.44 Special & .45 Colt for large game

[Malamute]

I used it years ago with good results, but these days wish to avoid the added cost of gas checks. I feel higher velocity unnecessary.

Thanks.

In looking for info about it before buying it, several people on the castboolit forum mentioned using them with and without gas checks with good results. Ill give it a try and see how it goes without for medium level loads.

[Lost River]

Fantastic topic.

I need to eventually get around to taking some old 35mm pics and turning them digital. Have a few old cruddy pics of critters from years past taken with .44s and .45s.

Anyways, thought you guys may enjoy this.

I was out shooting the other day. Was shooting my commercial .44 Special load, which is a .240 grain hardcast SWC that clocks 900 FPS from a 5" barrel.

was using both my 5" Model 29 Classic .44 Mag, with red dot optic, as well as my 7.5" Ruger Flattop .44 Mag (iron sights).

Pretty notable difference in group sizes.




I also realized that my 1950s era Flattop .44 was obviously zeroed for something else entirely. Probably a 300 grain load, since the point of impact was substantially lower. You can see the group with the Blackhawk is well more than double the size, even without the "flyer", and is really 3x the size of the groups shot with the Model 29 with RDO.

The RDO allowed me to precisely punch tight little groups, versus a large fist size group with the iron sighted Blackhawk. Same ammo, just different sight systems.

[Lost River]

I guess it would help to mention that this was off the bags (that were on my tailgate of my old Land Cruiser) and the distance was 25 yards.

[Dusty Stone]

I can only speak of deer up to 200lbs and a 255gr swc at 1-1200fps from my Blackhawk, redhawk, and 16" puma m92.

It absolutely hammers deer. Very similar to 12 gauge slugs. I've had exits on 200lbs deer after breaking both shoulders and a shoulder/rear hip.

Deer have no jointed shoulders to break, so if you're shooting them in the shoulder you're wasting meat. If you process your own wild game, you will find this out when separating the front legs from the rest of the carcass. Now the hip joints are another thing altogether as they are jointed.

[Tannhauser]

Deer have no jointed shoulders to break, so if you're shooting them in the shoulder you're wasting meat. If you process your own wild game, you will find this out when separating the front legs from the rest of the carcass. Now the hip joints are another thing altogether as they are jointed.

I agree with your observation on anatomy, as the front shoulders of a deer are attached only with muscle and connective tissue.

However, I do politely disagree with your assessment on a shoulder shot. It does water a little near, but it also tends to significantly reduce (or eliminate) mobility.

I’ve shot a fair number of deer with .44 240 XTP and .45 300 gr XTP bullets. With both rounds a behind the shoulder shot was fatal, but the deer were able to move a fair to significant distance after the shot.

A shoulder shot with these same bullets from the same guns were also fatal, but the broken shoulder(s) always resulted in the deer on the ground much faster.

[Tannhauser]

Autocorrect got me on that last post.

“It does water a little near, but it also tends to significantly reduce (or eliminate) mobility.” should be “ It does waste a little meat, but it also tends to significantly reduce (or eliminate) mobility.

[03RN]

Deer have no jointed shoulders to break, so if you're shooting them in the shoulder you're wasting meat. If you process your own wild game, you will find this out when separating the front legs from the rest of the carcass. Now the hip joints are another thing altogether as they are jointed.

Sometimes the hunting gods push the bullets a little off.

And like stated above, it does help reduce mobility which helps when you've got Posted land in sight.