Hardcast .44 Special Wadcutters

I may have found an actual magic bullet. No, really. The amazing part is it showcases 150-year-old technology and anyone can make them or handload them. How can this be?

I’ve long appreciated how standard .38 Special wadcutters perform. I’ve shot tens of thousands at PPC matches and taken lots of small game like jackrabbits and even one unlucky coyote. I’ve put injured animals down with them, carried them for defense, used their soft recoil to help teach new shooters and plinked to my heart’s delight. They do just about everything — and they do it swell.

I’ve also experimented with hardcast 150-grain full wadcutters loaded by some companies as defensive rounds. They tend to chrono around the 875 fps mark from small frame revolvers but are pretty stout to shoot. I’ve also fired .44 Special and .45 Colt wadcutter heavy defensive loads, but like the .38 Special, they’re pretty snappy. In my tests, a standard .38 Special 148-grain target wadcutter can usually penetrate completely through a 16″ gel block. The big bore rounds do as well while cutting bigger holes. In reality, who needs a fancy high-tech bullet if you’re putting .44 caliber holes all the way through something? I mean, two holes are better than one — in many cases — especially for field use.

The Downside

The hot wadcutter loads are a bit like putting a .357 load in a lightweight J-Frame and handing it to a new shooter. Ouch. Not long ago I got to thinking I’d like to fix that recoil problem while still having an effective load. While a standard 148-grain target wadcutter is pretty effective (at around 680 fps from a 2″ revolver), I didn’t really want to just “upload” it because I’d just be chasing those hard recoiling factory loads. But what about a .44 or .45 with a hard cast full wadcutter but loaded down — maybe even way down?

I chased down some great 185-grain .44 caliber lead wadcutters from an outfit called US Reloading Supply. I found the bullets were consistent, nicely made and ready to load. I nosed through some reloading manuals to tailor the .44 Special loads to be “just right” out of my 2″ Charter Bulldog I had cut down a zillion years ago. Those hot factory .44 Special loads are just too much in that little lightweight gun and are no fun to shoot. I wanted something I could actually enjoy shooting, but was still effective enough for personal defense.

With a bit of load development, I found 6-grains of 231 delivered between 600 and 650 fps with that 185-grain .44 wadcutter out of the short Charter barrel. The load was very controllable, even fun, and remarkably accurate, as almost all big bore loads tend to be. This load harkens back to the big-bore British revolvers of the early 1900s. Many of them shot .44 and .45 cal. wadcutters (Manstoppers, they called them) in the 500 to 600 fps range. Word from the world in the British Empire was they worked fine.

Experimenting, I shot a gallon jug with a RNFP .44 Special Black Hills cowboy load (590 fps), and it put a neat hole in the jug, kicking up dirt behind it, which then sort of glug-glugged itself empty. Then I did the same test with my wadcutter .44 Special load, and it went off like a bunker-buster bomb, soaking me and my camera. It was certainly a much more energetic result than I got with a .38 wadcutter, but recoil was mild.

But Why?

The reason, I think, is momentum. “Energy” tends to go in all directions, while momentum goes in one direction. So the bullet uses some of the energy but maintains its direction while the rest of the energy goes all over, for lack of a better term. It’s why an animal can “absorb” 5,000 ft. lbs. of “energy” and shuffle off, while the same animal drops like a rock with a slow-moving heavy .45-70 bullet. A heavier bullet can use the same energy to penetrate further than a lightweight bullet can, using the same energy. Thank you, momentum. Try to stop a slow-moving bowling ball vs. a tennis ball, both launched with the same “energy,” and you get the point.

I’ve chased Jacks in the high desert, and when hit with 158-grain RNL .38s they almost always run off, jumping, unless you hit them just right. But, when hit with a 148-grain target wadcutter, I’d usually clearly hear that wet sounding “Thwap” sound, and they’d be DRT, or “Dead Right There,” as we used to say in the police department.

So, is it magic? Maybe not, but it’s pretty darn close. My “new/old” pocket revolver these days is that Charter loaded with .44 wadcutters. If you don’t have one of those, maybe a good .38 wadcutter load would work for you. You live, and you learn, or you don’t live long, eh?

For more info: USReloadingSupply.com

SURPRISE!

FMG is proud to announce Roy’s new book! The Insider, 20+ Years Of Indiscriminate Deliberations On Timely Topics. It’s available on our websites and on Amazon.com (just search for FMG Publications to see it and our other line-ups). It’s a collection of past Insider columns with a respectable helping of gunsmithy features and general ephus tossed in for good measure. We’re thinking you might enjoy having all this in one spot. And, as Roy says, it’s “A Shooter’s Bedside Reader!” $34 on Amazon, with a Kindle Edition for only $15. Roy says, “Buy it!” so his dogs don’t starve.

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