44 mag rifle

[farmerfish77]

A friend of mine just got a 44 mag henry rifle and we are wondering what kind of loads would be good in it. I have some 250 gr. swc with 14.3 gr aa #7 that I loaded up for handgun, guess we will try that. Also have some other handgun loads that we will try. Wondering how a rifle load differs from handgun? He is wanting something that will shoot for maximum distance. Anyone have any experience with 44 mag rifles??:Fire::Fire::confused:

[runfiverun]

rifle and handgun loads are the same.
the 44 mag is held to 44 mag pressures.
i like 800-x in mine as well as 2400. your aa-7 would be in that range.
hitting 18" rocks to 400+ yds is feasable with one of these rifles

[leadeye]

I have one of these in 45 lc, it gets the same ammo my Blackhawk uses, stout or light. It prefers the RNF bullet type, really likes the RCBS 300 GC. :-D

[JIMinPHX]

I have had absolutely spectacular results using heavy loads of H-110 in a .44 mag rifle with J-word bullets. That powder turned out to be a little hot with plain base cast boolits. It burned craters into the base of the boolit. I would expect it to work well with gas checked boolits, although I don't have any gas checked .44 molds, so I never got the chance to try it.

H-110 gave me over 1700fps & 1" groups at 50 yards with iron sights using 240gr & 300gr slugs. Extreme velocity variation was less than 50 fps for the whole string of fire with a given boolit weight all day.

In general, slightly slower powders tend to work better for me in the rifle than they do in the pistol.

[C A Plater]

Ditto to what Jim said and will add 200 grain HP and H110 did very well too.

[AlaskaMike]

I'll echo what the others have said about max pressure for rifle and handgun .44 mag being the same.

What I do differently with my .44 mag rifle ammo is I'm very selective about bullet style. You need something that will feed reliably, and sometimes that eliminates long SWCs like the Keith bullets. My RCBS 44-250-K will feed most of the time, but not always so I now only use them in .44 special brass if I want to shoot them in the rifle. The Lyman 429244 has a very slightly shorter nose, and I have yet to have one of those fail to feed. However, because I also have good success with every 300 to 320 grain WFN bullet style I've tried, I've been sticking with those since I prefer the heavier bullet for my purposes.

My preferred powders for my .44 mag rifle ammo is W296 or Lil' Gun.

Good luck,
Mike

[farmerfish77]

Thnx for all the info. Gonna try some 300 gr. boolits with some 296. We did'nt get out to shoot yet and getting nice rain rite now so maybe tomorrow eve.

[watkibe]

Semi wadcutter bullets are famous for not feeding smoothly in lever guns. Round nose flatpoints are much more reliable.

[BarryinIN]

I've had two 44 Mag rifles- a Ruger 77/44 I have now, and a Ruger semiauto 44 I wish I still had.

The 77/44 likes bullets around 265 grains, and slow powders in the upper end of the recommended charge range.

The semiauto liked lighter bullets (200-210) and middle range loads.

They do what they do.