by gunnnie » 13 May 2019, 7:01 pm
I have a few 44-40's, two Mod 92 Winchesters and the most recent addition being a Rossi Puma Mod92 clone.
The cartridge is not that bad and to be honest any well placed shot on a pig with a 200-240gn lump of lead is going to hurt. Plus if you think about it, just how many shots are you going to take at pigs over 50-75 in the scrub??? Not bloody many I would guess! Different thing if you're chasing them out on the plains etc, in which case you won't be wanting a lever action 44-40 anyway!
The main issue that folks have with this cartridge will be when they begin reloading. It is not a cartridge that you can easily walk into a gun store and buy off the shelf. So reloading is the go and it is not really a cartridge for the novice reloader due to the relatively thin brass case necks. It is not hard to crumple necks during full length resizing, especially once the cases have been fired a few times.
Plus it would be adviseable to slug the bore of your rifle to confirm it's bore diameter to then ensure using projectiles of the right diameter. Both my of 92 Winchesters will not shoot jacketed pills worth a dam! At 50M you'd probably produce a tighter group by throwing the pills by hand. So I have to use .430" diameter cast pills. As I don't cast, yet, I buy Spartan 200gn cast pills at .430"
The loads aren't hot but should be trundling along at around the 1400fps mark. It isn't a 44Mag by any stretch of the imagination, but then again it is an old cartridge with a pretty fair heritage.
Make sure you have a good set of dies, RCBS for example, clean your brass and use a good lube, Simplex sizing lubricant. If you find that the case mouths are crinkling when you run them into the FLS die, try using just a universal de-priming die (doesn't size the case), then just seat the projectile & run the case up into the seating die to the correct depth. Then unscrew the seating stem and run the loaded case back up into the die to crimp the case.
If the fired case is a tad sticky coming out of the chamber or won't slide back into the chamber, then you'll need to FLS.