As an owner/shooter/loader of the 480, I would indeed be sad if they discontinue it. Of course, since I load all my own ammo for it, I guess they aren't getting much money from me these days. It has worked fine for me, and has taken two deer cleanly with one shot apiece. While I did fire a finishing shot on the bigger of the two, he was not going anywhere if I hadn't.
Regarding comments about the cylinder... I have not had any trouble with the extractor missing empties. However, I did have a lot of trouble initially with sticky cases. Factory loads were very difficult to extract, and handloads were darned near impossible. I had to use a wooden black powder pistol ramrod to tap them out individually. No signs of over pressure, and the loads were only warm per the reloading manuals. After a bit of research on-line, I found that this is a common problem with the Ruger 480s due to the thin cylinder walls and tendency towards chamber diameters on the high side of spec. The cylinder walls stretch slightly when fired, and then contract on the expanded brass, holding them tightly. Coupled with that, the cylinders did not have a polished inner surface. That roughness helped to grip the empty cases even more tightly. The solution was to return the gun to Ruger. They replaced the cylinder with one at the lower end of diameter tolerances, with a better polish of the inner surfaces. Now, factory ammo comes out easily, and even my hot loads only take a bit of a tunk on the extractor to get them to pop out.
