Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 17:37, 11 April 2005

The .44 Magnum cartridge is produced by the firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Based upon their earlier .44 Special revolver cartridge, the .44 Magnum cartridge was introduced in 1956. It has also found a home in rifles, and is a dual-use rifle/handgun round.

A .44 Magnum revolver or rifle will generally accept both .44 Magnum and .44 Special ammunition, but a weapon designed for .44 Special will only accept the Special, due to the longer overall length of a .44 Magnum cartridge.

The .44 Magnum was inspired by handloaders who had "souped-up" the .44 Special and other big bore handgun cartridges for better big game hunting performance. One of these men was the late Elmer Keith, a famous writer and outdoorsman of the middle 20th Century. Mr. Keith encouraged Smith & Wesson and Remington to introduce a pistol and cartridge. The .44 Magnum was a great success.

Elmer Keith wanted a magnumized .44 Special cartridge rather than a magnumized .45 Long Colt round. He thought the selection of .44 caliber bullets was better for handloaders. Also the .44 Special case was narrower in diameter than the .45 Long Colt case. In his era, (around 1940) this allowed a revolver to have more steel surrounding the cartridge and thus that revolver could take higher pressures with hot .44 Special loads than it could with hot .45 Long Colt loads.

In the early Keith era, revolver cylinders made by the factories were too narrow in diameter to take really stiff .45 revolver handloads. There have been since revolvers with larger cylinders made that can handle far larger cartridges.

It should be noted, however, that in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries there were some enormous English revolvers taking massive loads of black powder, of .80 caliber or better in some cases, shooting bullets of great weight. These "Howdah" revolvers were used to hunt big game or as weapons by soldiers against particularly fanatical opponents. The English used them in Africa and India. But these were custom made and only a man of wealth could afford one. On the other hand, in America most people could afford a big-bore (.40 caliber or better) factory made handgun. A 1996 movie called The Ghost and The Darkness featured a "Howdah" pistol in some scenes.

As history would have it there was developed around 1957 a lengthened high pressure .45 Magnum revolver round (the .454 Casull) that more or less was in parallel to the .44 Magnum and was developed by a gentleman named Casull. It has always been more powerful than the .44 Magnum but has never been nearly as popular. Elmer Keith did NOT develop the .454 Casull cartridge and the Elmer Keith development has so far stood the test of time better.

The .44 Magnum has also proven far more popular than the .41 Magnum developed in 1964 and the very powerful .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum developed in the last years of the 20th Century. From the viewpoints of cost, accuracy, hunting performance, recoil, and availability the .44 Magnum is arguably the best balanced of the really big bore Magnum class of revolver rounds.

The only Magnum handgun chambering that is more popular is of course the .357 Magnum, which was not mainly designed as a big game cartridge though it is used by some for deer, and the .357 is NOT either a true "big bore" round.

From the start, the .44 Magnum handguns were designed to take the high pressures this cartridge produces. Some past dual-use handgun/rifle cartridges, like the 44-40 Winchester, gave their manufacturers trouble and occasional lawsuits when people loaded the "High-Speed" versions designed for rifles into handguns. This problem was one of the reasons why the .44 Magnum was lengthened so it would not chamber in .44 Special revolvers. Some .44 Specials could take the high pressures of the new cartridge but other older guns would be damaged or destroyed by them. The lengthened cartridge avoided this issue.

The .44 Magnum provides a big, heavy bullet yet with the speed of the older .357 Magnum. It has in the full power loadings too much recoil, too much muzzle blast, and it is too expensive for police work. It was created as and still remains a very fine and popular short-range deer, black bear, wild pig and other North American big game cartridge, but it is on the light side for elk or moose, and inadequate against any bears larger than the black bear. It is easy to reload, very accurate, enjoyable to shoot if one can accept the recoil, and very available in rural areas of the United States.

This cartridge has a natural home in single action revolvers like the Ruger Super Blackhawk and some autoloading handguns like the Desert Eagle. These designs tend to "rear up" when fired and tame the recoil a great deal. Double action revolvers tend to transmit more recoil to the shooter's arm, causing it to be PERCEIVED as more harsh.

The .44 Magnum is a splendid short-range big game cartridge in a lever action, bolt action, single-shot or semi-auto rifle, especially in heavy brush or timber, out to about 150 meters. Past that the trajectory is too steep for easy hits on game, as the short, fat bullets have poor aerodynamic shape. Still, many shooters like it as they can thus have a rifle and a handgun in the same cartridge, making logistics easier. It is popular in rifles within these limitations for deer, boar, and black bear. It will also work well for coyotes and animals in that class, though it is rather expensive for that purpose versus lesser cartridges.

This dual-use concept was also popular in the Old West with cartridges like the 44-40 Winchester, whose "High-Speed" loadings were a sort of precursor to the .44 Magnum. Other dual-use rounds were the 32-20 Winchester, the 38-40 Winchester, and the more recent .357 Magnum. As a rifle cartridge the .44 Magnum is reasonably powerful yet compact and not bulky. It is far better on deer and other big game than the .357 Magnum out of a rifle, but the .357 is said by some to be more versitile as it covers small and medium game better and has less kick.

Many handloaders will load lighter than factory loadings for most purposes and for target shooting.

This cartridge was made notorious through its use by the "Dirty Harry" character in the Clint Eastwood film of the same name. However, it was not then and is not now "the most powerful handgun in the world." Nor it it in any realistic sense a practical police cartridge. It was designed for a different purpose.

An excellent write up of the .44 Magnum can be found in CARTRIDGES OF THE WORLD by Barnes.

A cartridge inspired by the .44 Magnum was an even longer version called the .444 Marlin, made for Marlin's line of lever action rifles. Out to 125 meters or so the .444 Marlin will take any North American game reliably, even the great bears. Oddly, this .444 Marlin cartridge has been chambered in some handguns, but it is just too big to efficiently burn powder in a short handgun barrel, causing extremely loud muzzle blast.

Synonyms

• .44 Mag.
• .44 S&W Magnum
• .44 Remington Magnum

See also

• List of firearms
• List of handgun cartridges
• List of rifle cartridges

• Pistol and rifle cartridges