Are the .44-77 BN and the .44-90 BN viable contenders in modern Creedmoor

[Distant Thunder]

Are the .44-77 BN and the .44-90 BN viable contenders in modern Creedmoor matches? Or perhaps I should ask, has anyone ever won a Creedmoor match using one of these two big bore bottleneck cartridges? And I’m not talking about mid-ranges matches, I'm talking about 800, 900 and 1000 yard paper target matches. Not to put down the long-range gong matches, which are a different animal, but paper target scores would tell more than just the number of hits on steel.

I’m betting the answer is, NO! So then comes my real question, why not?

I believe Shiloh greatly handicaps these two cartridges by offering only 19-twist barrels, though they will put other brands of barrels on their rifles as they did for me with my 17-twsit Krieger barreled .44-77.

Shiloh makes some very fine rifles, the best of the 1874s which is the model I am familiar with. There are many other actions that can be and are barreled in faster twist .44-77 BN and .44-90 BN cartridges.

I’ve been working with my .44-77 for a season and a half, both of those summers were cut short first by Covid then by personal business. The cartridge was a bit more involved to get into mostly because of brass, but very excellent brass can be had from Buffalo Arms. The brass does make it a little more expensive to get set up, but one does not take up BPTR if the idea is to get by with little expense. Once you have the brass it lasts a long time. I don’t size any of the black powder cases once they’re fireformed and I used a Lee .43 Mauser size die to prep the case for fireforming my .44-77. After that it’s just a compression die and a neck sizing die for my bore diameter paper patch bullets and they’re ready to shoot.

As for accuracy, in my experience the accuracy has been good to very good, but I haven’t yet had that show up in a match and I’m not sure why that is.

I really like this old Shiloh I had Kirk rebarrel for me and I really like the .44-77 cartridge. I will continue to shoot it in matches where the outcome is not critical to me, and I can relax and just work with the rifle and cartridge as I try to achieve match winning accuracy with it.

My .44-77 is the rifle I take out of the safe whenever I want to shoot just for the fun of shooting a BPCR and accuracy to 600 yards has been very good. I have not yet shot an entire two-day Creedmoor match with this rifle for various reasons. So I don’t yet know what it’s capable of at 1000 yards. I might be dreaming thinking winning a Creedmoor match is even possible with this cartridge, I don’t know.

That is what has brought the question I asked in the beginning of this post to mind. Can the .44-2 ¼” win a long-range match? It apparently did well in the 1870s in the 1 in 20-twist of the original Sharps rifles. I believe Remington use a 1 in 18 twist for their .44s. The 20-twist barrels would have only stabilized a bullet a little over 1.300” long and about 480 grains if it can get 1400 fps with 90 grains of powder. The .44-2 5/8 would have no trouble getting over 1400 fps with 100 grains of powder and would handle a bullet a little longer and heavier.

So just looking at the numbers it sure looks like they are up to winning. So, who has proven this to be the case? Nobody I have heard of, yet!