.44 Magnum

The .44 Magnum is a large-bore, dual-use cartridge designed for revolvers; however it is also used in many rifles as well. It was developed in the mid-1950s by lengthening the .44 Special cartridge. Despite the ".44" designation, all guns chambered for .44 Magnum and its parent use bullets .429 inches (10.9 mm) in diameter. A .44 Magnum revolver or rifle will 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.

Origin

The .44 Magnum cartridge was the result of "souped-up" handloading of the .44 Special. The .44 Special, and other big bore handgun cartridges were being loaded with heavy bullets pushed at higher than normal velocities for better hunting performance. One of these handloaders was the late Elmer Keith, a famous writer and outdoorsman of the 20th Century.

Elmer Keith settled on the .44 Special cartridge as the basis for his experimentation, rather than the larger .45 Long Colt. At the time the selection of .44 caliber projectiles for handloaders was better, and the .44 Special case was smaller in diameter than the .45 Long Colt case--in revolvers of the same size, this meant the .44 caliber revolvers had thicker, and therefore stronger, cylinder walls than the .45. This allowed higher pressures to be used without risk of a burst cylinder.

Mr. Keith encouraged Smith & Wesson and Remington to produce a commercial version of this new high pressure loading, and revolvers chambered for it. While S&W produced the first prototype revolver chambered in .44 Magnum, the famous Model 29, Sturm, Ruger actually beat S&W to market by several months in 1956 with a .44 Magnum version of the single action Blackhawk revolver. The exact reason for this is lost in legend; one version says a Ruger employee found a cartridge cased marked ".44 Remington Magnum" and took it to Bill Ruger, while another says a Remington employee provided Ruger with early samples of the ammunition.

The .44 Magnum was an immediate success, and the direct descendents of the S&W Model 29 and the .44 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk are still in production, and have been joined by numerous other makes and models of .44 Magnum revolvers, and even a few semiautomatic pistols, such as the Desert Eagle. While modern steels and manufacturing techniques have allowed even stronger clyinders, leading to larger and more powerful cartidges such as the .454 Casull, and .480 Ruger, in revolvers the same size as a .44 Magnum, the .44 Magnum is still considered a top choice today. In 2006, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the .44 Magnum, Ruger introduced a special 50th anniversary Blackhawk revolver, in the original .44 Magnum "Flattop" style.

Technical specifications

The .44 Magnum delivers a large, heavy bullet with high velocity for a handgun. In its full-powered form, it produces too much recoil and muzzle blast to be suitable for a police weapon, and is likely not very suitable for shooters of smaller build or with small hands.

Dual use of the .44 magnum

The dual-use concept has been popular since 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.

From the start, the .44 Magnum handguns were designed to tolerate 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 was one of the reasons why the .44 Magnum casing was lengthened so it would not chamber in .44 Special revolvers. Some high-quality .44 Special weapons could accept the high pressures of the new cartridge, but other older guns would be damaged or destroyed. The lengthened cartridge avoided this issue.

As a rifle cartridge the .44 Magnum is reasonably powerful yet compact and not bulky, and far better on deer and other big game than the .357 Magnum. However, the .357 is said by some to be more versatile as it covers small and medium game better and has less recoil.

Suitable game

It was 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 adequate against a brown bear only with precise shot placement. It is easy to reload, very accurate, enjoyable to shoot if one can tolerate the recoil, and universally available in 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. The single-action designs tend to "rear up" when fired and tame the recoil a great deal, while the gas system of the autoloading weapons absorbs and buffers recoil significantly. Double action revolvers tend to transmit more recoil to the shooter's arm, causing it to be perceived as more harsh.

Range

The .44 Magnum is a splendid short-range big game cartridge in a various short, handy rifles, 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 big game. It will also work well for coyotes and animals in that class, though it is rather expensive for that purpose versus lesser cartridges.

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

.44 Magnum in popular culture

This cartridge was made notorious through its supposed 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 is it in any realistic sense a practical police cartridge, though some persons do favor it for personal protection purposes. In the film Magnum Force, Harry Callahan admits to using light .44 Special loads, due to their reduced recoil, even though his gun can handle magnum loads. It has been said the .44 Magnum was not even used by Clint Eastwood when filming. The actual gun used was reportedly the Smith & Wesson Model 57 in .41 Magnum, due to the availability of the model at the S&W factory.

In the eighties sitcom Sledge Hammer!, the protagonist, Inspector Sledge Hammer, is in love with his ivory-handled .44 magnum. The show was a spoof of the Dirty Harry movie series.

In the Police Academy movies, Tackleberry carries a .44 Magnum and regards it highly.

In the movie Taxi Driver, the gun gets sold to Travis Bickle. The seller remarks that "It's a monster. Can stop a car - put a bullet right into the block. A premium high resale gun."

John Hartigan, the anti-hero from Frank Miller's comic book That Yellow Bastard: A Tale from Sin City, carries and is quite proficient in wielding a .44 Magnum revolver.

The .44 is referred in various second verses version of the school-age parodic anthem The Burning of the School.

Barry Burton from the video game Resident Evil uses a custom .44 as his primary weapon

Synonyms

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

Writings about the .44 Magnum

Barnes, Frank C. Cartridges of the world, Chicago : Follett Pub. Co., 1980 - An excellent write up of the .44 Magnum can be found in this title.

Gourt Home::Gourt :: .44 Magnum