44 Magnum — It won’t leave me alone – Genesis9:2-4 Ministries

Have you ever had a hard time getting a chambering out of your head?

Let me tell you my story. See if this sounds familiar. Let’s start back to 30 or so years ago. Back then, I was only deer hunting with 30-06 in Kentucky and 12 Gauge slug in Ohio. I wanted to expand my horizons. Honestly, if I’d stayed pat with those two, my life would have been far different. The problem for me was where to go next.

Somewhere in all this, I got to thinking about a lever action in either 30-30 or 44 Magnum or possibly one of those Ruger semi-autos in 44 Mag. I read a lot. I learned that 44 Mag was possibly a tad better at bringing down whitetails inside 50 yards, but that outside 80 yards, it began to flag in comparison to the 30 WCF. Whether or not that is true, I still do not know. Here it is 30 years later. I’ve shot with both. Deer died. That is all I know.

In 2001, I moved all my hunting to my newly-acquired 200-acre farm in Kentucky. It became my laboratory. In 2002, I acquired my first new experimental deer rifle, a Marlin 336 in 30-30. The story of those experiments is here:

Ode to a 30-30, Part 1, The Dream

Without digging too far into those weeds, let me conclude that the 30-30 ended up not being my favorite all-time deer-getter. I really love the Marlin 336. 30-30 has ended up being one of my favorite chamberings to reload for. I cranked out my 17th and 18th experimental loads for it last week– so just under one new load per year. It still holds a fascination for me even though I have not taken it deer hunting in 20 years.

But this is not about 30-30. It is about the other round lurking in the shadows, a .44 Remington Magnum. In the back of my head, I had this itch. For whatever reason, part of me wanted to go hunting with a 44 Mag, and as the years went on, the itch just sat there.

In the next decade or so, my overall taste in deer weaponry went a different route. I had somewhat bum luck with 30-30, so I cranked it up a notch and found a Savage 99 in 308 Winchester and played with downloading it somewhat so it shot more like 300 Savage. To this day, this is my go-to rifle for the cedar woods. It holds the #1 and #3 camp records. I really could ask nothing more for a deep-woods deer rifle.

My next experiment was with the 10-year romance I had with a Remington 7600 in 35 Whelen. When I put this rifle away in 2014 it was because I realized that for all its sound and fury, it was not killing deer any better than my 30-06. I bought a new 30-06 and promised myself this was the last deer rifle I was going to purchase in that chambering. By this time I had several already on the rack.

This was about the time Ohio started its flirtation with Pistol Caliber Rifles for deer hunting. I fancied that one day I might get back across the Ohio River and hunt, or that I might go back to my old custom of kicking up Buckeye-style for a day or two every Kentucky Rifle Season and hunt by Ohio rules. All of a sudden, the 44 Magnum started to make sense again.

Then my mentor, Big Bob, died. His Ruger Model 44 in 44 Magnum found its way to me, and I took it and cherished it and got all ready to hunt with it only to find it liked trips to the gunsmith more than it liked deer hunting. After one successful season with it, it ate itself. It was an early model with a design defect in the receiver that had caused Bill Ruger to redesign it. I was left with a wall hanger.

Here it is, three springs later, and I still cannot get it out of my head. Along the way, the right-thinking, rational part of my head had moved on. The next tick on the list was 7mm-08, and as soon as the gunsmith told me the Model 44 was DOA, I ordered a Thompson Center Compass in that chambering. I used it at fairly close range that next deer season and . . . YOWZAH! It put a doe down with authority.

It was at this juncture, I realized something important: there is no explicit reason to use chamberings meant for close-range work. To put it in simpler terms: “If you like what a 30-06 does at 150 yards, you’ll love what it does at 20 yards.”

I just got back from a boar hunt in Florida. I used the 7mm-08 on a 120-pound boar at 80 yards and the animal dropped in its tracks.

Compare that with my one and only experience with Big Bob’s Model 44:

Bob’s Model 44 and the Buck

Yeah, the buck died. Yeah, the 240-grain Hornady XTP went in one side and out the other and made a mess of things in between like it should, but even with everything working to spec and to plan, we ended up with a goat rodeo that went into the next day.

So when I came across the 80 or so unused rounds of 240 grain Hornady XTP this week, what I should have done is smiled wryly and stashed it in the back of a high shelf, and moved on with my life. That is not what happened. I just caught myself just now hitting Gunbroker.com and looking for a 44 Mag rifle.

Bob was my sponsor in Rifle Anonymous. As long as he was alive, I could turn to him when my willpower began to flag. With him gone, I am floating like a cork on the ocean, I feel like at any moment the breeze might change and I will find a deer rifle in 44 Magnum on my rack and hardly a clue as a how it got there.