Care and Feeding of the .44 Remingon Magnum

I talk about the .22LR a lot because it is ubiquitous, easy for people to shoot and amazingly effective, and, of course, I love the .22 WMR.  Still if one were to put a gun to my head, so to speak, and demand that I pick one and only one gun to keep and carry, one of the choices I would ponder, after my shotgun and the rimfires, would be my Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 magnum.  If I were able acquire plenty of ammunition or knew that I had access to plenty of components and my reloading setup, the .44 would be hard not to choose.

At the top of my list for any firearm is accuracy.  It's a fact that I have tested over and over again.  For some strange reason, I shoot the Blackhawk as well or better than any of my other firearms.  Given the fact that is has open sights, I shoot it about as well as I do my scoped rifles.  I would say it is rivaled only by my Single-Six.  Maybe I was born to be a plowboy because the old plowhandle works for me.

The thing about the .44 is that it can be loaded to do all kinds of jobs.  Stick a relatively soft cast bullet in over a modest load of fast powder and use it for small game.  Put a 180-grain jacketed bullet on top of a bunch of H110 and you have a longer-range varmint or whitetail walloper. 

A maximum load of H110 behind a 300-grain solid would probably work for dangerous game.  I'm not going to try it, but people have taken some mighty big game with Mr. Keith's baby. 

Speaking of that patron saint of the Double-4, Keith's original load was a 240-grain (relatively) hard-cast bullet clocking along about 1200 fps.  Remington loaded their first 240, gas-checked bullet to give 1400 fps out of an 8-inch S&W Model 29.  That's a good stiff round.  I shoot a 240-grain jacketed bullet over a non-max load of 2400 that will exceed 1300 fps.  It might actually approach 1400 in my 7.5 inch Blackhawk.  Even in my big SA, you don't have to wonder if it went off.  Generally speaking, that bullet will not stay in one of our goaty little whitetails. 

Then I have my "light" load.  The load that I use for general plinking, pest eradication, and, if it came to it, self-defense, is a gas-checked, hard-cast 240-grain bullet (Oregon Trail, I think, could be wrong because I didn't write it down). I load that bullet in a .44 mag case with a regular Winchester LP primer and around 12 grains of Blue Dot.  That's a way reduced load.  The minimum listed in the manual on the magnum side is around 15 grains.  It's really a very mild .44 Special load in a .44 magnum case.  It shoots to basically the same point of aim as the jacketed bullet load out to forty or fifty yards.  I'm pretty sure it would kill a deer just as dead as the other one, and it's mild enough for rapid fire.  I found it to be quite adequate for most purposes. 

REMINDER and CAVEAT: I have had no problems with these loads in my particular revolver.  That DOES NOT mean they are safe.  Refer to manufacturers' reloading manuals and  DO NOT EVER use any load you run across on the internet from some half-wit like me.   

Should a person be inclined to use a .44 magnum for self-defense, one option would be to simply pick up some .44 Special high-performance rounds -- such as Hornady Critical Defense, Winchester Silvertips, or Speer Gold Dot.  The good old Silvertip, for example, is pushing a 200-grain bullet at 900 fps, yielding 360 ft/lbs -- probably from a 4-inch barrel.  That will certainly do the job on the business end while being mild and controllable for the shooter. 

Practice ammunition would be easy to load up in magnum cases using cast bullets and .44 Special recommended loads. 

The .44 magnum is a very versatile and useful round.  I used to think the .357 magnum was the perfect handgun round -- and it is very good.  Yet, over the years, I have come to rely more and more on the .44 as my go-to hunting handgun.  Accurate and powerful, or accurate and mild, the .44 is what it eats.