"Hunting" Handguns

[gaijin]

Nice group of Smiths.

I'd bet your dot scoped .460 would be good for deer to 150 yds. or so.
With my eyes I'd feel confident to 100 yds. with a braced firing position.

[Coal Dragger]

My one and only wheel gun at the moment.

[gaijin]

That's a good one.
Is it .454/.45 ACP or .45 Colt/.45 ACP cylinders?
Freedom Arms is the cream of the crop for production revolvers.

I'm partial to the Bisley style grip frame for hard recoiling revolvers.

[Coal Dragger]

It is a .454 with a .45 ACP cylinder. The .45 ACP cylinder is a lot of fun, and very accurate despite what the internet says about the affects of a .451" bullet in a .452" bore, or the long jump the bullet has to make to the barrel forcing cone.

It also serves as a great garbage disposal for .45 ACP reloads that don't end up wanting to feed well in my 1911 or HK45 (both of them hate soft swaged lead copper coated bullets).

[gaijin]

I'm guessing yours is a m83 with the .454 cylinder?

I have a 4 5/8" barreled m97 in .45 Colt with an ACP cylinder.
It's a Premier Grade with 2# trigger and FO FS.
The guns an outstanding "packing revolver" with the smaller frame and its crazy accurate with +p .45 Colt loads.

[Coal Dragger]

Yep M83 in .454. Had the .45 ACP cylinder, action/trigger job, and trigger over travel stop installed later.

[gaijin]

Have you shot any hot, +P .45 Colt through the .454 cylinder?
I'd think it'd be a cheaper alternative to .454 ammo and should be reasonably accurate.

[Yooperboy]

In my mind it is the Dan Wesson .44 magnum. My uncle owned one and got to shoot it often when I was a younger man. He bought I believe the v pack with 4 barrels included with tools, gauges, 2 sets of grips and an extra cylinder. Don't quote me on how it came with parts. It had a great trigger pull with barrel switch out, for what ever he needed it for. I could never afford one and settled on a redhawk. Darn I miss shooting his.

[Coal Dragger]

Have you shot any hot, +P .45 Colt through the .454 cylinder?
I'd think it'd be a cheaper alternative to .454 ammo and should be reasonably accurate.

I reload, so I just acquired .454 brass instead, loading it to my desired power level. I considered a .45 Colt cylinder and put some .45 Colt through it, which it seems to shoot just fine; however in the balance I find it easier to keep one type of brass on hand. Plus the .454 brass has the advantage of being made for small rifle primers, adding a margin of safety against pierced primers and other ugliness if loading to the full 60,000 PSI of a .454....not that I do very often.

Of note Winchester .454 brass is preferable to any other for actual maximum loads, as it is harder and resists expansion at the base of the case. Hot full power loads using Starline brass have resulted in sticky extraction in hot weather for me. Not a big deal actually, no one who values the cartilage in their wrists shoots full house .454 Casull in volume anyway, so I reserve virgin Winchester .454 brass for hot loads. The Starline stuff does great for .45 Colt +P power levels, and you can shoot them comfortably all day long as the grip shape is kind of in between a Bisley and a SAA, you can get your whole hand on it like a Bisley. Running 300gr to 335gr bullets at about 1100-1300fps makes for controllable recoil that you can actually practice with, and honestly flatten most any critter with.

At full house velocities with lighter bullets the jacket needs to be thick so the bullet doesn't deform on the forcing cone and potentially cause damage. So run of the mill jacketed hollow points and soft points are a no go with say a 250gr XTP, instead you would need the 240gr XTP Magnum which is made for hot rod .454 velocities like 1800-1950fps. The softer jacketed bullets work great at .45 Colt +P or .44 Magnum equivalent velocities though.

The only other thing to watch out for is bullet jump, I crimp on a separate die from my seating die, which is a micrometer seating die. By crimping as the last step I can apply a very heavy crimp and not buckle the case or shave bullet material. When I say the crimp is heavy, I mean it; I'll literally iron brass flat into the cannelure on a jacketed bullet from the top of the cannelure to the bottom. This has to be done slowly by the way. I've never had a bullet jump crimp, so the Speer Loading manual with the instructions for this has been spot on.

Another source of entertainment is loading .45 ACP brass up using .45 Super or .460 Rowland data. I've run a few test batches, and the results were pretty good. A 185gr .451 XTP over a charge of Power Pistol that I will not disclose on here gave some very very impressive accuracy, not sure what velocity was but it was high enough that the big cavity on the front of the bullet was acting like a shaped charge and dimpling an AR550 steel gong at 25 yards. As fun as these were I won't load any more of them, too risky with 2 other .45 ACP only pistols in the arsenal. Brass was unfazed by this and extraction was normal.