Fire Watch: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, But Not Your Sights

When you grow up in the Pacific Northwest, the one thing we learn at a very young age is that occasionally during the summer months, the place catches on fire.

The summer of 2026 was a real pain in the neck because a lot of my favorite hunting areas went up in smoke, all because of lightning strikes. The harsh reality is that I won’t be visiting places I have hunted in the past, for the remainder of my lifetime, and the realization is still just setting in. To put this in the proper perspective, however, the owners of a popular Spokane gun store lost their home to a wildfire set by an arsonist, who is now in custody. I’m pretty certain their loss is greater than mine.

Forest fires have some interesting side effects, not the least of which is that wild critters with teeth and claws move out of their personal range in a hurry, and sometimes they’re not in a very good mood when they relocate. Which brings us around to one of the main reasons I don’t venture off the pavement without a sidearm, with a .38 Special wheelgun on the lower end of the scale, and my .41 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk being on the higher end. I’ve toted test guns in .44 Magnum, .480 Ruger and other calibers, and never felt under-gunned or over-armed.

Sometimes I’ll just pack a .357 Magnum or my single-action .45 Colt, all stoked with handloads; the point being there is always something within quick reach should the necessity arise where I need to react immediately. This principle applies in urban environments as well, although the nature of the predators one might encounter there is somewhat more sinister.

While smoke gets in our eyes out here in the Northwest, it doesn’t bother the sights on any wheelgun I’ve ever handled, nor has it distorted my view of the world in which we live.

When I’m lectured by someone about how bears, cougars and wolves rarely attack people, my typical response is a very curt “Except when they do.” Even coyotes have on “rare occasions,” nipped at people. In just the last eight years, two people have been attacked by mountain lions within a few miles of my front porch, one of them fatally. A teenage hiker was roughed up by a sow black bear earlier this year on a local popular hiking trail when he apparently got between mom and her cub. Let us just say I’ve seen pretty much every common North American predator up close except for a grizzly.

Shooting a predatory animal in self-defense would never be my first choice, but packing a handgun keeps it available as an option. Ditto if we’re talking about a two-legged predator.

A Question of Horsepower

Back in my younger life, before the advent of the semi-auto revolution, the typical cartridge in my .38 Special revolvers was a 125-grain JHP, since that was what local police and sheriff’s deputies might be issued. When I wasn’t using factory ammunition, my handloads pushing 125-grain JHPs were powered primarily by HP-38. I once brewed up some potent rounds using 10.0 grains of the old Hercules 2400 behind a 125-grain Speer JHP for use in my Model 19 S&W, based on data in the Speer No. 11 manual at the time, which I think was the first loading manual I ever owned. They worked rather well, although out of a J-frame Model 36, they bucked pretty good! Speer no longer offers data for .38 Specials using Alliant 2400, probably because there are many more propellants available.

But a while back, I discovered I can get slightly better velocity using 6.0 grains of CFE Pistol behind a 125-grain JHP than with 2400, or HP-38 and it’s a little gentler on my .38 Special revolvers, including my 1975-vintage Colt Diamondback. This I recently confirmed while on a “fire watch” trek into the Central Cascade ridges above Washington’s Snoqualmie Pass. I took along the Diamondback and a handful of cartridges, some loaded with 4.7 grains of HP-38 and the others with CFE Pistol.

Even under a smoke-filled sky, my chronograph told the tale: My top velocity over the screens with the HP-38 powder charge was 875.6 fps, while the CFE Pistol-fueled round sent the same Hornady XTP projectile over the chronograph at 975.5 fps! The HP-38 loads averaged 858.3 fps, while the CFE Pistol lot averaged 948.8 fps. Your mileage may vary, as they say, but not by much, and if a .38 Special is what you have—and all you’ve got—as my chronograph readings show, you are much better off than having no gun at all!

I recovered one bullet fired into an old log, which passed through a couple of inches and stopped in the dirt behind. My conclusion was that anything on the receiving end is going to hurt.

Packin’ Pistol

The late John Taffin did a series on what he considered “Perfect Packin’ Pistols” a few years ago, and having had the opportunity to carry revolvers in calibers that made his list, my preference for the outdoors is for either a .357 Magnum or .41 Magnum. I was carrying a Blackhawk on a recent day trip to check a then-1,900-acre lightning-caused forest fire burning near one of my old deer hunting grounds.

But after noting the velocity I get from the 125-grain XTP out of my Diamondback’s 4-inch barrel, I started giving serious thought to setting aside—at least for a while—my Colt Lightweight Commander for everyday carry. Why would I do that? I just happen to like revolvers—call me a Fudd if you like—and they seem to like me. I’ve never had a revolver jam on me, never lost the cylinder, thus making the gun inoperable, and the D-frame Colt is just a hair lighter than my .45, and much lighter than a Blackhawk or Model 57 S&W, and let’s be candid about this, the .38 Special delivers a far more pleasant recoil than a magnum or any of my .45s, wheelgun or semi-auto.

According to Hornady’s website, their factory load featuring the 125-grain XTP leaves a 4-inch barrel at 900 fps with 225 ft/lbs of energy, and is still stroking along at 856 fps at the 50-yard line. At a hundred yards, Hornady says this bullet clocks at 817 fps when fired from their factory cartridge. In theory, anyway, my load would have a tiny bit more energy and velocity downrange.

For the record, my factory .38 Special ammunition for social carry happens to be the Hornady 125-grainer found in their American Gunner line. I’ve found it to be consistently accurate at “gunfight” distances.

With modern propellants and good bullets, the venerable .38 Special is hardly anemic. It is a cartridge which has been discouraging bad behavior for more than a century. I’ve known guys who used it to dispatch mountain lions, bobcats, rabbits and snowshoe hares, coyotes and other four-legged critters.

Fortunately, gunmakers have not mothballed the .38 Special. S&W, Taurus, Charter Arms, Ruger, Colt, Henry Repeating Arms, Rossi all make revolvers which will chamber the cartridge.

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