Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 44-40 bear load????

I have a Winchester 1873 and I have developed this load. I truly think it's a good deer load but I was wondering if it will do for the black bear just so just soliciting some opinions thank you.
The load consist of the Hornady 200 grain xtp with 24 grains are RL 7.
Velocity is 1175 feet per second. Accuracy is very very good for open sites. Anyway this is purely an academic question I was just wondering

I’m sure a bear won’t shrug one off Fotis. I’d rather have a bit more mass for them to get better penetration but a 200 in the right place wouldn’t cause me to lose sleep at night.

If I was forced to use on Bear, it would be with a Hard cast .I'll take the penetration over the expansion. Notice I said "If I". Everyone thinks differently.

Like I said, purely an academic question.

Actually, I think these might be better.


Penetrator

Do you think they shot bear with it back in 1875?

I think I'd load up some 240gr cast bullets with the widest meplat that would function and sling them at 1100-1200fps

Sure someone did

Me too!

Can you kill a bear with such a thing? No doubt about it. Is it a good choice for bear under normal hunting conditions? I doubt it very much. Better might be a heavier, hard-cast bullet. Brian Pearce has killed lots of big stuff with 250gr-ish bullets at 950-1000fps from .45 Colt SAs and .44 Specials. The real question is, in my mind, do you have a reasonable chance of getting into a position to make the shot you need to make this work?

Decades ago I read a story in, I believe, a Gun Digest, about a couple guys who were using .45 cal MLs with IIRC, 250gr bullets over about 70gr of BP. At some point one of them switched to a .44WCF levergun and had considerable trouble killing a black bear, and expressed the opinion that his old ML (a swivel barrel, I think) would have done a better job.

In my Granpa's hunting notes he had and incident where he shot a doe five times with a 44-40 that "nearly stompled me to death." He didn't say if it was a rifle or a pistol though. This was in the 1920's with whatever factory ammo was available at the time.

30-30 should work at close range. I wouldn’t want to try much less. Maybe a 243 or a 45 Colt.

I’d hate to wound a bear and have it run off.

I'm with the hardcast crowd.

I had an original '73 in 44-40, used some 240 gr hard cast flat nosed bullets sized down to .427" over 14 grs of AA#7 powder in Starline cases lit with WLR primers for 1350 fps, shot through a doe deers shoulders at 35 yards, she just walked till she fell over, don't think a black bear would hold that load either.

well i own a colt saa in 38wcf. that's typically a 180grain bullet.
inscribed in the grip is something like this gun killed a grizz, sierra madre mts. mexico, 1910.
knowing the history of the gun, the statement was real.

Went looking to see what they did back in the day...



"... Len killed a dark silver tip grizzly, with a magnificent skin ... The bear had chased Len's dog out of a little gulch, whither it had gone in pursuit of a wounded deer, and on reaching the higher ground it reared up, apparently looking for its disturber. Len stood just sixteen yards away, and a bullet from his .44 Winchester shattered the great neck bone to atoms. Cool, good shot as I knew Len to be, he admitted he would have hesitated about firing, but he mistook the animal for a black bear."

-Recreation, 1894 via Charles Greenwood

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"I killed two large antlered elks but a few yards apart, and, it being nearly night, I only removed their entrails and camped alone near them, confident that bruin would visit them before morning. I then found that he had dragged the elks so near together as to leave only a space for a lair of boughs and grass between them, which he was intently finishing, when I, at a distance of 100 yards, opened fire with a Winchester rifle, with fourteen ordinary bullets in the chamber and a dynamite shell, being all which I dared to use at once in the barrel. This I first gave him high in the shoulder, the shell there exploding and severing the main artery beneath the backbone. He fell, but instantly arose with a fearful snort or howl of pain and rage, but got four additional ordinary .44 calibre bullets in the shoulder, and nearly as many falls before discovering me, and then charged. Hastily inserting another dynamite shell, I, at a distance of about fifty yards, as he came in, sent it through his throat into the chest, where it exploded and nearly obliterated his lungs, again felling him, and as he arose, broke his neck with the seventh shot. Either one of these would have stiffened any other animal, and surely have soon proved fatal to him, but deeming delays just then dangerous, I peppered him lively. I then found the hide of the bear, just as spread out, without stretching, to be eight and three-fourths feet long, from tip of snout to root of tail, and six feet seven inches at its widest place, and from his blubber were tried out thirty-five gallons of grease or oil."

Report Upon the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior, 1880 via P. W. Norris

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"The largest Sierra Nevada bona fide grizzly I ever knew to be killed, was rendered hors de combat by a single shot from a '73 model Winchester. The bullet struck him in the breast (he was sitting on his haunches) and going through, broke his back. But still, in tackling those or any Rocky Mountain bear other than the black and the brown (for with these exceptions they are all apt to prove ugly customers, and I am willing to confess at least a very wholesome respect for them) I want every possible advantage, and therefore the best and more effective rifle made."

Forest and Stream, Volume 21, 1884

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"J. T. Gardner, U. S. Geological Survey, killed a very large grizzly on Long's Peak, Colorado, with a single ball from a Ballard carbine, calibre 44, which passed through the bear from the back."

J. H. Batty, 1878

Ben Lilly was one of the great Bear hunters. In his early days in MS and TX he hunted them with a Winchester 44-40 and his hounds. He killed a lot.

I just loaded 10 of those in 444 Marlin cases for my TC Encore with an 18 " barrel. I got one of the pink trimmed Pro Hunter stock/forend sets and call it my little sissy gun.

Reloder 7 with a 240gr hard cast LRNFP bullet.

Alliant once listed 23.5gr with a 240gr lead bullet @ 12,000cup. SAAMI MAP in psi is 11,000psi

I have tested 200gr Lyman 427098 black powder, 40gr by weight with .19" to .21" powder compression loads in original semi-balloonhead cases that produced 14,000psi @ 1,373fps with Swiss FFG and 12,600psi @ 1,360fps with Goex FFFG. Same Goex load in modern brass only produced 11,000psi @ 1,260fps.

Reloder 7 is my go-to powder. Nearly anything 240gr lead and below stuffed into it with a caseload of powder (no compression) produces less than 14,500psi and less. Jacketed bullets like the Sierra 210gr JHP and the Speer 240gr JHC produces up to 16,500psi. Shooting .430 diameter bullets in smaller bore (old rifle barrels) can increase pressures.....this includes those black powder loads. All my current loads use .429 bullets in a .4295 bore.

There is a reason "water" cape buffalo hunters use heavy, wide meplat hardcast lead bullets (45-70 loads). The hard cast will not expand and it digs deep into the carcass to attack the vital organs.

I have tested Winchester's .426 JSP bullets in clear ballistics gel and they act just like a hollow point with a large wound channel.

Let me clarify...the below test was performed using a revolver, however, the test was to demonstrate the impact velocity from a rifle at 100 yards.....not a muzzle velocity! The muzzle velocity from a rifle would be between 1,300 to 1,500fps.



bullet courtesy of John Kort. 1920's nickel plated.




bullet courtesy of John Kort. 1920's nickel plated.


Bullets #8, 9 10 and 11 are bullets John Kort's castings that he sent me to test in the clear ballistics gel.