Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Is the 44 mag a novelty for a nonhunter?

Good topic.

Too bad I am a bit late to the party

As far as being a novelty, it depends on perspective and other uses. I have been shooting and have owned a .44 since I was a teenager.

I learned a long time ago that there is no real good reason to run the .44 (or any other caliber ) full throttle all the time. I match the load to the job.

As I have posted before, I have 3 loads that I primarily handload for, essentially a light, medium and heavy. Then I just load those in volume. Every once in a while I will load some specialty load if I am just goofing off, such as a 180 full wadcutter load.

I don't do specialty loads too often simply for the fact that I hate fiddling with my press/dies. My free time is at a premium due to work and family, so when I reload, I want to crank out a bunch of cartridges.

The beauty of the .44 is that it can be loaded down to levels that a child who is strong enough to hold up a Redhawk and get a good sight picture, can also shoot as much as they want without developing a flinch.

As a note, everything here also applies to the .45 Colt. That being said, quite often I have noted that .45 cal guns have to be fiddled with to find appropriate sized bullets to match, or they require cylinder throats reamed, forcing cones chamfered, etc. This is not always the case, but it is often enough that reamers are commonly mailed back and forth among handgunners.

For whatever reason, it has been my experience that it is hard to get a .44 Magnum from Ruger or S&W that is not accurate.

Now with all of that, in order to take full advantage of the .44, one either needs to have deep pockets, or be a handloader.

Besides using the .44 for hunting, I personally use the .44 for a number of other reasons. In the past, when I was young, I could not afford a bunch of different handguns, so my Super BlackHawk did most of all my outdoors chores. I know I killed one hell of a lot of ground squirrels with a .44!

I worked around a lot of large stock animals when I got out of the Army, including working on an outfitter and guide ranch in the Frank Church Wilderness area of Idaho.

That gun was usually fairly close by, except when I was working a shovel or irrigating, which I did a whole lot of as the lowest man on the totem pole.

Later when working as a Trooper I ended up shooting a good number of injured or vehicle struck animals. when I say that, people always assume the animals were just laying there. Most often that was simply not the case. Often they would have one busted leg, or have some guts hanging out of them.

The majority of them were VERY mobile and required precise placement of projectiles.

The reason I bring this up is that I was issued a Glock 21, .45 and 230 grain Hydra Shoks at first, then later, 230 grain Gold Dots. Both rounds will put down deer, elk and cattle with authority if you can place your rounds in the right spot.

That is the tricky part. Trying to get within 25 yards or so of a semi mobile animal before they run back onto a road and collide with a fast moving vehicle can be a dangerous game of chance. 90+% of the time I tried for brain pan shots into the ear. When you put one there, they drop like turning off a switch.

Unfortunately I watched the results of an injured cow that ran onto the interstate and collided with a fast moving car. The man bled out and died from internal injuries while I held onto him and talked to him.

Another LEO had called and asked permission to put down the animals and was denied. I saw the cow running for the road, but it was far enough away that even if we had permission I doubt I could have made a difference and shooting towards the road would have presented a whole other set of issues.

In regards to .45 vs .357. Personally I will take the .45 every time myself. My experience has shown it is not as noisy, and easier to shoot well. Plus few things stand up to the big bullets.

I also have found that my old duty loads the Hydra Shoks would flat out hammer mule deer.

Speaking of hammering deer. If you really want to turn a .45 ACP into a whole other animal, try this bullet:

The bullet on the right is a 260 grain cast flat point. The bullet on the left is a standard 230 grain FMJ for comparison.







When loaded with a heavy dose of Unique and a heavier spring in a 1911, it turns your auto into a stomper of man or beast!

I have yet to see anything that will take a hit from it and move far.



I won't post the powder charge. I know it is good to go in my guns, but I cannot say so in others. You need to re-spring your gun with a heavier spring. There are numerous threads on the net about this and similar loads,

This is a heavy load so Caveat Emptor, so to speak.

Anyways, back onto the original topic, if I am only going to have one revolver for all my handgunning/outdoors needs, without question a .44 would be it.

Something in an "all around", belt portable, practical size such as a 5" N Frame or 4 or 5.5" Redhawk would do nicely as well.

Purely personal tastes, I prefer the 4" Redhawk myself over the 5.5". My dad ended up with my 5.5" gun. I just liked the balance of the 4" gun a bit better. Though I find 5" barrels to be ideal as far as length goes for "all around" guns.

If you like the Redhawk you have and it balances nicely for you, roll with that and don't look back. Pick up a bunch of Starline brass, grab some cast bullets and fire up the press!