.44 Magnum

The .44 Magnum is a large-bore, dual-use cartridge designed for revolvers; however it is also used in many rifles as well. It was developed in the mid-1950s by lengthening the .44 Special cartridge. Despite the ".44" designation, all guns chambered for .44 Magnum and its parent use bullets .429 in (10.897 mm) in diameter. A .44 Magnum revolver or rifle will accept both .44 Magnum and .44 Special ammunition, but a weapon designed for .44 Special will only accept the Special, due to the longer overall length of a .44 Magnum cartridge.

History

The .44 Magnum cartridge was developed in 1956 by handloaders who had "souped-up" the .44 Special and other big bore handgun cartridges for better hunting performance. One of these was the late Elmer Keith, a famous writer and outdoorsman of the 20th Century. Mr. Keith encouraged Smith & Wesson and Remington to introduce this successful new cartridge.

However, Elmer Keith wanted a magnumized .44 Special cartridge rather than a magnumized .45 Long Colt. At the time the selection of .44 caliber projectiles for handloaders was better, and the .44 Special case was smaller in diameter than the .45 Long Colt case.

In this era (around 1950), this allowed a revolver to have more steel surrounding the cartridge and thus that revolver could take higher pressures with hot handloads, thus the weapon would be safer and more reliable. In addition, during the Keith era, factory revolver cylinders were too narrow in diameter to take very stiff .45 caliber handloads. There have since been revolvers made with larger cylinders that can handle far larger cartridges.

In fact, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries there were English revolvers of enormously high caliber, in the range of .80 inches, firing very massive projectiles. These "Howdah" revolvers were used to hunt big game or against fanatical human opponents, and most commonly employed in Africa and India. These weapons were custom made and only a man of wealth could afford one. A 1996 movie called The Ghost and The Darkness featured a "Howdah" pistol in some scenes.

As history would have it, there was developed around 1957 a lengthened high pressure .45 Magnum revolver round (the .454 Casull) that more or less parallels the .44 Magnum and was developed by Dick Casull. It has always been more powerful than the .44 Magnum but never nearly as popular. Elmer Keith did NOT develop the .454 Casull cartridge and Keith's cartridge has so far stood the test of time better. The .44 Magnum has also proven far more popular than the .41 Magnum developed in 1964 or the very powerful .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum developed in the last years of the 20th Century. (Note, however, that weapons firing the recently developed .500 S&W Magnum cartridge tend to be very expensive and as such are rather uncommon at this time.) Looking at cost, accuracy, hunting performance, recoil, and availability the .44 Magnum is arguably the best balanced of the high-caliber magnum class of revolver rounds.

The only magnum handgun chambering more popular than the .44 is the .357 Magnum, which was not primarily designed as a big game cartridge, though it is used by some for deer. The .357 is not considered a "big bore" round.

From the start, the .44 Magnum handguns were designed to tolerate the high pressures this cartridge produces. Some past dual-use handgun/rifle cartridges, like the 44-40 Winchester, gave their manufacturers trouble and occasional lawsuits when people loaded the "High-Speed" versions designed for rifles into handguns. This was one of the reasons why the .44 Magnum casing was lengthened so it would not chamber in .44 Special revolvers. Some high-quality .44 Special weapons could accept the high pressures of the new cartridge, but other older guns would be damaged or destroyed. The lengthened cartridge avoided this issue.

The dual-use concept has been popular since the Old West with cartridges like the 44-40 Winchester, whose "High-Speed" loadings were a sort of precursor to the .44 Magnum. Other dual-use rounds were the 32-20 Winchester, the 38-40 Winchester, and the more recent .357 Magnum. As a rifle cartridge the .44 Magnum is reasonably powerful yet compact and not bulky. and far better on deer and other big game than the .357 Magnum, but the .357 is said by some to be more versitile as it covers small and medium game better and has less recoil.

The .44 Magnum delivers a large, heavy bullet with high velocity for a handgun. In its full-powered form, it produces too much recoil and muzzle blast to be suitable for a police weapon, and is likely not very suitable for shooters of smaller build or with small hands. It was and still remains a very fine and popular short-range deer, black bear, wild pig and other North American big game cartridge, but it is on the light side for elk or moose, and inadequate against a brown bear. It is easy to reload, very accurate, enjoyable to shoot if one can tolerate the recoil, and universally available in the United States.

This cartridge has a natural home in single action revolvers like the Ruger Super Blackhawk and some autoloading handguns like the Desert Eagle. The single-action designs tend to "rear up" when fired and tame the recoil a great deal, while the gas system of the autoloading weapons absorbs and buffers recoil significantly. Double action revolvers tend to transmit more recoil to the shooter's arm, causing it to be perceived as more harsh.

The .44 Magnum is a splendid short-range big game cartridge in a various short, handy rifles, especially in heavy brush or timber, out to about 150 meters. Past that, the trajectory is too steep for easy hits on game, as the short, fat bullets have poor aerodynamic shape. Still, many shooters like it as they can thus have a rifle and a handgun in the same cartridge, making logistics easier. It is popular in rifles within these limitations for big game. It will also work well for coyotes and animals in that class, though it is rather expensive for that purpose versus lesser cartridges.

Many handloaders will load lighter than factory loadings for other purposes and for target shooting.

An excellent write up of the .44 Magnum can be found in CARTRIDGES OF THE WORLD by Barnes.

A cartridge inspired by the .44 Magnum was an even longer version called the .444 Marlin, made for Marlin's line of lever action rifles. Out to 125 meters or so the .444 Marlin will take any North American game reliably, even the great bears. Oddly, this .444 Marlin cartridge has been chambered in some handguns, but it is just too big to efficiently burn powder in a short handgun barrel, causing very obnoxious muzzle blast.

In Popular Culture

This cartridge was made notorious through its use by the "Dirty Harry" character in the Clint Eastwood film of the same name. However, it was not then and is not now "the most powerful handgun [cartridge] in the world." Nor is it in any realistic sense a practical police cartridge, though some persons do favor it for personal protection purposes.

Synonyms

• .44 Mag.
• .44 S&W Magnum
• .44 Remington Magnum

See also

• List of firearms
• List of handgun cartridges
• List of rifle cartridges

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