Tools and Targets tests Spear Gold Dot 200 grain 44 Special out of two revolvers with 2" and 3" barrels, respectively. Average velocity for 5 rounds out of each yielded results below 800 FPS which is just too slow to expand. And, sure enough, when put through the ballistic gel and fabric, there was no real expansion. Consequently, as the host notes, it is a waste of money to buy expensive hollow point ammunition for a shorter barrel revolver in .44 Special, but that you might as well just run flat nosed FMJs or use hard cast bullets.
My opinion is that the .44 Special is a round that would really benefit from having +P loads to give you something more powerful than standard .44 Special but less than .44 Magnum, just like .38 Special +P falls into a middle ground between .38 Special and .357 Magnum. I've brought this up before and received suggestions to just use a reduced power .44 Magnum. But my interest is not in a lighter round to shoot out of a .44 Magnum revolver, but making .44 Special a better caliber for concealed carry or home defense. A .44 Special +P would allow a lighter and smaller (and less expensive) revolver than one capable of handling .44 Magnum (which would be the inevitable requirement of something that could chamber full length .44 Magnum cartridges); and it is likely that many .44 Special revolvers marketed and sold could handle the higher pressure of a +P round without modification.
VIDEO: "Their Own WORST Enemy!...Speer Gold Dot 44 Special Self-Defense AMMO Ballistic Gel Test!" - Tools&Targets (15 min.)
I'm not convinced there's a reliable way, across all possible .44 Special handguns, to achieve the consistent velocities necessary for reliable bullet expansion. Maybe it's time to simply give up on .44 Special hollowpoint bullets and, as you point out, move to something non-expandable with a large meplat.
ReplyDeleteSo, how about a 225 - 250 grain hard cast wadcutter at around 850-925 FPS from a 3" barrel?
If you could get 850 to 925 FPS you could probably manage hollow point expansion, but in these tests they were not even moving that fast. But yeah, a wadcutter would probably work great--people seem to like the wadcutters for .38 Special snubbies for self-defense use. The primary market for .44 Special snub nosed revolvers were those jurisdictions that didn't allow hollow point anyway, so the reasoning was that if you can't use an expanding bullet, you might as well start out with a wider diameter bullet.
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