Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns 44 Magnum pic and discussion thread.

I would like to share a thought on the .44 magnum I do not read in threads, and have never seen in a magazine, or professed by the "experts"

The tendency in America is bigger - faster - stronger. Having lived and gone to school in RSA this was something I was teased about frequently being an American in a foreign country.

I guess I could have gotten defensive about this, but there is a lot of truth to that statement. Over time I could see the way things worked and began to understand that cartridges like the 375HH were "just right" they did not need to become the 378 weatherby, or the the 375 ultra-mag. They were fine as they were, even better truth be told!

I find this so much the same with the 44 magnum. There was a time when I had my 7.5 inch redhawk that I continued to build up the loads and bullet weights, until I was wondering where the self destruction of this gun would occur! Thinking back I was a complete idiot loading that revolver to levels that were just stupid on many levels.

Then some time and additional maturity crept back into my life. I found that in reality the bears I was responsible to handle for my job really did not know the difference between the monstrous overloads, and a factory load equivalent.

The real beauty of the .44 mag when used on big animals is that it's really great with a plain old .44 mag loading. Anything more is fine, but un-necassary. I got caught up in the "power" and took it to the limits. All I did was waste a lot of gun powder and stress my shooting skills.

I bought a .44 S&W Mtn gun. It was like a toy, I was thinking it was no way gonna hold up and function with proper .44 mag loads. It's was puny and scary small. It does however work just fine, shoots any load I want, and has power a-plenty with simple .44 mag loads. The recoil with heavy loads is severe, but this is a good idea actually. It keeps folks from pounding them to bits. It's brilliant to carry. I could not likely ever go back to the 7.5" RedHawk having packed this for a decade or more now.

So the bottom line here is that the .44 mag is a brilliant and comfortable design which is fantastic with really powerful .44 special loads, and factory level Magnum loads. It does however have the range to go into the realm of stupid power for those who have to do this.