If you only had one choice

[Don McDowell]

When Brooks made this 44 mould he said he'ld taper the first band, as sometimes these rifles have leading problems and tapering the first band helped stop that. It's a good thing he did or as close as this chamber is cut I would of had to seat past the driving band to chamber a loaded round without a camming tool. And it did stop the leading up until I suffered a moment of operator stupidity at Byers this past Sunday.
So with my limited experience with the tapered band I'll say it sure doesn't hurt anything.
I think the biggest thing when using a 45-70 for the longer ranges is to not get the bullet to heavy/long for the amount of zoom the 2.1 case can put behind a bullet, and that seems to be right close to 500 grs or 1.4 inches in length.