This story really starts back in Regan’s first term. I got into shooting shortly after college. My main focus was hunting, but I also enjoyed plinking. To that end, my buddy Jerry offered me a 3-screw Ruger Blackhawk in 357 Mag. I went through gobs of 38 Special ammo with it. For a long time, it was the only centerfire pistol I owned.

When I first started reloading back in 2000, a light 357 Mag target was one of my first projects. Over time, I had shot that Blackhawk enough that I was starting to get a hard-to-remove buildup in the chamber in that 1/10 of an inch in front of the the 38 Special rim. What I wanted to do was replicate the light 38 Special loads, but in a 357 Mag case. That worked well, and I pretty much forgot about shooting 38 SPL after that.

Then my kids grew up. I told you this was a long time coming. Shortly after my sons got of an age where they were owning guns of their own, we started having their friends down to the farm for friendly shoots. It became customary for me, as the big daddy of the operation, to receive all the brass. Over time I got quite a bit of usable brass in 308 WIN, 223 REM, 45 ACP and 38 Special. I was cleaning and sorting a bunch of brass after one weekend shoot and realized I had a shelf full of 38 Special, and really had no plans to load it.

I started thinking about how I could use all this 38 SPL brass. The thought occurred to me that a really nice tack-driving 38 target pistol was just the ticket. This was well past 2015, and by this time, there were no such animals in production. The real epitome of what I was seeking was a Smith and Wesson Model 14. They had not been made in decades and the price for a used one was ridiculous. The idea languished for several years. I kept my eye out for something but grew tired. I was talking with SuperCore just this past year. It finally dawned on us that:

1. I’d been seeking a 38 Special, due to excess brass.
2. SuperCore and our other friend, Hathaway, shot 38 Special almost exclusively in their revolvers
3. One of the rounds SuperCore was reloading on his Dillon press was 38 Special; he always had need of brass
4. SuperCore had an excess of 357 Mag brass that he had stopped using years ago.

About this time, I was working with my Hornady LNL Progressive and realized that changing over from 357 Mag to 38 Special was going to be a real chore and that I would be better off buying a new set of dies if I wanted to take on a 38 Special project. Meanwhile, here was my friend set up to do massive loads of 38 Special if I ever wanted to pitch in. In the end, we agreed the easiest way for us was to swap brass. My bags of 38 SPL became bags of 357 Mag.

Now came the question: What to shoot it out of?

If you’ve been reading my stuff over the years, you know I was best friends with Big Bob. Bob was a serious Ruger collector. When Bob died, he had a whole bedroom full of firearms stacked floor to ceiling. Most of them were Rugers. Bob was the guy who got me into shooting in the first place; I’ve always been sweet on Rugers. I could think of only one pistol: The Ruger GP100 in stainless. It took less than a week to track one down at a decent price. I picked it up from the FFL just before deer season.

The next question: How to Carry it?

A normal western rig is out of the question for a guy like me. I simply do not have enough butt to hold it up. I started wearing suspenders in high school to hold my pants up, and the situation has gotten only worse as I age. An unsupported belt just falls to my knees. For normal banging around the farm, I carry a P38 in a tanker-style holster. It is a P1-P38 variant with an aluminum frame and it is quite light. That same sort of rig with a big chunk of steel like a GP100 is not going to be as comfortable.

I had tried an idea with my Ruger Blackhawk several years ago, The Shamanic Rig

The Shamanic Rig, a new holster idea

It worked fine hiking about on level ground, but it got all catawampus if I was hiking on a hill.

What I finally found was a Sam Brown belt. I had a spare holster that I have slung on the off-side in the manner of a British WWI officer and a 2-compartment ammo pouch behind or carrying ammo in speed strips and acting as a dump bag. Crossdraw suits me fine. It rides right where it feels best when I am in and out of the truck.

So what is this all for?

When I was carrying the Ruger Blackhawk in 357 Mag about the farm, I used to plink at stumps and such to keep myself in practice. I hardly ever pull the P1-P38. It is kind of a no-brainer, but its (my) range is somewhat limited. I would like to go back to hunting stumps. Of course, a long-barreled 357 Mag could also drop a whitetail if I were so inclined, as well as any 2-legged or 4-legged vermin.

What loads?

Right now, I have every imaginable option already on the shelf from 125 grain Lee 358-125-RF which is my favorite practice load all the way up to some 200 grainer RNs that I adopted from from of my 35 Whelen projects. What I have in the way of readily available components are a vast amount of 158-grain lead SWC that SuperCore gave me with the brass and a variety of 148-grain wadcutters. Since this is about a combination of plinking and serious target practice, I will give everything in my inventory a whirl and concentrate on working up decent target loads with the 158 and 148 grainers for starters. As far as powder is concerned, I will see how far I get with my supply of Hodgdon Universal before experimenting with something else. I have some loads cooked up with H110, and they are far too spicey for this. They are strictly for the 1894 carbine.

As I was asking around, I got one piece of advice: don’t load 357 Mag the same as 38 SPL. That is, don’t expect the same accuracy if you take a 38 SPL target load and just load it in 357 brass. That extra 1/10 of an inch is a significant amount of volume. The better bet is to start at the low end of 38 SPL +P loads if maximum accuracy is required.

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