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The .44 Special: A Versatile and Increasingly Rare Cartridge

While its star has faded, the .44 special remains a great cartridge.

The .44 Special: A Versatile and Increasingly Rare Cartridge
(Photo submitted by the author)

"She come to the joint, .44 in each hand. Said stand aside all you women and men, ‘Cause I’m looking for my man."—Blue Yodel No. 9 by Jimmie Rodgers (1931)

If you’re a fan of old-time country or traditional music, you may have noticed the .44 Special crops up in quite a few of the murder and mayhem ballads that were kind of a staple of this genre. Whether this was due to the popularity of the cartridge or the way “forty-four” rolled off the tongue or fit into verse…well, I don’t know the answer to that. What I do know is that the .44 Special is a great cartridge that’s largely overlooked today. It was developed by Smith & Wesson at the turn of the century—the previous one—at a time when smokeless powders were first coming into wide use.

S&W already had its .44 Russian, but the case was too short to use the bulky smokeless of the day, so the company lengthened the Russian case by 0.2 inch, although the resulting .44 Special only matched the performance of the Russian round, rather than improving on it.

My friend Joel Hutchcroft, editor of Shooting Times—and also the person responsible for putting together Hodgdon’s annual reloading manual—rustled up an article by Skeeter Skelton from a 1966 issue of Shooting Times that was reprinted in the 2018 Hodgdon annual. In it, Skelton writes that the .44 Special “is inherently more accurate than any other centerfire pistol cartridge that I have fired…”

Loyal Fan Base

44 special loads
(Chart submitted by the author)

Skelton, Elmer Keith, and others were part of a loosely formed “.44 Associates” group that saw more ballistic potential in the cartridge than the standard 240-grain bullet at 760 fps. They hot-rodded it to the point that Skelton writes: “Handloaded, the .44 Special made the .357—also handloaded to peak performance—eat dust. It was the case of the good big man beating the hell out of a good little man.”

We do have better .44 Special defensive loads today, as you can see in the chart—most more powerful than the 308 ft.-lbs. of energy of the old standard and all featuring better bullets. But other than a couple of the offerings from the boutique makers, they don’t eclipse the .357 Magnum in terms of energy.

All beat the living hell out of the .38 Special, though, which generates energies in the low 200s. Specialty .45 Colt loads will do better than the .44 Special in terms of energy, but when it comes to run-of-the-mill loads, they’re fairly close.

The fly in the ointment is gun availability. While one of the great things about the .44 Special is it can be fired in .44 Magnum revolvers, true .44 Specials are rare, with one big exception.

Ruger Rarity

Ruger offers distributor exclusives in both the GP100 and various New Model Blackhawks, but good luck finding one. Very occasionally, you’ll see a Single Action Army clone on the used market. No, your best bet today is Charter Arms and its Bulldog line of revolvers, which is fairly extensive although primarily limited to the snubnose variety. Prices are in the mid-$400 range for the most part, and there’s a decent selection.

You’ll see that some of the loads in the chart are specifically singled out as too powerful for the Bulldog, and this model has one other point of notoriety: Serial killer David Berkowitz used a Bulldog during his reign of terror in New York City in the mid-1970s—earning him the sobriquet “the .44 Caliber Killer” in addition to “Son of Sam.”

I’m fortunate to have two .44 Specials, both Rugers. One is a GP100 with a three-inch barrel that was briefly a standard catalog item. The other is a 2010-vintage New Model Blackhawk I inherited from my late father-in-law. (Interestingly, in the article I mentioned, Skelton described adding ivory grips to his first .44 Special, and my father-in-law also swapped out the wooden grips on his for white plastic—perhaps inspired by that piece.)

Like the .44 Associates and probably most all .44 Special fans today, I reload for it. Brass is currently available only from Starline, but there are plenty of bullets thanks to the .44 Magnum. My two favorite loads are a 240-grain Oregon Trail Laser-Cast semi-wadcutter ahead of Winchester 244 and a 180-grain Hornady XTP charged with IMR Target.

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Loads and Loads of Fun

Out of the three-inch barrel of the GP100, I’m getting 760 fps with the hard-cast bullet—just like the original Special load. It’s my tent load, and while it generates modest energy, I figure the tough bullet can punch through the skull of any black bear that’s intent on dragging me out of my sleeping bag.

The Hornady XTP load shoots great out of the Blackhawk, which has a 4.5-inch barrel. With a muzzle velocity of 800 fps, it’ll group under two inches at 25 yards, and it’s comfortable to boot.

What does the future hold for the .44 Special? It’s not like there’s a shortage of factory ammunition, although it’s a shame that SIG dropped its excellent V-Crown .44 load a while back. While Hodgdon still has load data on its website, it hasn’t published recipes in the annual manual for a couple of years, and that’s not a great sign.

Still, I suppose the cartridge will limp along and almost certainly outlive me. It should be more popular because it has a lot of qualities today’s shooters look for: It’s accurate, easy to shoot, and has a decent amount of power. But then again, we .44 Associates pride ourselves on appreciating a cartridge a lot of people don’t.




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