The hard choice is something middle-of-the-road that is almost but not quite as hot as the maximum loads. I could have chosen any number of powders but elected to use Ramshot True Blue, which is a very fine-grain ball powder that meters beautifully. It has proven itself to be useful in .357 Magnum, so this was a logical addition.

Loading the .41 Magnum is routine, although it does want a fairly stout crimp for good burning and to prevent bullet pull with heavy loads. When it comes to primers, everyone seems to believe that if it says magnum on the cartridge you must use magnum primers. Not so.

Some loaders think they are required for any ball type powder. That's not true either, and I'm pretty sure you could get along happily never using them with the possible exception of the very slow burning magnum powders such as H-110. Even there you might not notice any difference unless you chronograph the loads.

Over the years I have shot many comparisons where the only difference was standard versus magnum primers. With some powders they are positively detrimental to consistency and accuracy, but my experience with the .44 Magnum and now the .41 shows a velocity gain with the magnum primers and H-110. Accuracy was about the same, so if velocity is paramount use H-110 and magnum primers.

We are always asked for "best" comparisons, and the more tests I do the more convinced I am that such things simply do not exist in shooting. If you look at the accuracy results in my table you will see a couple of sub-one-inch groups, and it is certainly tempting to consider the half-inch group to be the best load, but it is at that point I remind myself about the bell curve.

We know that within every set of test results we can find both good and bad numbers, and this is where we must back up and look at the bigger picture. In the examples here, slightly different powder charges did not show similar wonderfulness, so it might be best to think that the half-inch group was a happy convergence of chance. All the other averages are very much alike.

Some time ago S&W had the bright idea to change its rear sights from machined forgings to a metal injection molded part made by a vendor. This is one of those changes that resulted in a better looking part with no decline in quality. After all, the rear sight is not exactly a high-stress part where a forging might be beneficial.

At the same time, S&W also drilled and tapped the top strap--under the rear sight--for easy installation of a scope base.

So for this exercise I mounted a Simmons 2.5-7X variable scope in a Weigand base. The scope combined with the 7.5-inch full lug barrel and unfluted cylinder of the 657-5 brought the weight of the gun to 4.1 pounds and made recoil a non-issue.

I'm sure the Hogue rubber grips helped, too. In fact with some of the lighter loads it felt very much like shooting a .38 with wadcutters, but the chronograph told a different story and things were speeding along nicely.

Just for grins I took the .41 over to the rifle range and after a bit of trial and error found where I had to hold to hit a 14-inch diameter steel plate at 300 yards. Actually there was a nice rock a couple of feet over the gong that became my aiming point and then, from a good sandbag rest, using a maximum load of H-110 and the 220-grain Speer bullet I was able to hit the gong with pleasing regularity. To me that's plinking with style.