Henry Rifle Forums

Took 6 shots each with same H110 powder load. The Hornady 240 grain xtp at .430 diameter and the speer 240 grain sp at .429 diameter. Seems I had good holds on all shots but being a geriatric, one never knows! Will hunt both NH and VT this year. See attached targets. The gun doesn't seem to like the xtpsas much. Trigger is crisper. They did a good job.

since the mid 60's we've had really good luck pushing Nosler 240 gr JHP and/or JSP bullets with 23.8 gr o W296 and/or H110 .... over that time we've used them in 2 different revolvers and 2 different rifles .... in a revolver they are a handful with a very noticeable recoil .... in our rifles we've found them to be very comfortable to shoot

PJM wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 15, 2020 4:23 pm

Took 6 shots each with same H110 powder load. The Hornady 240 grain xtp at .430 diameter and the speer 240 grain sp at .429 diameter. Seems I had good holds on all shots but being a geriatric, one never knows! Will hunt both NH and VT this year. See attached targets. The gun doesn't seem to like the xtpsas much. Trigger is crisper. They did a good job.

If you have a chrony, check the MV of the Hornady, and run the stats for 5 or 10 rounds. I think you'll find they aren't very consistent. I had quite a wide variation in MV in some Hornady LeveRevolution (190gr .41 mag) when I tried them out, which made it difficult to zero the rifle (scoped on a rest) for elevation. Ended up switching to Underwood 210gr XTP, which was much more consistent.

I use a Lee die set for .44 Mag and I find it 100% impossible to consistently seat XTPs because of their bigger diameter. The Lee die resizes to 0.429”. Out of thirty rounds, only ten seated to where I wanted them. The others were either too long or too short, by up to 0.010”. The neck tension is too high so the bullet goes in with jerks. Plus the soft nose gets deformed too easily. It gets really old pulling bullets over and over, and futzing around with the seating die. Since I did not want to try to find an “oversized” die, I just decided to screw XTPs. I just won’t use them.

Regular sized jacketed bullets load just fine, nice and consistent, so I have no patience whatsoever with Hornady. Maybe a Hornady die set works better?

John Davies
Spokane WA

Thanks for the info. Although I do like the .44mag as a less than 100 yd deer rifle (perfect for the northeast),there are not a lot of commercially available bullet styles available in this caliber. Lately not much of anything is available. I have not had much luck with the lighter bullets either. I will try the noslers if I can find them.

Are you using an ammo search engine? There are several. This one lets you search reloading components too. Here is a search for Bullets/ .429”/ 220 gr to 260 gr/ JHP

It shows available 6 boxes of Speer (.4295”) at one retailer. You have to act instantly on these will be gone when you check back.

https://ammoseek.com/reloading/bullets ... ns?ikw=JHP

There are still lots of range bullets available, but if you are low on those, or primers, stock up if you can find a tolerable price, because this is only going to get worse.

John Davies
Spokane WA