Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Ruger Redhawk reviews please

The Redhawks are indeed very heavily built. That said the very vast majority of the shooting public does not shoot enough heavy loads through their .44s (either Smith & Wesson, or Ruger) for it to matter. I have both, and both work fine. I don't really feel the need to do a trigger job on the Redhawks as while their DA and SA triggers on average may not be as nice as a typical Smith, they are certainly shootable. Plus the more you actually shoot them, the better they get.

It gets repeated ad nauseum about how N Frame .44s are weak and how strong the Redhawks are. A good bit of this is parroting by guys who don't even own examples, or shoot them very little. I have put literally thousands of rounds through N Frames, to include heavy for caliber 300-310-320 grain projectiles. While the N Frames are not quite as strong as the Redhawks, they are certainly not weak, by any stretch.

In favor of the Redhawk, if it is right from the factory, timed correctly, odds are it will last a lifetime, even with loads that are beyond what are recommended. Generally speaking, guys wrists, elbows and hands physically break down from years of pounding heavy loads through their guns, before the guns actually wear out.

I know that in my case, I don't shoot the heavy loads in the quantities like I did in my 20s and 30s. No real need and if I want to continue to shoot for years to come it is better to take care of my hands and wrists, rather than continue to trash them with high volumes of heavy recoil.

Back to the Redhawk, they are a little heavier to pack, but nothing a proper holster and belt won't fix. Great revolvers. If I had to choose just one .44 Mag, it would be a 5" N Frame Model 29 though. There is nothing it cannot take cleanly, and I have yet to completely wear one out in spite of years of shooting.