Winter just don't ...........

[Kurt]

want to give up. When it's 35 degrees and the wind is blowing making your eyes water it's tough to shoot.
I drug the bench in a protected area of my front porch and did some shooting at my 130 yard target with the .44-77.
This rifle is my hunting rifle and it just had barrel sights on it. The rear sight is a Lawrence and the front is a Bronze Hartford sight Steven B made for me. The sight is a little to high and there is not enough room to file the bronze blade down before getting into the base so this is why the shots in the picture are low but I have learned where to hold the front sight above the rear to get center at 103 yards. It will do until I get my lathe going again and I will put the milling attachment on and work the sight base down so I can lower the blade where it needs to be.

The .44-77 gets a lot of bad write ups on the forums. "it's hard to make shoot" "it's hard to load" all of this is a bunch of BS! The .44-77 is a great caliber that shoots as well as any or better and it is a fine hunting caliber. If I had a .44-77 reamer I would rechamber a .44 CPA barrel that has a 1/16 ROT and make this a long range rifle along with the .44-75 Ballard.
When a rifle with a single trigger, standard light weight barrel and barrel sights plus the straight Hartford stock shoots like this, it should make a fine midrange as well as a long range rifle.

And Gary; No coffee filter wads used

Kurt

[Don McDowell]

That 16 twist would let a person shoot the 1.35 in. long bullets, and that would make it maybe a bit better out to 1000 in the wind. But that Shiloh, with bullets at just under 1.3 in long will shoot just fine to 1000 in the wind.

[Don McDowell]

ps. It was 71 here this afternoon.

[J.B.]

No argument here on ease of load development. I've found it certainly as easy...and in some cases 'more easy' to get to shoot that some of the more conventional BPCR calibers I've worked with. A nice balance of power and recoil too. I believe the set up costs of brass ( and its availability ) , moulds , dies etc have scared a few people off. It would be fun to experiment with longer bullets and the faster twist but I'm loving my Shiloh as it is. Nice shooting Kurt. Our weather is cooling off but still in the 80's at present... so no snow for us.

Gavin.

[Kurt]

Hey! no fair rubbing in the good weather

My 1/7 rot shoots a 1.465" in fine shape. The 19 ROT .44-90bn I shot the MT 1000 with held it own with a 505 gr 1.465" long KAL elliptical.
That little extra powder capacity helps shooting that bullet.
The .44-77 does well on the Buffalo on the hill side at Raton using a 485 gr Sharps bullet at around 1100 yards it just splattered on and just around the white plate hanging on that buff using the barrel sights.
I might be making a mistake not putting a tang sight on this rifle that has windage adjustments and use it for the midrange and silhouette matches, but I build that rifle for hunting and this is what it will stay.

[Don McDowell]

Put the tang sight on for shooting sillywets and midrange, take it off to go hunting. Leave the blade on it.