question about cast bullets in 44 mag

[catkiller45]

Just getting into deer hunting withmy 44..6.5 in barrel.
Now tell me honestly..Would I be better using cast bullets
or jacketed bullets..Be using open sights as well...or maybe
you can refer me to a place with more information on this..
thank you..john

[Bookworm]

You come to a place called CastBoolits, and ask if you should use jacketed.

Okay.

[winelover]

I had jacketed HP's fail me hunting whitetail with my 7 1/2" Redhawk. That's when I switched to cast and never looked back. That was in the late 80's. Have taken deer with 240 SWC, 240 RNFP and 265 RNFP, in both revolver and carbine, ever since. HP's not necessary.

Winelover

[44Blam]

Whelp, I've got a nice little load that shoots an Accurate 43-240 AG about 1450 fps from my ruger Redhawk.
With the same load in my Henry H0012, I have been able to consistently hit 2' targets at 300 yards... And those cost me about $0.20 each to make.

[Tatume]

Just getting into deer hunting with my 44..6.5 in barrel.


What sort of gun do you have?

[6bg6ga]

You come to a place called CastBoolits, and ask if you should use jacketed.

Okay.

The man asked a simple question that should be answered responsibly. The man asked about hunting with a 44 magnum. Would cast or jacked be better? I will offer an opinion here..... I have a mold to cast 44 mags along with a variety of calibers and if it were me I would use jacketed if I were hunting deer simply because I wish to take no chances being that I don't wish to walk 50 miles on a hunting trip. Jacketed= more velocity, more accuracy in my humble opinion.

My load would have been a 240gr jacketed hollow point with a max load of 2400. In my S&W its a deadly accurate combination.

[catkiller45]

My revolver is a Taurus..6.5 inch..open sights..Ported barrel
which I have read with lead bullets that the ports might plug.
Any thoughts on this?

[GhostHawk]

I don't see that jacketed gives you that much better anything. In Cast there are molds from 200 to 300 grains, easy to find.

With a revolver I doubt you would be breaking the 1400 fps mark, so you should not need gas checks.

With jacketed the only control you have is which one to buy and how much your willing to spend.

With cast you have a lot more variables at your fingertips. Bullet size, weight, alloy (soft to hard) and you can with some time, effort, and practice fine tune your bullet and load for your gun.

Cast lowers costs, allowing you to shoot more, practice more, giving you more confidence. Confidence is big, I mean REAL big.

The down size is you have to do the work, the research, the casting, loading. You can't just go buy a box and head to the range then the woods.

I know if I was on the receiving end I know which one I'd want shooting at me. And it is NOI the cast boolit guy.

But it is your time and money, so really only you can decide.

[stubert]

The ports won't plug. You might need to clean off the sight a lot. A nice cast 300 grain wide flat nose would be good.

[lightman]

I've killed a few deer with my 44 using a Keith type SWC cast from wheel weights. Carefully culled, my cast shoot as well as factory JHP's.

[6bg6ga]

My point is to remove all question. When in doubt I use jacketed despite the fact I have thousands of bullets cast. I would use gas checks on anything above around 1000 fps but then again that's just me.

[6bg6ga]

The ports won't plug. You might need to clean off the sight a lot. A nice cast 300 grain wide flat nose would be good.

Well every time you tell someone something won't plug it does. My experience with ports is they can and sometimes do plug. A dozen or so rounds surely won't plug the port if the bullets are reasonably hard however soft will plug ports because its happened to me.

[bluejay75]

I reload for the most forgiving loads possible. So none of my 44 loads currently have gas checks. But this takes time to find. I don’t mind load development.

But sometimes you don’t have that time. Jacketed is repeatable in performance and there’s tons of load data that will get you to the same place quicker.

I am resizing 500 Zero Bullet Company .431 jacketed to .430 with a Lee .429 push through sizer as we speak.

And I know exactly what 23.3 grains of H110 will do behind it.

[6bg6ga]

I reload for the most forgiving loads possible. So none of my 44 loads currently have gas checks. But this takes time to find. I don’t mind load development.

But sometimes you don’t have that time. Jacketed is repeatable in performance and there’s tons of load data that will get you to the same place quicker.

I am resizing 500 Zero Bullet Company .431 jacketed to .430 with a Lee .429 push through sizer as we speak.

And I know exactly what 23.3 grains of H110 will do behind it.

Yup...Jacketed performance is repeatable. The answer here shouldn't stem on the fact this is a cast bullet forum thus you have to use cast bullets. Sure, i do shoot a lot of cast bullets I enjoy making them, sizing and lubing them and reloading but when performance MUST be relied upon I will reach for a jacketed round and yes I know there are people here that won't like hearing that but too bad so sad I said it.

[Jeffrey]

Your profile shows you are from New York. To me that means you will be hunting big northern deer.
A big advantage cast has over jacketed is that cast boolits can be made of alloys harder than dead soft. Jacketed bullets cores, except in very few cases, are dead soft lead. This is required by the swaging process by which the bullets are made. A cast boolit can made from harder alloys that will be less likely to deform as much on impact and passage through a deer, and therefore more likely to exit.
This gives two holes to let blood out and air in, resulting in an easier track (if necessary) and a more likely recovery. Give cast boolits a try in your gun.
Before you commit to buying a mould, go to the area of this site "The Commercial Sector". Within it are the sub-forums "Swappin and Sellin" and "Pay it Forward". Within either or both of these sub-forums you should be able to get a few different boolits to try before buying a mould.
In fact, I have the 265gr Ranch Dog mould. Message me with your physical address and I will send you some under the pay it forward rules. I have a .430 sizer and lube with Lee liquid Alox. I can send them to you thus treated or as cast.
Jeffrey

[centershot]

I've killed a few deer with my 44 using a Keith type SWC cast from wheel weights. Carefully culled, my cast shoot as well as factory JHP's.

For a number of years I also used a 250 grain Keith SWC, plain base, loaded over a maximum charge of H-110/296. It killed deer just fine! After a bit, I switched the powder charge to 10.0 gr. of Unique. It continued to kill deer just fine. Turns out, you don't need a whole lot of velocity when you're throwing around 250 gr. boolits! In all those years, I never recovered a boolit, every one of them was a complete pass-through regardless of angle.

[white eagle]

John
use the 44 mag quite a bit and the 475 Linebaugh
would never consider using jacketed in any of my guns
other than paper punching
most large revo's and some rifles are way better with cast
I save the jackets for high speed 22's

[Tatume]

The ports will plug. When they accumulate lead, I just take the point of my pocket knife and flick the lead out. Easy as pie, and completely harmless.

[mdi]

I have 5, 44 Magnums that I load for, but I haven't hunted with any in many years. But, unless deer have evolved into a tougher animal, a 44 cal bullet, running around 240-250 gr @ 800-1,100 fps will do an excellent job. I have been casting a Ranch Dog RNFP bullet of either 240 gr. or 265 gr. for a while and find them accurate. I have not taken any deer, but the bullets were designed for hunting. I also cast many, many Lyman 429421 bullets which have an excellent reputation for taking deer Most of my 44 Magnum bullets are cast of my 11-13 BHN alloy, and air cooled. With a good bullet to gun fit and a decent lube, I experience very little/no leading.

The only jacketed bullet I've reloaded in quite a while is a Hornady XTP which is pretty accurate but I only used them for an experiment in my Contender with extra heavy loads.

Like I said, I no longer hunt but I choose bullets for what they will do and not what they "are supposed to do". A lead bullet designed with a good meplat will do a lot of tissue damage and penetrate well, but a jacketed bullet is supposed to expand. I've seen jacketed bullets fail to do their job, but rarely a good designed cast boolit will fail...

[stubert]

My super blackhawk was magnaported back in the late 80's. It has never plugged the ports.

[Petrol & Powder]

I'm out of that game but I will say the American Whitetail Deer is NOT bulletproof.

A cast lead 44 projectile of 240-260 grains with a flat point or a HP, put in the right place, will easily kill a deer cleanly.

A friend of mine uses a short lever action chambered in 44 mag and he reports outstanding results with shots under 100 yards.
Another friend had an old Ruger 44 carbine and only used jacketed bullets, he also had outstanding results.
Those guns have longer barrels than a handgun but I don't think the reduction of velocity with a shorter barrel is a big deal if the ranges are reasonable.

It's just not that difficult to cleanly bring down a deer. A soft 240-260 grain flat point or HP bullet going 1000 fps or better will do the trick.

In another era, a lot of whitetail deer fell to a soft lead 36 caliber round balls travelling at much slower speeds.

[richhodg66]

Never used them in handguns, but have shot a few deer with .44 bullets in sabots through an inline muzzle loader and the cast SWCs do a lot better than the Hornady XTPs I used once.

Personally, I'd go with cast. For the past nine years, all I've used is cast and arrows and have averaged two deer a year. The cast have been 7mm, .30s, .32s, 35s, a .45-70 and those muzzle loader bullets I talked about. All of them worked fine and I never had to look far to find the deer. I can't see where a cast wouldn't do anything and more than a jacketed bullet would in a .44.

[catkiller45]

Appreciate your replies...lets go back to the ports possibly plugging....If they do will this
have any effect on accuracy? And if they do,it should make it more quiet? this is my first
ever ported weapon..Been a long time since I used open sights as well...john

[Tatume]

At one time I was shooting a Mag-na-port gun in Precision Pistol competition. Lead accumulated in the ports, and as I said, it was easily removed with the point of a pocket knife. It did not completely block the ports. It did not affect the sound signature of the gun. It did not affect accuracy. It was just ugly, and I would remove it every now and again. Don't let it worry you; just shoot the gun, and every few thousand shots, clear the ports with your pocket knife.

[waksupi]

Stick with cast. To cut back on fouling in ports, dip the muzzle in Ed's Red or Moly. Neither are a total cure, but they help.

[yeahbub]

For some years I hunted deer with a Ruger SBH and at first used jacketed at full power, but before long, it became obvious I was generating a lot more horsepower than the task called for. I graduated to using the Lyman 429215 cast SWC with GC cast of WW's with a touch of tin over enough propellant to get them up to 1100-1200 FPS. They shot comfortably and accurately with a flat trajectory out to the distance I was interested in taking a shot, 80-100 yards or so, max. I never recovered one from a deer. They were all shoot-throughs and they never went far. One of those through the boiler room or the lungs and they piled up within a few yards.

[MT Chambers]

I don't believe that anything jacketed would touch my LBT WFN cast boolits in my .44 Mag., .454 Casull, or 45/70, jacketed bullets may show some advantages at longer ranges in the smaller cals. like .30 cal.

[fredj338]

None of my revolvers see jacketed bullets. There really isn't anything a jacketed bullet does better than a lead bullet, though they are more forgiving accuracy wise than a lead bullet. Deer don't require a lot of penetration on broadside shots, so a heavy LHP works just as well as a JHP. The other option is run a soft WNFP about 1300fps. Not staying inside any deer & does a lot of damage along its way out.

[kingrj]

I have killed a lot of deer with the .44 mag in various handguns...Alot with JHP's and a few less with cast SWC's...I have never recovered a hardcast SWC in a deer but I have recovered many of the JHP's..None ran more than 50 yards with either bullet. I have had insufficient penetration out of light (200 grain) JHP's so I mostly use hard cast bullets in my .44's now. But some of my guns just will not shoot my full power cast bullet loads with good accuracy so I use heavy JHP's in those guns. I can tell you that a full power hard cast SWC WILL shoot completely through a smallish whitetail from front to back but a JHP will not. Take you pick!

[6bg6ga]

There you have it so far. Some like myself will tell you that ports can and do plug and others tell you that no ports never plug. You asked a question on a cast bullet forum and got slammed and it happens a lot here some don't play well with others. I maintain that while cast bullets are accurate jacketed are more accurate. I would suggest that you open a few manuals read a few books and make up your mind that way because here on this forum you will probably get a somewhat slanted view in favor of cast bullets. Getting back to the Deer hunting... My suggestions is to hunt with the jacketed but then again that's me my opinion and will thousands of opinions here on the forum.

[smithnframe]

To be specific.......Elmer's 250 grain cast bullet!

[6bg6ga]

There are a lot of copy's out there some are close to Elmer's 429421 mold number and some are just close. So who is making Elmer's 250 gr cast bullet to Elmer's specifications ?

[Bazoo]

I've not taken deer with a 44 mag. My take on it is, If you're going to cast your own, go for cast. But if you're going to buy cast from a company, use jacketed. Confidence is important.

Hornady xtp 44 hold up well in the ones I've recovered from earth, federal factory jacketed had core separations though.

[Mal Paso]

Lead is faster with the same charge, maybe it because the bullets are custom fit but copper is stickier. Accuracy with lead is better than I am. I wouldn't contaminate my bores with copper now that they are seasoned and I just run a brush then dry patch to clean them.

[waterg90]

in by humble opinion both will kill deer. They both have their advantages and disadvantages. I personally think it comes down to the amount of time and effort you are willing to put into it. With cast boolits you have to put in more time and effort to find a boolit design and alloy and load that works reasonably well in your firearm. There are a lot more variables that go into casting boolits. It can be easier to just buy your jacketed boolits because all thats left is to develop a load for said jacked boolit. But wheres the fun in that?

just my $.02

[fcvan]

Sadly, I do not own a 44M :( But my wife does! She saw a 3.75" SBH she just had to have and well, you never argue with SWMBO. Seriously though, she LOVES Rugers and loved the way it balanced. I told her "Well you know, a new caliber means new dies, molds, and such." The look on her face was one of sadness, "Oh. okay." Thats when I told her, "I already have dies and a 240gr mold to load for a friend. Get that sucker!" So far I have the Lee C429-240SWC and and oddball I got in a trade, a 429-208WC. She likes the 240 at 1250fps, and the wadcutter at 1000fps. I think she likes the WC loads so she can show off, she is deadly accurate with that one. I'm pretty sure the WC would be a good pigbuster.

My personal favorite since the 1970s is a S&W M57 8 3/8" in 41 Mag. I have however picked up a couple in the last few years that are growing on me, 2 Old Model Ruger Vaqueros (SBH Frames), both 5 1/2", one in 38-40, and the other in 45 Colt. I also scored a NEF Buffalo Classic in 45 Colt. I'm liking both 'warmer' loads for the 45, but also some 45RB loads at 900fps. Quiet like a 22lr., hits like a hammer. Cast for me, since 1975.

[richhodg66]

Well, reading back through this thread, you have quite a few guys who have killed deer with both jacketed and cast in .44s and they overwhelmingly say go with cast. Then you have one or maybe two who mention no game shot with either who say "well, jacketed are better just because, so there".

Whose advice are you gonna take? People with experience or people shrieking theories?

[Follow Me]

Back when I was younger I used a 242 gr cb flat nose out of a Marlin 1894. One shot and done. It’t miller time.Don’t need no stinkin j-words with holes.
But that’s just me.
Follow me

[KCSO]

The truth is that either will do the job IF you can put them in the right spot. Find a load that you can put into a 4" group at the farthest range you intend to shoot. Don't sacrifice accuracy for power, a max load that will cause a miss is worse than a less powerfull load. Then practice till you can hit what you aim at.

A Good semi wadcutter or Keith style bullet in cast will be more than adequate for deer from either a rifle or handgun. My Dada buddy killed several with a 44 special with heavy loads in his SAA.

[gnostic]

I load a 250 grain air cooled range scrap SWC GC, with either 2400 or WW296 near max with total confidence...

[murf205]

Your profile shows you are from New York. To me that means you will be hunting big northern deer.
A big advantage cast has over jacketed is that cast boolits can be made of alloys harder than dead soft. Jacketed bullets cores, except in very few cases, are dead soft lead. This is required by the swaging process by which the bullets are made. A cast boolit can made from harder alloys that will be less likely to deform as much on impact and passage through a deer, and therefore more likely to exit.
This gives two holes to let blood out and air in, resulting in an easier track (if necessary) and a more likely recovery. Give cast boolits a try in your gun.
Before you commit to buying a mould, go to the area of this site "The Commercial Sector". Within it are the sub-forums "Swappin and Sellin" and "Pay it Forward". Within either or both of these sub-forums you should be able to get a few different boolits to try before buying a mould.
In fact, I have the 265gr Ranch Dog mould. Message me with your physical address and I will send you some under the pay it forward rules. I have a .430 sizer and lube with Lee liquid Alox. I can send them to you thus treated or as cast.
Jeffrey

What he said! Plus, those perfect broadside shots are great, especially for TV hunting shows. But when the truth is told and the buck is a real wall hanger that is giving you a decent quartering shot, most hunters are going to take it. That could mean 3' of needed penetration and just like Jeffery said, a dead soft handgun bullet with a soft lead core will parachute and "probably" stop leaving a smaller entrance hole.

[JAMESGR]

I recently bought a used Tarus .357 model 608 61/2" ported barrel. HOWEVER, ONLY 51/2" ARE RIFLED. THE LAST 1" UNDER THE PORTING IS A MILLED OUT CHAMBER. I don't know whether this is factory or not. (if I had noticed this I may not have bought it). I don't think I have to worry about leading the ports. Carbon build up in the chamber but not leading. Also I just added a post seeking help with bore diameter. PLEASE read it and help. thanks. 71 YRS. AND STILL LEARNING!!!!!!

[Golfswithwolves]

Keith liked cast bullets, so that is a pretty good recommendation from a guy who knew his stuff. I understand also that jacket metal can in time wear more on a gun's bore than a cast lead bullet will.

[kingrj]

Just getting into deer hunting withmy 44..6.5 in barrel.
Now tell me honestly..Would I be better using cast bullets
or jacketed bullets..Be using open sights as well...or maybe
you can refer me to a place with more information on this..
thank you..john

I have probably killed at least three dozen deer with .44 mags. Most have been with 240 JHP's but quite a few with Keith style hard cast 245 grain. Most of the JHP's were recovered in the deer but the cast bullets exited from ANY angle fired. I have had bang flops with both bullet types and had some 50 yard runs with both types. As long as you stay away from the lightweight JHP's you will be fine with either bullet you choose. Interestingly the longest shot I ever made on a deer was with a Ruger SBK with a 4 5/8" barrel using a hard cast SWC over 21 grains of 2400. It was 110 paces. Dropped in its tracks. I shouldn't have tried to make that shot but I was young and "lucky" at the time.

[catkiller45]

All good reading and appreciated..decided on the 255 gr lswc from G T Bullets..Why,hell I have no idea,they looked good I guess..Thinking of using black powder in my loads..NO not really..All I have here is unique..Maybe tomorrow I will get some red dot or 2400..Don't want a lot of powder being around..Also
thinking I might try some loads with the Trail Boss..I have a little left from my 4570 loading days..I doubt I will get a shot any farther than may 60 yards where I hunt in the woods..I used to make tons of cast bullets yrs ago..Sold all my molds and alloy to a guy in NJ..He bought it all..Must have had about 3 ton of alloy..Only thing I ever hunted with cast were small game with my old 223 with gas checks..

On other question for you old timers out there..Ever try widening the notch in your rear sight to see the from one more clear..Also thinking of using one of those Fast Fire red dot things..Something to think about anyway.Again thanks for all your input on the subject..John