Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire You cant beat a 44 Special

I gotcha.....you’re ashamed that you only have 3 when you could have 4 or 5. 😁

I’d love to find a deal on a nice clean original model Bulldog 44. One of my favorite pocket guns for arrowhead hunting.
I always keep the first cylinder loaded with a CCI snake shot load.

Jim, I'm impressed by when the boy dropped the hammer on an empty chamber you don't see much, if any, flinch at all.

He do looked hooked.

That right there is awesome Jim I’m always impressed with your posts regarding family keep up the good work.

I'll bring my own, so I'm not a burden. Jim will have to continue to drink generic soda.

Hope that's not a deal breaker.

Brings a tear.

And Shasta soda is better than that kommie coke and puusy pepsi crap.

I saw a Smith & Wesson triple lock in 44 special recently very nice gun

And if you REALLY want to make a s hit stomper out of it.....load it with 35 grains of 3F REAL BLACK POWDER!!!

"It's fun."

From the mouths of babes....

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My .44mag and .357mags shoot 9 special-powered loads for every 1 magnum-powered load. They're like gunpowder-sprinkled Lays tater-chips: can't just shoot once.

HIckok45 says that about .45 Colt, i.e., that a full charge of black powder in the case brings it up to Magnum levels of power without the pressure levels created by Magnumizing with smokeless powder. I guess because it's slower burning. But then you'd need a longer barrel to benefit from it.

Spot on.

Interesting point... I'm not sure exactly how much barrel you would need, but when I fire my .45 Colt blackpowder loads in a 4" bbl pistola I "think" I've still gained some significant oomph compared to standard factory loads (which are pretty anemic!). I guess I need to run some chrono numbers and find out what the actual data say. Have you tried it?

BYOB
BYOW

What are these charges?

IIRC the old load was 40 grains of black under a 250 or 255 for 900-950 fps. I wouldn't call that magnumized, but recoil would be up from a typical smokeless load at that level because of double or more ejecta due to powder.

If I use a drop tube and compress the charge further I can fit ~38 gr of FFFg in a Winchester case, but only ~37 gr in a Starline case. That's with a 265 gr bullet, which is my standard 45 Colt cast bullet with 1:16 alloy.

The original 1873 load was ostensibly 40 gr, but those were in the old balloon-head cases, and there is a lot of random info out there saying the armories downloaded them to about 35 gr because the recoil with 40 gr was hard for the soldiers of the 1870's and 80's to handle. I recall reading that Mike Venturino had taken apart some antique cartridges from that era and found the loads were 35 gr or less.

I think you're correct on the increased recoil being from the ejecta. I had chronograph data on these loads out of my old 7.5" barrel Bisley, but I do not have that revolver any longer (it went to Linebaugh as a project donor gun), and I can't for the life of me find those chronograph records. I did those tests way back, in 2001 or 2002. I'm going to have to chrono these loads again, and will compare the 5.5" Bisley barrel with a 4" S&W barrel. I'll post the numbers on the Handguns forum. May take me a week or two.

Funny thing about old vs new is that it has gone full circle.

The latest and greatest 9mm's are heavy for caliber and sub-sonic.

Crazy fershure.