I thought I'd start a thread to talk about feeding .38 Special snubbies. You can talk about what you've found that works and doesn't. Factory ammo and/or handloads. Ammo for defense or plinking or practice or hunting. The more info, the better.
I'll start. I found that my 642-2 hits to POA with 125-grain bullets. I got a couple of boxes of Remington GS 125-grain +P to try based on positive experiences with the 9x19 versions and the fact that it's usually available at a good price ($19/50 from Target Sports).
I don't have the budget for factory practice ammo, so step one was to chronograph it to give me an idea of what velocity to shoot for (yeah, I wrote that ) in my handloads. Five rounds came in at 941 fps with an SD of 15. POI was right on top of the front sight at ten yards.
Recoil was brisk but bearable. This isn't the cleanest ammo I've ever fired, but it left less residue than Federal wadcutter and in 11 cylinders full there were no issues of hard extraction, and the next rounds slid in with no binding.
I couldn't find the correct gel testing for it. The closest I could come was Lucky Gunner's tests, where the GS showed almost the exact same penetration and expansion as Winchester's RA38B in the same medium. I'll be using it for carry ammo in the 642.