Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Ruger 44 Carbine

In Iowa we can hunt with straight walled and pistol cartridges the last 3 years. I ended up with 3 Ruger 44 carbines, a 444 Marling and a Marlin 336 44 rem mag. I was working on doing some bedding work on one of the Ruger 44. I had the action out and really studied it last night. What a piece of engineering. I have been using the Hornady 240 grains xtp and have good success. Bang flop. Most shots have been in the 75 to 50 range on bottomland deer.

I am glad that Ruger is not making these anymore. Keeps the value up on mine when I kicked the bucket and my estate cashes in. Better than my stock holdings post COVID

Any other Ruger 44 carbine owners out there?

Just curious, can you use .45-70 and the other BP cartridges?

I used a No1 in 45-70 for Iowa deer last December...450 Bushmaster as well.

45 70. 444marlin and 450 bushy only real rifle u can use

Most common 450 Bush. 45 70. 444 marlin. 350 legend. Not impressed with 350 legend. 44 rem mag and bigger handgun cals

I'm a recent Model 44 convert. My buddy died a year ago and I acquired his Ruger Model 44. I determined to hunt with it last year, and managed to bag a buck.



Story here:
Bob's Model 44 and The Buck

When I first got it, it was a Jam-O-Matic. Over the summer, it took two trips to the gunsmith to get it working right. It wasn't feeding the second round properly, and the action was locking up. When it did work, the brass was ejecting every-which-way. My guess is that the first owner did something to hose it up and then took it to a gun show to dump it. Bob acquired it cheap and never shot it and let it sit in the case for 40 years. Bob was more of a collector than a hunter. Once it got going, it was a joy to shoot. Bottom line: if you find one that jams, a good smith can fix it.

My load of choice is 240 grain XTP's over H110, just a tad hotter than a starting load. I started out with an 1st Generation Aimpoint, but that did not work so well in low-light conditions. It now sports a Bushnell Banner 1-4.5X; the Dusk to Dawn coatings are the Schizz!

After the buck, I took it along to Georgia for a hog hunt with Folically Challenged.



One word of caution: On my last evening hunt with FC, it was pitch dark when the truck picked us up, and I made the mistake of cupping my hand over the ejection port to catch the round. The round popped out, bounced off my hand and then back in, and it jammed up tight. It took removing the action from the stock and working a butter knife into the action to get the round sent back up into the magazine where it could be re-ejected. Just make sure you let loaded rounds eject freely as you're unloading it, and you won't have to suffer as I did.

Pros: Light, accurate, quick to point. Negligible recoil. Deadly on whitetails at close range.
Cons: It flings brass. Mine was flinging it all over the place when I got it. After the smith fixed it, it flings much more reliably to the 2 O'Clock position, but it still flings.

Just found one also, fun little banger though I'm not sure what practical use I have for it. My thumb bounces off my nose during recoil, I might get a pad to extend the LOP.

I've had a 44 International for more than 50 years.

It does what it was designed to do quite well, kill medium game at ranges out to 100 or so yards. If you still-hunt in tight cover it might be close to the perfect tool. It is short light, accurate enough, and the minimal recoil makes it easier to send multiple follow up shots at a moving target if necessary. When I moved from NH to NE in 1990 I didn't think that I would us it, but found that still-hunting in tight cover calls of the same skills and gear in Nebraska creek-bottoms as it did in the woods of ME, NH, and VT.

I have a picture somewhere of my Father and Bearrr264's Father with 2 big, over 200 lbs., NH whitetail bucks on top of an old green Jeep Wagoneer on Main Street in Colebrook, NH, in the late 1960's. They were standing next to the Jeep in falling snow, both dressed in green plaid wool and holding Ruger 44 Carbines. That was probably a common sight in that town, at that time, such nobody walking by would think that two guys holding guns on Main Street was out of the norm.

I've shot a couple of Iowa whitetails with Remington 870s, a 16 gauge shooting Brennekes and a 20 gauge rifled slug gun shooting sabots.

I have one manufactured in 1967. I have been wanting one since I was young, but never acquired one. My work buddy's Dad was selling a lot if his gun collection because he felt too old and broke down to hunt anymore. He was. Asking $600, but when he heard I was a police officer who worked with his son, he sold it to me for $450. It's in excellent shape. Only modification is a white line recoil pad that he had installed. I'll probably never let go of this one.

Ron

My late buddy had a Ruger 44 Carbine. He killed a truck load of whitetails with it in Wisconsin decades ago. It worked well for him on deer drives with ranges under 100 yards.

I shot my first buck with one when I was a kid...I was pretty young. Had a 2.5x scope on it in "see-through's". Homemade treestand, sitting on a board about 20 feet up in a cedar tree. Pouring rain....I actually had to use the iron sights as I couldn't see anything through the scope. I sat in the tree and waited on my dad to come get me after the shot. He was in a stand probably 100-150 yards down the mountain. I looked down and watched him running up the mountain....Dad running was not a common sight. When he got to me I climbed down and asked him why he was running....he answered that he was scared I had an accident and shot myself.

I started a thread once on another forum asking what cartridge killed out of proportion to it's paper ballistics. The .44 Magnum and the .257 Roberts tied for top honors.

In the early '90s my brother inherited one from our grandfather. After talk of selling it for beer money I bought it from him for $300. I have since cleaned it like it has never been cleaned before, lube it with dry film lube, and restocked it with a modified blank from Macon Gun Stocks. Mine has a monte-carlo cheek piece and a flat stock with a 1/2" recoil pad. The action moves around inside the stock a little bit but I'm able to maintain 3" groups at 100 yards so I'm not too worried about it. It WILL be the gun I carry this winter when I hunt bears with dogs again. I've killed deer and pigs with it and it never disappoints.

Thanks, Dinny

The first one I bought on GB and the post office broke the stock in half. They paid on the insurance for the full value and I kept the action. Found a stock through the Camp Fire but the guy would not sell it unless I bought another custom stocked 44 carbine from him. Since I had one free already I bought his custom gun and additional stock for $600. Now had 2 at $300 apiece. Was in LGS and there was one on the rack for $450 a year ago so I bought that one. That is how I ended with three All are set up differently. One has a 1.5x5 Vortex scope on it, One a redot and the last one was with the factory peep set-up. I really like the peep sights and shoot it ghost ring style. I have got greater knowledge of the guns. The custom gun was beautifully done and was bedded properly. I have followed that bedding pattern on the other 2 guns. The smith that did it is well know in Oregon but his name alludes me right now. The guy that had the gun before me owned a tool and die operation. He gave me the custom aluminum top rails he made. They are beautifully made and are exact fits to the stepped contour of the receiver and barrel base holes. They are a shoot. The scoped gun is an honest 1.5 inch 100 yard grouper with The Hornady 240 XTP.

If you ever need a Ruger 44 carbine worked on, the place to go is Rody's in Newport, NH.

Bill and Henry know more about those old Rugers than anyone else who I've met or talked to, so if it can be fixed, they can fix it.

Rody's Gun Shop
3 Chateau Drive
Newport, NH 03773

603-863-3356

Pops has a minty '66 fingergroove.
I shot a deer with it about a dozen years ago.
Last time it was shot.

Has big bead on front sight, and peep. Sucks past 75 yards.
Needs a low power scope.

Good buddy of mine, Tony, successfully used a Ruger 44 carbine for deer on our hunting property in central WI for years. Sadly, Tony passed from cancer a few years back. His son, Anthony, a cancer survivor himself, now uses the carbine. The first year Anthony used the carbine, after his dad's passing, turned out to be more emotional for us in camp than I had anticipated. I never used one of the Rugers, but the one of Tony's still keeps working and killing deer!

My wife's grandfather had a marina/sporting goods store in our hometown. He got one of the Ruger .44 carbines when they first came out. It was his Adirondack deer rifle the rest of his hunting days. My brother-in-law has it now.

My brother had one for a few years in the '70's, one of the newer ones with a "hardwood" stock. The guy he bought it from gave hime a bunch of homeloads with it, 180 grain bullets of some kind, I don't remember. It shot well, but he traded it off after a few years.

I got one while home on leave in 1968, used, like new, for $70. It has a walnut stock and a 4 digit serial number. I never did anything much with it until I got out of the Navy. It wasn't very accurate until I read an article in Rifle magazine about accurizing them by glass bedding the gas block and somewhere else (can't recall right now and the rifle is at my son's in Missouri.) After that, with a 240 grain XTP over a very healthy dose of H 110 it will shoot under an inch and a half at 100 yards. I killed two of my nicest buck with it, one a magazine-cover quality ten point and one that weighed 208 gutted and hung for a week before weighing. That one was way down in the swamps and it was a chore getting him out. It was before we had such things as quads. Dragging a deer that size uphill, over a freshly plowed field that's damp, not muddy, is an experience I will probably never repeat.

I want to find a Ruger 44 carbine too, but the 2 I am most interested in are the newer Deerfield auto or the M96 Lever action.
There is NOTHING I could do with either one of them I can't do as well with other guns, some of which I already own. I just like them.

My wife's uncle hunted with one of these in the heavy bush of northern Minnesota. He is an excellent shot-participated on an Army competition squad back in the 50's. To the best of my knowledge, he never had a deer get away from him that he shot with this rifle. I always thought this was an excellent choice for hunting in the reallky thick stuff where most shots were barely further than bayonet range. .