is much easier to shoot.
