Taming the brutal beast: a comfortable shooting .454?

American Handgunner, Sept-Oct, 2004 by John Taffin

There was a time in my life (and probably in yours too) in which I was invincible, or at least thought I was. Twenty years ago it was not unusual for me to shoot hundreds of heavy sixgun loads on any given day and think nothing of it. If the trigger guard whacked my middle finger enough to break it open I simply wrapped it with foam rubber and tape. It eventually got so bad and was so full of scar tissue, I had to visit a doctor who told me the answer was to quit shooting; to which I quickly replied that would never happen.

One memorable day was spent with three different Freedom Arms .454s: a 4 3/4", a 7 1/2" and a 10" while working up extensive loading data on the then relatively new cartridge. By the time I had finished I had fired over 800 rounds in one day. Bullet weights consisted of 240, 250,260 and 300 grain jacketed bullets, while cast bullets were used from 260 up to 340 grains. All loads were chronographed and fired for groups. My last five shots went into less than 1", probably because I was so happy to be finished.

Do I tell this to prove how tough I was? Nope, rather to show how dumb I was. It was an extremely foolish thing to do and something I would caution anyone against trying. I have been paying the price in my wrists and hands ever since. This definitely fits the category of "Don't Try This At Home."

There was a time the .44 Magnum was considered to have too much recoil for most shooters to handle. In fact, we can go back two decades before the introduction of the big .44 to the .357 Magnum and find warnings pertaining to the recoil of that first Brutal Beast. The .44 Magnum made the original Magnum seem almost mild by comparison. Since the advent of the .44 Magnum, which was then followed by the subsequent introduction of the .454 less than three decades later, it has been bigger and bigger, and more and more brutal as far as recoil is concerned.

The .475 and .500 Linebaughs, the .475 and .500 Linebaugh Longs, the .445 SuperMag and the latest King of the Beasts, the .500 S&W Magnum all take their toll, and the near constant pounding I have subjected myself to since 1957 is definitely a chicken that has come home to roost. The .44 Magnum was brutal in 1956 and the fact we have even heavier recoiling sixguns today does not minimize the felt recoil of that first truly big bore Magnum.

No Pleasant Days

I will tell you in all honesty there is simply no way I can ever again spend a "pleasant" day shooting hundreds of heavy big bore sixgun loads. Over the past 25 years I have written somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 articles. As far as I know, I'm the only one who has done extensive testing and load data of EVERY big bore sixgun load from the .44 Magnum right up to and including the new .500 S&W Magnum. I expect the .500 S&W is my swan song as far as developing new load data and shooting hundreds of rounds through a truly big bore sixgun. The spirit is certainly willing, however the flesh is weak. The hands and the wrist simply will not take the pounding anymore.

No way should it be concluded from this I will be shooting less. In fact, I will probably be shooting even more, as I will be shooting a whole lot smarter. In fact I have a Trio of Smarts.

1) Smart: There was a time when everything I loaded had to be heavy. When I started reloading nearly 50 years ago I rarely had to mark the cartridge box as to what it contained. The Standard Loads were assembled with #2400 and my three main sixgun cartridges were the .45 Colt with a 260 hard cast over 18.5 grains; the .44 Special, a 250 and 17.5 grains; and the same 250 in the .44 Magnum with 22.5 grains. In the relatively light sixguns of the mid-20th century, recoil was heavy in all of them, however nothing like what the future held.

Now in my Golden Years (and whoever tagged them with that label was either a total idiot or a cruel jokester), I find those same cartridges and bullets more often than not loaded with Unique in quantities of 8.0, 7.5 and 10.0 grains respectively. There's a decrease in muzzle velocity of several hundred fps as well as a most welcome decrease in felt recoil. For anything short of really big game hunting we can get along quite well with a hard cast bullet at 900-1,000 fps in any big bore sixgun.

At yesterday's Cowboy Shoot I used a 2nd Generation Colt Single Action Army and an even older Great Western Single Action Frontier, both chambered in .44 Special. My loads were duplicates of the old original circa 1908 .44 Special and even earlier .44 Russian with a 250 grain bullet at around 750 fps. One of the other shooters asked me why I was using such "heavy" loads! I hope I never get to a time when I think these are heavy loads--but then again everything has a way of changing.

2) Smarter: For the first time in my life I now have a Ransom Rest. I never had one before for two simple reasons. When I was younger, steadier and certainly tougher, I felt I could outshoot one no matter the sixgun or caliber; and secondly, it's not a good idea to try to use any sixgun larger than a .44 Magnum in a Ransom Rest. For the past month I have been thoroughly enjoy myself shooting standard loads through several single action sixguns in a Ransom Rest without having to totally concentrate as I tried to get the tightest groups I could possibly produce. Now that job will more often than not be taken over by the Ransom.