I have a ruger blackhawk 4.5 inch in 357. I'm looking for small game loads for grouse and rabbits.
I have ample brass, a few 100 remington sp primers, and green dot, bullseye and W296.
Any suggestion as to bullet or another powder?

Try a 148 gr. wadcutter at about 700-800 fps. The classic .38 Special target loading works great on small game.

That is all you need right there. For small game, you will not find a better projectile than a wadcutter. It punches clean full caliber holes through the game and is extremely effective. I cannot even begin to tell you the amount of big high desert Jackrabbits that I have killed with .38 wadcutters in the 750-800 FPS range.

Normally I actually hunt them with .44 and .45 caliber revolvers but just to do something different, some hunts I will take along a couple of .38s. Loads of fun and it helps alleviate cabin fever after big game season has ended.






These ones below were actually popped with my Model 29 .44 mag:



But still loads of fun and full wadcutters in a .44 Special make for a great small game getter as well.

Had a Colt Trooper years ago in 357 and the only thing I shot in it was 148gr wad cutters in 38 spec cases. Do believe it would be a great small game load. I cast them myself and when shooting practice dug the fired bullet's out of the backstop and reused them. Load I uesd was 2 1/2grs Bullseye

The answer is as noted above is a wadcutter. I used Bullseye and it was a tack driver in mu gun. 296 also works.

In my Dan Wesson I loaded a little hotter and shot to 100 yards.

Light load with something like Bullseye. Not loud and little recoil, accurate

I keep it simple I use the same general swc load for every thing.
Mb

2.7grs Bullseye below a 148 HBWC seated flush with the case mouth. Classic target load

I agree with all of the above, also, don't over look the lighter jacketed flat point bullets like the Hornady 125 grain XTP FP, Speer 125 grain unicore soft point, Speer 125 grain TMJ FP, Sierra 125 JFP, (don't know if they still make the Speers). I have had good luck with these, especially from S&W revolvers with the slower twist barrels.

If these are pushed at moderate 38 special speeds they don't tear up critters, and can be very accurate.

Any flat point cast bullets should work well also if accurate enough from your gun.

You can shoot some of those lighter jacked bullets backwards making a sort of boat-tailed wadcutter. Also can do that with SWCs. Be wary of squib loads if you back off too much .. I've left a bullet in the bore a few times trying to slow things down tooooo much.

My load for my Ruger Vaquero with the same barrel length as your BH uses a round nose, flat point lead bullet pushed by 4.0 grains of Trail Boss. I haven't chronographed it, but it's a powder puff to shoot, very accurate, and hits point of aim of my fixed sights out to 25 yards (I'm sure even further - but my indoor range goes to 25 yards.).

I took maybe a 7 yard shot at a mid-sized cottontail with this load and purposely aimed behind the shoulder vs. the head just to see what the load would do. The meat and fur damage was minimal. The rabbits I have taken with .22lr hollow points had far more mess to deal with than this particular .357 Mag. load.

I failed to mention - the lead round nose, flat point bullet is 158gr., and the same bullet with slightly lesser charge of Trail Boss does great things in my 38 Special cases too.

Yep I found out fifty years ago about jacketed bullets sticking in the bore with very light charges. Thankfully I caught it before I sent another one down range. A 185 semi wadcutter .45 in a S&W 25 Target in Auto Rim cases.

We can’t use a centerfire during small game season, game boys worried about our highly overpopulated deer getting poached…a .38 wadcutter would be perfect.