.44 mag verses wet sand

[BTLowry]

That ought to knock a good sized hog off it's feet at pistol range

[Blood Trail]

That ought to knock a good sized hog off it's feet at pistol range

Pistol range for this gun is around 150 yards.


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[PondPopper]

Now that would blow daylight through a man!!

[Johnny44]

Awesome stuff, great pics !

For those with a levergun, I highly suggest Remington 180gr or equivalent load. They clock at about 2,200 fps and are ugly. Usually anything under 250gr cycles well.

“Penetration” with a 44 is almost an irrelevant concern, on deer I think expansion in thin skin and fragile bone is more important because it typically is going through.

Personally after extensive killing of a variety of animals with so many different loads, I came to the conclusion 240gr JSP or Copper HP’s is a do everything to anything round.

In my 444, 265gr Hornady Flat nose does everything I need.

I personally found regardless of the differences, no other special 44 mag load does anything significantly better than the 240’s but many times has less desired results on smaller big game.

Its a fun hobby though and I enjoy watching others play.

[softpoint]

I have a .44 caliber XTP 300 grain bullet laying around here somewhere that I retrieved from a buck deer several years ago. It was fired from a .444 Marlin at about 125 yards, almost went the full length of the deer before it stopped. It mushroomed pretty good. However, although good for comparison purposes, wet sand is far too dense to examine performance of bullets. A much better medium for bullet testing is plastic water jugs, if you don't have any ballistic gelatin. But it takes a bunch of them to do any real testing. Swimming pools are great, too, but it is generally frowned on to walk outside and dump a cylinder full into the pool. Especially in suburban areas...The cast bullets would have had a much better showing in water jugs. And you can adjust your bullet alloy to provide some expansion, although a hard bullet with a flat meplat will perform just fine on game animals. One of my .45/70 loads is a 340 grain bullet cast quite soft, at about 9 BHN, and paper patched with two wraps of tracing paper. I run it 1950 FPS out of a Marlin, and it is accurate and expands extremely well on deer size game.

[EarleyBird]

Wow, that's pretty impressive.

[Blood Trail]

I have a .44 caliber XTP 300 grain bullet laying around here somewhere that I retrieved from a buck deer several years ago. It was fired from a .444 Marlin at about 125 yards, almost went the full length of the deer before it stopped. It mushroomed pretty good. However, although good for comparison purposes, wet sand is far too dense to examine performance of bullets. A much better medium for bullet testing is plastic water jugs, if you don't have any ballistic gelatin. But it takes a bunch of them to do any real testing. Swimming pools are great, too, but it is generally frowned on to walk outside and dump a cylinder full into the pool. Especially in suburban areas...The cast bullets would have had a much better showing in water jugs. And you can adjust your bullet alloy to provide some expansion, although a hard bullet with a flat meplat will perform just fine on game animals. One of my .45/70 loads is a 340 grain bullet cast quite soft, at about 9 BHN, and paper patched with two wraps of tracing paper. I run it 1950 FPS out of a Marlin, and it is accurate and expands extremely well on deer size game.

Yeah, I made that bullet trap so I can easily retrieve bullet to re cast. My Keith style .44 mags are around 13 bhn. With that large meplat, they should expand somewhat at that hardness.

I’d never been able to recover a .44 projectile from any deer I’ve killed, longest shot only being 108 yards. Those 240 gr XTP’s punches through them.

Last hunt the year, I shot two deer in the same evening with hand loaded 240 gr Magtech sp.

I think this year, I’ll focused more on hunting with cast bullets.


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[softpoint]

Yeah, I made that bullet trap so I can easily retrieve bullet to re cast. My Keith style .44 mags are around 13 bhn. With that large meplat, they should expand somewhat at that hardness.

I’d never been able to recover a .44 projectile from any deer I’ve killed, longest shot only being 108 yards. Those 240 gr XTP’s punches through them.

Last hunt the year, I shot two deer in the same evening with hand loaded 240 gr Magtech sp.

I think this year, I’ll focused more on hunting with cast bullets.


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I also load the .45 caliber 300 grain XTP in my Freedom .454 Casull, but haven't shot any game animal with it yet. Only killed one pig with that pistol so far, and it was a cast bullet.
I likely wouldn't have retrieved that .444 bullet out of that deer except it was a full length shot, entering the left front shoulder and stopping just about an inch from the skin in the right hindquarter.
Those Keith style semi wadcutters will perform great on game, whether they expand or not. I have a custom mold for short barreled .44 magnums that is a 250 grain full wadcutter, with gas check. It's only accurate at shorter ranges but it's a real killer on trapped or snared hogs, and I suspect it would be formidable defense load too. Looks like a small engine piston...lol.

[txpitdog]

Awesome stuff, great pics !

For those with a levergun, I highly suggest Remington 180gr or equivalent load. They clock at about 2,200 fps and are ugly. Usually anything under 250gr cycles well.

“Penetration” with a 44 is almost an irrelevant concern, on deer I think expansion in thin skin and fragile bone is more important because it typically is going through.

Personally after extensive killing of a variety of animals with so many different loads, I came to the conclusion 240gr JSP or Copper HP’s is a do everything to anything round.

In my 444, 265gr Hornady Flat nose does everything I need.

I personally found regardless of the differences, no other special 44 mag load does anything significantly better than the 240’s but many times has less desired results on smaller big game.

Its a fun hobby though and I enjoy watching others play.

Agree on the 240 JSP in a rifle. Tough enough for rifle velocities, still expands for massive damage

[Blood Trail]

I actually prefer JSP’s for hunting with the exception of XTP’s. All others I tried broke apart having major core/jacket separation.

Not sure what method Hornady uses to bind their jacket and core together, but it works.


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[muzzlebrake]

Not sure what method Hornady uses to bind their jacket and core together, but it works.


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Bonded to the jacket plus the cannelure locks the lead to the copper base very well. Bonded just means the lead slug is shoved in with flux and slightly melted from the outside in to fuse with the copper. Kinda like soldering a pipe joint. The cannelure further strengthens the joint just like a copper coupling that also has a cannelure. Bullets would then be tumbled and swagged again to insure dimension and the sorted by weight.

[M16]

I don’t worry about expansion in large caliber handgun bullets. The idea is to break bones in the skeletal system. You don’t have the advantage of hydrostatic shock. So aim for the shoulder and don’t worry about expansion.

[RifleBowPistol]

I actually prefer JSP’s for hunting with the exception of XTP’s. All others I tried broke apart having major core/jacket separation.

Not sure what method Hornady uses to bind their jacket and core together, but it works.


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I used to shoot a lot of jacketed hollow points, mainly Sierra, Nosler and Speer, I never had any problems with them. I started off with 240 gr. hollow points leaving a 7 1/2" barrel somewhere over 1500 fps. Then later switched to 180 gr. jacketed hollow points, to get more reliable expansion. The 180 gr. loads used H110, and left the same 7 1/2" barrel at 1776 fps. That was a deadly load. I never had jacket separation problems, back the. But that was 25 to 30 something years ago.

I just recently got a 445 Super Mag. barrel. So far I have only loaded 240 gr. Hornady XTPs. Just shooting targets, I have had jackets come off of the core. Those are leaving the muzzle at 2082 fps. I found a jacket, between the sheet of Hardie Plank and a sheet of 1/2" plywood I use for my target stand. I have found a few of the XTP jackets laying around, after target shooting. 2000 + fps, seems to be a bit much for the Hornady bullets.

I have thought about trying some 265 gr. XTPs and 300 XTPs, to see how well those expand at whatever velocity the 445 will spit them out at. I would love to find some Sierra, Barnes, Speer or Nosler, if they make any 265 gr. to 300 gr. bullets, that are not silhouette bullets. But all I can find in 44 caliber is Hornady. Actually that's all I can find in 458 caliber and 6.5 caliber, are Hornady. Really getting tired of only being able to find Hornady bullets.

[RifleBowPistol]

Awesome stuff, great pics !

For those with a levergun, I highly suggest Remington 180gr or equivalent load. They clock at about 2,200 fps and are ugly. Usually anything under 250gr cycles well.

“Penetration” with a 44 is almost an irrelevant concern, on deer I think expansion in thin skin and fragile bone is more important because it typically is going through.

Personally after extensive killing of a variety of animals with so many different loads, I came to the conclusion 240gr JSP or Copper HP’s is a do everything to anything round.

In my 444, 265gr Hornady Flat nose does everything I need.

I personally found regardless of the differences, no other special 44 mag load does anything significantly better than the 240’s but many times has less desired results on smaller big game.

Its a fun hobby though and I enjoy watching others play.

Years ago, my favorite load for my 7 1/2" Super Blackhawk was a 180 gr. bullet leaving at 1776 fps, that was a deadly load. Years before that, when I was a kid. I had a Ruger 44 Carbine, I only used Remington 240 gr. hollow cavities. They were rifle ammo, that came in 20 round boxes, if I remember correctly. That was some deadly stuff out of that 44 Carbine, I killed some critters with that combo.

[Johnny44]

Dang 44 just works.