Nomercy448

I usually reload all of my .44mag ammo, but I've been traveling too much for work this season, and opted for some factory fodder to feed my 7.5" Ruger Super Blackhawk for deer season.

I picked up a box of the 225grn Hornady Leverevolution FTX .44mags, and was VERY impressed with their performance. Deer season opens end of this month, but I'm VERY sold on the FTX bullet so far. At 50yrds from the bench, I'm getting 1.5-2" groups, and 2-3" groups unsupported. At 20yrds, I can cover 6 shots with a quarter (something I can also do with handloads, but is impressive with Factory ammo).

I managed to dig several of the bullets out of the berm behind my target and found AMAZING uniformity in the mushrooms, great weight retention, and huge expansion. After seeing the expansion in the dirt, I put up a few water jugs and the results were awesome. 0.82"-0.85" with the mic, with over 85% weight retention (some were within 10grns!).

Factory load or not, I'm switching to Hornady FTX's. I have 500 bullets on order from Midway, and bought 5 boxes of factory to practice with and hunt with this deer season.

The recoil on the factory 225grn FTX's was actually pretty mild. They're only pushing 1410 published (1402fps average for me with ES 27 from my 7.5" barrel). I'm excited to see how these babies would do if I pushed them up to around 1550fps reloading.

EDIT: For plinking, I've had decent results from Winchester "White Box" jacketed soft points, but PMC 240grn TCSP's have been really accurate for all of my .44mags (2 .44mag Ruger Vaqueros, 2 Marlin 1984's, Ruger Super Blackhawk, Ruger Super Redhawk, Taurus Raging Bull, S&W 629). The recoil on the PMC's are surprisingly stiff for a factory load, much moreso than the Hornady's. The Hornady's are little expensive for plinking ammo, but not too outrageous that you'd go broke by plinking with them.