44-77 continuing development

[Distant Thunder]

Don,

Thanks! I will say that with my other rifles, .40-65, .45-70 and .45-90 once I reached the point where they were consistently shooting under 3 inches at 220 yards ant more improvement was slow and at times hard to judge. Shooting groups, not something I do well, inherently seems to have variables day to day. One day I'll shoot more than one group that will be much closer to 2Inches and on another the same rifle and load will be more in the 2 1/2 inch range. I suspect the shooter!

Really the only rifle I of mine I really believe can shot 1 moa groups day in and day out is my .40-65 and I think that is just because that cartridge is so easy to shoot well and not necessarily that the rifle is anymore accurate than the others.

Having had this .44-77 for just short of a year now I will say it is a different animal from the others I listed above, not to say it is any harder to get good accuracy from but that it is just different in some of the requirements to get there. Most notably the tolerance it has for seating depth. It actually seems to prefer to have the paper patch bullet seated deeper than the other 3 cartridges I've used for target work. I see that as a good thing because one thing the .44-77 does not lack is powder capacity and I could easily get 90 plus grains of Swiss 1 1/2 in the case with a shallowly seated PPB.

Actually other than the seating other than the seating depth I'm not doing anything different than I do with my other cartridges, same wad, same powder, same primer and same case prep. My case prep is just clean and reload. It just seems to like the bullets in the case somewhere around .200" +/-.

With the 86 grains I am getting 1315 fps which seems a little slow compared to my .45-70 and .45-90 with a PPB of the same weight, but it is fast enough for 1000 yard shooting and everything else really.

The other thing that I had to work a little hard at with this bottleneck case was the fouling, but my new bore pigs with 2 felts on them are so far handling the situation without a hitch. I have discovered that I am able to use the same pigs in my .44-77 that I made for my .45 calibers. If anything the little bit tighter fit in the .44 seems to help with the somewhat more fouling I get just in front of the chamber.

So I think I've gone about as far accuracy wise as I can with this bullet at 220 yards. Now all I can do is go to matches where I can shoot it at greater distances and see how it holds up. I also have to adjust to using a scope, which I love for gongs and silhouette, but I have been slow to warm to it for paper targets. Time will tell!

Now if I lived out west and knew somebody who had a 1000 yard range out their back door I'd be in business. I need to talk to my farmer type neighbors around me and see if they would allow me to use one of they're fields to shoot in. That would get me to 400 or maybe 500 yards. It's hard to get much more than around here with the trees and hills. By the time I lay down on my belly and put my rifle up on sticks I just can't see over the next rise! Finding a place that's open and has more than a few hundred yards between hills and is safe to shoot ain't easy in my area.

The rest of my development will be at matches, but I think I'm about ready for that step, finally.