I started shooting with a local Cowboy Action Shooting club several months ago. This can be an expensive proposition when you consider the expense of the necessary firearms. I also shoot with a USPSA club and own many modern pistols and long arms, but acquiring the cowboy firearms could be a financial challenge. Cowboy shooters must have a SASS-legal and (more or less) period-correct shotgun, pistol caliber carbine and two revolvers. The deciding factor for me in joining the club was that I already owned two single-action revolvers, so acquiring only the shotgun and carbine was less of a financial burden. Sure, I could've maxed out the CCs, but that's just not my way.
Most of the really good shooters in the club - and nationally from what I understand - shoot .357 rifles and pistols and feed them .38 Special "mouse fart" loads. My problem was that my two single-action revolvers were .44 Magnums that I'd previously used for wild pig hunting. These are not optimum for CAS because of their recoil. Cowboy rules require lead-only bullets at modest velocities. I could load these easily enough in my .44s, but even at low(er) velocities, the standard .44 240 grain bullet still has appreciable recoil. I'm not especially recoil-shy, but speed and accuracy is the name of the game in CAS, so reducing recoil as much as possible is key to success. This is why so many of the good shooters load light 120 to 130 grain lead bullets in .38 Spl. brass for their .357s. I didn't have any really light .44 bullets on my loading bench and my experiments with lighter powder charges under my various 200+ grain bullets were improvements, but not match-winning combinations.
After a lot of research and experimentation, I came up with a recipe that resulted in extremely light recoil and great accuracy at seven yards (a typical cowboy steel target range). One problem is that the .44 Magnum case has a lot of volume and using light powder charges under a light projectile tends to result in inconsistent performance and poor case sealing. My solution here was to use the stubby little .44 Russian case. The lightest .44 projectile I could find turned out to be the humble and ancient round ball. I ordered a two-cavity Lee 120 grain, .433 round ball mold and a hundred Starline .44 Russian cases.
Here's the recipe that's worked best for me thus far:
Bullet: 120 gr. Lee round ball
Case: Starline .44 Russian
Primer: Winchester Large PIstol
Powder: 5.5 grains of Trail Boss
This gives great accuracy out of my Ruger Super Blackhawk and shoots very close to the sights regulated for magnum loads. I've gotten one ragged hole on the paper, offhand, at seven yards. It shoots about 3/4" low at this distance, compared to a full house 240 grain magnum load. This isn't enough to quibble about, especially considering that the CAS steel targets are 16 inches square!
If some of you guys (and gals) would like to try your hand at Cowboy Action Shooting with your .44 Mag revolvers, the above recipe should be a good starting point.
Best regards
Doc