44 mag hunting loads

[fatnhappy]

No shots further than 35 yards.

stick. string.
125 grain muzzies.

[44man]

Dale is exactly correct.
I only shot one deer in Ohio that I could not eat. Big OOOOLD buck in full rut that walked past me standing in the open. I put an arrow through him and when I approached him HE STUNK. He looked 50 years old, gray hair everywhere. I used all the care I could cleaning him but the meat was no good. Tough too, an hour or two in a pressure cooker and you could still sole your boots with the stuff.
The doe in PA forests were all different. I would shoot one and it would be good, the next from the same tree, same size doe and the meat would be strong. Then many had leg worms that had to be removed.
The deer here in the eastern panhandle of WV are all good, just like Ohio deer and you do not know it is venison.

I don't have all my chrono readings but an LBT 320 gr with 21.5 gr of 296 is going 1316 fps from a 10" barrel. I went to 23 gr during testing and it reached 1421 fps, started to stick brass and was not accurate. 21.5 was the best and is also the best with the Lee 310 gr.
Barrel length will change this reading.
If you stop this boolit in a deer, it might stop in the second deer standing behind the one you shot at!

[44man]

stick. string.
125 grain muzzies.

No more Muzzies for me!
They kill good but I broke every single one in the ground after going through deer. Got just too expensive. The little tip would strip the threads and drive back into the blades.

[Dale53]

I have no explanation for it, but that is just what it chronographed with my two hunting revolvers (S&W Model 29 with 8 3/8" barrel and a Ruger Red Hawk with 7½" barrel).

Now, I chronographed that a long time ago with an Oehler chronograph. I now have access to a different chronograph (another Oehler) and probably ought to chronograph it again.

I thought it was about 100 fps "slow" but accepted that as that was "how it was".

FWIW
Dale53

[peter nap]

There was a thread a while back and I wish I could find it, discussing lower velocities with heavy bullets for Deer. Maybe 44man can help since he was a major contributor.
It was one of the most interesting I've read....and I forgot to bookmark it.

[44man]

Can't remember all of what was posted but maybe I will touch on it again. I like heavy boolits for hunting but would be happy with the 265 gr RD in the .44. I shoot up to 330 gr in the .44, 300 to347 in the .45 and 420 in the .475.
I load strictly 100% for accuracy and make the boolits as hard and tough as needed for each caliber and find the velocity for each for that accuracy.
The .45 runs along at 1160 fps and the .475 is 1329 fps. All three calibers are deadly on deer but there is a decided difference when something is hit with the .475 even with very hard boolits.
The .44 at 1316 is very deadly but it seems the .45 is less so. Although 1000 to 1200 fps kills just fine, it seems around 1300 is better and there is no need at all for soft boolits or expansion. The .45 seems to be better with around 300 gr boolits a little faster.
We do a complete necropsy on every deer and it still looks like the 1300 to 1350fps range does the most internal damage without meat loss.
Boolit weight and diameter can do amazing things and the .475 penetrated 14 one gallon jugs of water and blew the first 4 sky high and badly split two more. The insides of deer look like the water jugs! Yet there is just a small exit hole and no meat loss.
Now moving to my 45-70 BFR at over 1600 fps, internal damage is not there at all and I have lost a couple of deer and others went 200 yards or more. Blood trails are poor and lungs are intact except for a hole.
It seems as if the big flat nose creates a pressure wave that moves tissue away from the boolit path in a secondary wound channel. That collapses, leaving only the primary hole.
I cured the problem by making the boolit expand even though there is an accuracy loss caused by fliers.
I went too far last season and lost almost all of the off shoulder so some adjustment is needed.
I used Babores great 420 gr hollow point made from 50-50 WW's and pure, oven hardened. I think the pure needs reduced a little, maybe to 25%.
Anyway it is a mistake to look for too much velocity in the .44, look for accuracy first and it will just plain work. Load the same for the .45 by finding a heavy boolit at the same velocity range.
I would not try and shoot heavy boolits too slow because of the mismatch to the twist rate.
It can be a mistake to load light, fast, expanding boolits too if it stops penetration or if a boolit stops on bone. Harden the boolit too much at that speed and internal damage might be reduced. In the end, the heavier boolits just do a better job.
Whitworth, Bioman and I have stacked up a huge pile of deer and all have been given the once over to see what the boolit did inside where it is important.
Nothing you shoot at for boolit tests will tell you what happens in animals.

[Thumbcocker]

Anthony68:

There is a lot of good advice in the above posts. Many of the posters have taken a truckload of deer with .44s. I have not taken nearly as manny critters as .44 man and the others. With that said; in my limited experience white tails are not especially hard to kill with any reasonable load. My hunting load is a 429421hp cast of 50/50 ww and soft lead over 22grns of IMR4227. I have never recovered a boolit shot into a deer with this load. I have also used solid Keiths over 18.5 of 2400. There has not been that much difference in performance no boolits recovered. The longest shot I have ever connected on a deer with was 65 yards with a second shot at 35 yards. What usually happens, in my experience, is that the deer will show little or no reaction to a hit and will walk off 35-75 yards and fall over. Two exceptions are heart area hits where you will get the high kick reaction and hits in the shoulder upper shoulder area that hit colse to the spine. Then you get a drop in place. I hold for the heart lung rib area because I like shoulder meat and shoulder shots can bust up the bones and cause that loss of a good bit of meat. I can not speak to heavy boolits on deer because I have never used them.