PT7 wrote:So what are the things (attributes?) a .44 can do better than a .357? It would also be interesting to learn, conversely, what things the .357 can do better, if any?
PT7
while the bark is louder, the felt recoil of our Henry BBS 44 Mag isn't much different than that of our BBS 357 .... the recoil from a 44 Mag 240 gr bullet pushed by 23.8 gr of W296 is in a different universe from that of 45-70 .... in our 45-70 we load 51.5 gr of IMR 4198 pushing a 300 gr Nosler Ballistic Silvertip with a muzzle velocity of 2242.5 fps developing 3349.2 ft lbs of energy .... its recoil is punishing .... move up to 400+ gr bullets and it gets even worse
as to specifics about what a 44 does better >>>> the trajectory of the 44 is slightly flatter that that of the 357 while delivering significantly more knockdown power at every point along the way .... here again, its performance is in a different universe .... specifically :
44 Mag ... Nosler 240 gr JHP
DISTANCE/TRAJECTORY/ENERGY
25 yards / +.6" / 1427.1 ft lbs
50 yards / +2" / 1266.2 ft lbs
75 yards / +2.4" / 1123.5 ft lbs
100 yards / +1.8" / 998.4 ft lbs
125 yards / 0.0 / 890.1 ft lbs
150 yards / -3.1" / 797.8 ft lbs
357 Mag .... Nolser 158 gr JHP
DISTANCE/TRAJECTORY/ENERGY
25 yards / +1.1" / 753.8 ft lbs
50 yards / +2.6" / 673.5 ft lbs
75 yards / +3.1" / 603.3 ft lbs
100 yards / +2.2" / 542.8 ft lbs
125 yards / 0.0 / 491.6 ft lbs
150 yards / -3.8" / 449.1 ft lbs
the info on which the above stats were generated are taken directly from Nosler's reloading manual