Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Best low recoil round for a S&W 642 in 38 Spl

A friend of my wife's just purchased a Smith & Wesson 642 in 38 Special. She is going to get a carry permit and start carrying this gun. She is a new shooter and I am looking for a low recoil load for her to carry. I am familiar with the 38 Special full wadcutter ammo from the thread on the best snub nose round in 38 Spl+P. I am looking at the 90 grain Hornady Critical Defense Lite in 38 Spl and the 110 grain Hornady Critical Defense in 38 Spl. What other low recoil loads should I be considering? In snub nose revolvers, my experience is with a Colt Magnum Carry loaded with Remington 125gr 357 magnum Golden Sabre ammo. I have no real experience with low recoil loads in light weight snub nose revolvers. An opinions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

My Wife and Daughter both LOVE the 148 grain full wad cutter loads.

VERY light recoil, not much more than a 22LR. Very fast sight recovery for a second shot.

I also pack them in my Detective Special, and don't feel "under gunned"

Virgil B.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This

It seems to me that practicing with a light load .38 Special is a good idea for training muscle memory, but in a defensive shooting situation I would rather have a more effective +P load in the chamber than a light one. Recoil would be the farthest thing from a person's mind if they needed to shoot. My S&W 337PD is lighter than that 642, but it is rated for +P and that is what I carry. I would also shoot only a factory loaded cartridge and that Critical Defense name is going to sound good to a jury if it comes to that and the Personal Defense load would be even better. Remember when Winchester had to take their Black Talon ammunition off the market because the name sounded too destructive. I'm sure that they reintroduced it under a different name.

Windfall, I will have her practice with 38 full wad cutters but she will have to still fire a few rounds of carry ammo so that she is familiar with the recoil. I just don't want to scare her with the recoil in such a lite gun. There is no shortage of good 38 Spl+P ammo such as Speer Short Dots, Federal HST and Remington Golden Sabre's, good low recoil rounds are a little more challenging to find.

I gave a 642 to a daughter that lives nearby when I bought one. I load 3.1gr Unique behind 147WC. Good, light, practice load. For carry we use 4.3gr Unique behind 148gr JHP, which we fire to clean up the lead, if any, from the wadcutters. There's truly no perceptible difference. But then my daughter has been shooting for almost 60 years. I don't see any sense in P+ loads personally. At the range where you might have to use it, the wadcutters would suffice. Further than that, get away!

If you want low recoil form that gun, forget about any idea of achieving expansion. You don't need it. Expansion is a benefit, but it's not like someone's going to laugh at this lady if hit with an old fashioned 158 grain, lead round nose slug.

That, in fact, is my recommendation. It was the standard NYPD load till the late 1980s. It was what Jim Cirillo used in all his shootouts while on the NYPD Stakeout Squad. He had no trouble putting big bad men down every time. It's all about shot placement, and a round that she's not afraid to touch off is going to improve that immeasurably.

According to Jim Cirillo's books, he thought pretty poorly about 38 sp round nose. In fact he hand loaded most if not all of the ammo he used in his Model 10 in those shootouts with the express intention of getting away from 38 special round noses. Again, that's according to both his books.

A wadcutter is going to be way superior to a round nose. Obviously there is tons of data on this, but I have personal experience as well. At a different stage of my life I worked in a big city Trauma Center and also worked as an EMT as well and I have seen tons of wounds with both round nose/ball ammo and hollow point ammo. Nothing fancy. Bad guys tended to shoot other bad guys with 9mm round nose. The police by then were all using hollow points. This was the 1990s and these were old school 9mm hollow points and they often fragmented and came apart in people's torsos (bad guys shot by cops) The difference in internal damage is huge. Round noses just push tissue aside without cutting it and the tissue bounces back. Hollowpoints cut and crush and shred tissue (as do wadcutters to a lesser extent). An round nose bullet in a rifle may still kill well bc of velocity. In a pistol they are a joke. I wouldn't want to get shot by one but I also don't want to be shot by anything.

If you don't have much time, wadcutters are probably the quickest solution.

If you do have some time and your wife wants to shoot a bunch, the best solution is to train with very low recoil mouse fart loads to practice with then find one of the many decent 38+P loads that hits to the same point of impact.

The softest shooting 38 loads I know about are Georgia Arms 125gr loads. Very accurate as well. 125gr at maybe 650 fps from a snubby. Way way softer shooting than most wadcutter loads which tend to be 148gr at 700-750 fps. 125gr bullet at 650 fps is a typical 38 sp cowboy action load.

Once you've got a good supply of mousefart loads, buy a box each of golden sabers, gold dots, etc, and see which shoots closest to the point of aim of the training ammo.

That's sort of the longer approach but it gets you closest to having a good shooter and an effective bullet.

I love to shoot midrange wadcutters out of just about any 38sp. And I certainly wouldn’t want to be shot with one. That said I have seen more than one brand that wouldn’t penetrate a sheet of 1/4” rubber on the front of a bullet trap, they’d simply bounce back a foot or two and fall to the floor. That leaves me uncertain about their effectiveness on a bad guy or a mean dog or whatever else you may need to shoot.

I like to load cast wadcutters to full power. Still pretty low recoil since full power 38sp with published loads isn’t any kind of giant killer. But much better penetration in my experience. Granted I have shot no bad guys, and hope to keep it that way, but I have shot plenty of animals with a variety of 38 bullets and loads.

Ditto on Cirillo using anything but 158 round nose . I’m looking at an account right now where he details using 110 super vel semi jacketed and another where he and Allard used a national match 45 and handloads with hollow points and cup point full wadcutter profile bullets and “were willing to take the slap on the wrist for non approved ammo .

Back to the OP , wadcutters , semi wadcutters loaded soft work great and agree on carrying +P

TX35W ain't blowing smoke.

I shot a buck with 45 Colt round noses.

Yes noses.

Never got a count of the holes, but there were a bunch
I ran out of ammo, and had get my rifle to finish it.

We literally had pieces of meat with a hole, but no bloodshot or otherwise
damaged meat.

There were multiple lung hits, and they probably would have been
fatal. Sometime.

Quite the ugly [bleep].

I would not be afraid of the wadcutter load. It has been a standby since I was in high school in the early 80's. When I got my first 357, a local store had Federal 38Spl wadcutters for a very reasonable price. Couldn't buy virgin cases to reload cheaper. So I shot the wadcutters to get the brass. When I took the revolver to my grandfather's farm, he had some old used up truck tires laying about. The wadcutters would penetrate through the tread of the steel belted truck tires. I was impressed that at 10-15 yards this "target load" would penetrate like that AND the flat face of the wadcutter would expand 50%. Next to no recoil.

I think the old gunwriters of the day were bang on with this recommendation.

I guess I assumed he used lead round nose because, when he was operating, that was a requirement for all officers on the NYPD. If they were caught with anything else in their guns, they'd be disciplined.

i’m no recoil fan at all, thus when i’m not carrying a 22lr handgun my ccw is a s&w 642 airweight loaded either with wadcutters or magtech cbc shorts. the only, small, issue that i have with wadcutters is that their flattened end makes them a bit harder to reload a revolver with a speedloader. that said, if one is a typical civilian ccw holder using common sense in non apex predator zones, five shots are statistically sufficient.

Not all factory .38 SWC ammo is anemic.

https://www.ppu-usa.com/ppu/38-special/

There is Federal +P load especially designed for small guns with short barrels. It's in the Premium Line with HST bullets and side of plastic box has word 'Micro' on it. The revolver does have to be +P rated, therefore, it may not be of use if you have older gun such as pre-Magnum J frame era gun, for example.

NYPD at that time used a 158 grain lead SWC at an advertised 800 fps from a 4" M10 S&W. Bill Allard was the firearms instructor for the stakeout squad and tested all the rounds carried by the squad for velocity, accuracy and penetration up at the Wallingford, CT range. He told me that none of the ammo ever chrono'd that high. Most lots of city ammo were in the 780 fps range; lower for 2" guns. NYPD cops on the squad (only) were allowed to carry their own pistols/revolvers as "backup", subject to Allard's approval. Nothing in the NYPD operations manual said you had to use your primary weapon (.38 4") first. As long as you had your duty weapon on your person, you were good to go, as far as the Dept was concerned. 9MMs (Browning High Powers) were popular, but the jacketed ammo over-penetrated. Cirrillo (Allard's partner) carried a 2" .38 Colt and a 4" S&W. Bill carried a National Match .45 as his backup, and a 4" S&W heavy barreled M&P. Ammo in the .45 was Norma hollowpoints.

Right now, the best .38 ammo, based on actual shootings, is the .38 Gold Dot (issued to LAPD and NYPD cops who still have revolvers). LAPD has shot quite a few people with this load, and is very satisfied with the results. Haven't talked with the NYPD guys; not many .38s left in the big apple.
Bob

First, replace the mini grips with something a little more hand filling. Then work on loads. I shoot hundreds of hbwc bullets out of my 442, 638, and SP101. Carry is a hotter factory load.

I have a (almost) foolproof way of getting women to accept recoil. It's worked quite a bit at the range where I work. Most women are mothers, so here's how it works...
Me-Do you have any children?
Her-Yes
Me-I'm sure they were all little angels, but do you remember that one time that you had to spank them?
Her-(with a laugh) Angels? Yeah, right.
Me-Do you remember how it stung your hand a little but it hurt them a lot more?
Her-Yeah!
Me-It's the same thing with a gun--it stings you a little but it hurts the bad guy a lot more!
I immediately see the light come on and a smile come across their face. They never mention recoil again.