Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Grizzly Defense With A Handgun: Doable?

...He said one speck of grit in my nice tight double action and I would be bear scat. He called the Super Blackhawk the preferred berry picking gun of Alaska.

...there is one other problem that sometimes happens..ejector rod back out.... Cure is simple, but sometimes getting the cylinder out is not...especially if you don't have the experience of what is happening...


Bob

Hmmm. I'm always curious as to where this backwoods wisdom comes from... experience, or just rural legend? I'm inclined to believe the latter.

Where, exactly, does that "speck of grit" have to be? I've been shooting DA and SA revolvers in hunting and competition for 15+ years, we're talking 70,000+ rounds of revolver ammo downrange. The only times I've had a revolver of any kind fail to fire is when one of two things have happened: 1) the cylinder was jammed by out-of-spec ammo (high primers or bullet creep) so it couldn't cycle, and that has happened only a handful of times with reloaded ammo from another; and 2) when the timing of the revolver was off due to excessive wear of the cylinder's "hand" (it's happened with only one revolver I own, and that after tens of thousands of rounds fired through it). I've fired DA revolvers without cleaning them for several thousands of rounds just to see how dirty I could get them, and they still fired. Every time. I had one revolver (S&W 686) get splashed with mud and gravel during an IDPA match in the rain and although the action was gritty, it functioned just fine and I was able to finish the match. My favorite revolversmith and one of the best S&W-certified smiths in the nation, a retired cop in Indiana, has carried and shot S&W DA revolvers thru his entire career and in plenty of competition and training. He's never had one of his guns choke up because they were dirty, either.

So I would ask your lifelong friend, if you get the chance: where exactly does that speck of grit have to be to lock up a DA revolver? Because I haven't found it yet and I'd sure like to have the benefit of his greater experience in this matter.

Think about it. The only things that will render a revolver inoperable (short of a breaking a mainspring, something that will pretty much kill ANY handgun) are: 1) binding up the cylinder so it can't rotate, and 2)breaking the trigger-hammer connection. As you may or may not be aware, the only difference in the way DA and SA cylinders rotate on the pin is... nonexistent. They both rotate on a pin. Period. So anything that can block rotation of a SA revolver cylinder can block rotation of a DA revolver cylinder. As for breaking the trigger mechanism, the delicacy of a SA trigger-sear-hammer connection is no better or worse than a DA trigger-hammer-sear connection.

Sorry, but I call bullshit on your Alaska buddy's "revolver wisdom".

...there is one other problem that sometimes happens..ejector rod back out.... Cure is simple, but sometimes getting the cylinder out is not...especially if you don't have the experience of what is happening...


Bob

I agree with you advice about working into a heavy kicker, for sure and for certain. FA does make one in 475L. The rim is too large on the 500L for the FA platform. The 500 WE, 500 JRH and the 500AE work in the FA and are .500 instead of .510 as is the 500L

John Burns posted over at the Fire about being at Ross Seyfried's ranch while Brian Enos was visiting. Ross invited Brian to shoot one of his new five-shooter Bisley cannon conversions. Benos shot a couple of rounds through it (he was one of the top 3-4 in the world at the time with a revolver). He handed it back to Ross and said, "That's a great way to [bleep] up 20yrs worth of trigger control".