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I want to “train” my wife to shoot her 44 Spl Bulldog by starting with some exceptionally mild loads. The bullet I’m using is a 185 full wadcutter. I want to start with a 300-400 fps and work up to 800-900 fps. My concern with these very slow loads is what powder works best to make sure all rounds exit the barrel.
Any ideas?
I'm guessing Bullseye is what you'd want.
I used to pop squirrels with a Speer .433” round ball and 3.5 grs of Bullseye from a .44 Special S&W. Try it with your WC and see what happens. Should be a hoot. Red Dot or Tite group should work too.
Sounds like a good start. My wife wants to shoot, but is afraid of the large bore handgun, so I need to ease her into it. She’s shooting my Ruger Mk II with a fair amount of confidence.
4.5 grains of unique is what i use for mild 44loads with the lee 210 rnfp. If this is one of the light weight revolvers by charter arms i might try even a little lower. My 41 mag pug still lets you know you are shooting something with 5.0 unique and a 190 gr lee swc. In more sizable guns people compare these 44 loads like shooting a 22 not sure i would go that far but they are mild in a black hawk and a sw24 and a tauras.
My Bulldog was happiest with a 250 gr bullet.
I would think Bullseye would work fine. In my elderly speer manual they list loads with the .433 120 gr round ball . 2.3 gr BE will get you 504 fps, 3.0 gr unique is 470 fps there's other powders listed also in the same vel range .
Be careful. Low velocity round ball loads will bounce back from hard backstops.
A friend was shooting bowling pins with hard cast in his .45 auto and a bullet rebounded and hit him in the fellas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thumbcocker
After the appropriate pause; we fell laughing from the spectator bench.
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Thumbcocker you better believe it went walking in the swamp 40 or so years ago and had a philly derringer fired at a tree and woke up bout late afternoon with a splitting headache. Came out the woods and wife said good lord what happened had a not in center of my forehead bout size of my fist both eyes were black. She said i was gone bout 5 or so hours. Went back next day and saw hole in tree 1/2 deep but no lead ball must have came back and hit me. Last time i ever shot a tree you can be sure.
My CA Bulldog seems to like 180 grain full wadcutters ("real" weight of my cast bullets hovers about 182 gns) using Remington primers and Alliant Bullseye powder, weighed to 3.8 grains. Quite accurate (for me) at my ~45-foot rage, and fairly mild. A challenge to me, re the Bulldog, is it being so lightweight and relatively small in size, the perceived recoil is quite noticeable, as opposed to the same load in say, a Ruger Blackhawk. Still, it may be a starting place for your lady. BEST!
I had to go with different grips on my charter arms the grips were just to small. But the light weight is a trade off i will make for ease of carry. I don't own a bull dog mine is the 41 mag pug now the recoil on that with full power loads is not for the timid.
Friend of mine had a CA Bulldog and wanted light loads for his wife. I got him 50 rounds of .44 Russian brass and he used a 200 grain SWC over a charge of Bullseye. I DO NOT remember the load. I do remember he was looking at light .45 ACP data to experiment with.
I picked up some 185 FWC and am going to try these with some red dot, green dot or 231. It may be a few days however, as my reloading room is under construction by the HVAC contractors.