the 3-inch and 3¼-inch .500 bpe cartridges have survived to the current day as the .500 3-inch nitro for black and the .500 3¼-inch nitro for black, the same cartridges loaded with mild loadings of modern smokeless powder, carefully balanced through trial to replicate the ballistics of the black powder version. the two cartridges offer almost identical ballistic performance to each other, and are very similar to the .50-140 sharps.