S&W 396 Nightguard .44 Special tries out six different loads for POA

I finally redeemed the S&W 396 Night Guard .44 Special from the layaway safe at the gun store on Friday. Today after the N.C. Concealed Carry Handgun Class I taught at the shop I got a chance to shoot her.

We do the qualification firing part of the course at the N.C. National Guard Armory indoor range in Wadesboro, which is really great here in the summer. Today it was only 92 but with a heat index of 100. In the AC of the indoor range, it was great.

And the shooting was pretty good, too. Targets at right were all fired single-action at 5 yards standing two-handed.

I tried six different .44 Special loads. From top left, Hornady JHPs of unknown weight, an unmarked lot I got at the gun shop. Top right was PMC 180-grain JHPs, middle row left was Georgia Arms 200-grain Gold-Dot JHPs, right was Winchester Silvertips 200-grain. Bottom left is Speer Gold Dot 200-grain JHPs and bottom right is Magtech 240-grain Cowboy Loads.

And the winner is ... Speer Gold Dots, the same load that shot closest to point of aim for my Charter Bulldog .44 Special. I just grabbed two more boxes of Speer Gold Dots that came in to the gun shop, so I'm ready for carry next week at the shop.

The second-best group I shot was with Georgia Arms, but they were a lot hotter than the Speer Gold Dots, which is typical. GA calls their new ammo "Canned Heat" and it is hot. They use Speer Gold Dots for projectiles, but load them hotter than Speer factory ammo. And while manageable, it was definitely a lot louder and hotter than any load I shot with the possible exception of the unknown-weight Hornady JHPs. It wouldn't take much shooting with either of those loads to put me into flinching territory.

Speer Gold Dot 200-grain JHPs are rated at 875 fps with 340 ft./lbs. of energy, which is quite hot enough for me. It's hotter and delivers more energy than most .45 ACP loads.

Gold Dot Personal Protection - 44 Special
Part Number Cartridge Bullet Wt. Bullet Type Box Count Bullet Coefficient 23980 44 Special 200 GDHP 20 0.145 Velocity(in feet per second) Energy (in foot pounds) Muzzle 50 yards 100 yards Muzzle 50 yards 100 yards 875 832 794 340 308 280 Trajectory if sighted at 25 yards Test Barrel Length in inches Usage 25 yards 50 yards 75 yards 100 yards 0.0 -2.1 -7.3 -15.8 6 1

I'm not 100% set on carry, but it likely will be my Sig P220 Compact SAO .45 ACP on my left hip and the S&W 396NG in my Galco right-hand small-of-back holster. A .45 with a .44 for a New York Reload suits me just fine. I can deploy either one with either hand, whichever comes to hand most readily if and when the brown stuff hits the fan.

Sexy .44 Special with pretty wood grips almost upsets Nightguard plans

My plans to save up for a Smith & Wesson Nightguard revolver almost jumped the tracks this week. My job at the gunshop where I work is to take photos of new and used guns and list them in auctions on gunbroker and what should I find waiting on me but a S&W 296 AirLite Ti Centennial .44 Special with a beautiful set of wood grips.

I'm a sucker for .44 Specials and nice wood grips and this one has both of those fine qualities. But thankfully I have already experienced the laws of physics in motion with another S&W AirLite Titanium/Scandium alloy .44 Special revolver, the S&W 396 Mountain Lite, at bottom in the second photo which I stole from John Taffin's article on .44 Specials in Gun Digest.

I got a chance to test-fire a S&W 396 I found in a gun shop in Wagram, NC, and after 15 rounds I understood why one gun writer said it should have been called the "Mountain Bite."

I test-fired it with .44 Specials of 200 grains or less as it says right on the barrel and decided against that purchase. I fired it right-handed and left-handed and either way, she bites.

So the temptation to grab the S&W 296 was one I managed to resist. Yes it's light as a feather and great to carry. But IMHO it's too light for .44 Specials of any more potency than Cowboy loads and I just don't want a carry gun I can't also enjoy shooting regularly.

I believe Tamara has mentioned on her blog that a S&W 296 lives in her purse, but since she also carries a full-size 1911 IWB, she's obviously more man than I am when it comes to both carrying and shooting pistols. 

I've only got one "carry a lot, shoot a little" pistol, my Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm and that's enough. I do enjoy shooting the PF-9 but with hot loads it is a bit snappy, plus Kel-Tec's small pistols are not built to be range guns. I've heard some complaints that after 200+ rounds they start falling apart, but that is not the case with the two I've owned, PF-9 and P-11, both of which have managed 200+ just fine.

Anyway, the plan for my first Nightguard goes forward. They are light, but not too light, with steel barrels and cylinders to go with the alloy frame and from all reviews I've read, they're also eminently shootable.

Now if I could just sell my S&W 469 "Mini" 9mm and Dan Wesson .22LR Revolver to finance the purchase of a Nightguard, whatever the model I decide upon. Anybody who wants to help me out with those sales would be appreciated.

And thanks also to all who have voted thus far in the poll at top left on which Nightguard model I should choose. There's only been one vote thus far for the S&W 396 Nightguard .44 Special and that vote was mine. It also just happens to be the only model in the poll that we actually have or have had in stock at the gun shop where I work, so that may be what I buy, not being terribly long on patience when it comes to waiting for a gun on special order. The jury is still out.

Smith of the Week: Tam's purse gun, S&W 296 DAO .44 Special

It's no surprise to my faithful readers, all dozen or so of you, that I love Smith & Wesson firearms. During the past year+ that I've working in a gun shop, I've had quite an education in the bewildering nomenclature of Smith handguns with two, three and four digit ID numbers established since the line got so large in 1958 that all models got numbers instead of names.

"They've given you a number,
"and taken way your name"

goes that song of the '60s from the TV show, "Secret Agent Man."

So I have decided for furtherance of my own education, as well as my faithful readers, that I shall henceforth begin a regular feature I shall dub "Smith of the Week" or maybe day or month or whenever inspiration strikes.

This inaugural post is dedicated to Tamara, who confided in a comment post when she visited my humble blog that a S&W 296 .44 Special has a permanent home in her purse.

Bluebook sez:

MODEL 296 AIRLITE Ti CENTENNIAL- .44 S&W Spl. cal., L-frame, 5 shot, 2 1/2 in. barrel, similar to Model 242 in construction materials, alloy frame and titanium cylinder, Uncle Mike's Boot grips, 18.9 oz. Mfg. 1999-2002.

Bluebook doesn't supply a photo and Tam didn't give me one, so I stole a couple of images from an auction on gunbroker for this post. It was available for a mere $999, so that puts if out of my league.

Aside from the fact that I love Tam from afar and greatly admire her gun knowledge -- what's not to love, a good lookin' woman who has a lot of guns and shoots them regularly and shares her knowledge? -- I also got the chance to actually hold and dry-fire a S&W 296 this week.

One came into the gun shop and when I picked it up and snapped it, lo and behold it has a great double-action-only trigger. It also has a really nice set of combat finger-groove checkered wood grips of the type used on Talo and other special-edition S&W round-butt revolvers.

But alas, it was purchased by a customer from afar who had it shipped to our shop for a transfer. My hope was I would be able to shoot it and perhaps add it to my humble collection of Smith's, but that is not to be, at least immediately.

The boss lady gave me hope after informing me it is for transfer and not for sale. She said this customer often purchases guns off the Internet, tries them out and then brings them back for resale. So maybe I'll get a shot -- literally -- at this 296 yet.

It's one of Smith's alloy frame, Titanium cylinder creations that is remarkably light for its size and shooting a respectable cartridge, certainly a lot more potent than .38 Special, and I am one of the many who love .44 Specials.

My hope, if I ever to get a chance to try it out, is that it will be more shootable than the S&W 396 Scandium-Titanium "Mountain Lite" that I once tried out at another gun shop that had a range.

One writer I read termed it the "Mountain Bite" and after five rounds of full-house .44 Specials I had to agree with that assessment. It had a serious bite on the back end as well as the business end.

The 296 differs from the 396 in two regards, it is double-action-only not traditional double/single like the 396. And despite that Bodyguard-looking hump, it does have not a shrouded hammer but a fully enclosed hammer of the Centennial-Smith style.

And is seemed some gunsmith worked some magic on the trigger as it was very light and eminently shootable. Who knows if the recoil is "biteable"?

Tam likes it so it can't be too bad. Time will tell as to whether I ever get a chance to shoot this 296. But if not, it's something else I can be on the lookout for future acquisitions.

Amazing but true discoverery: I'm a .45 and .44 kinda guy

A funny/strange not funny ha-ha thing happened while I was in Pittsburgh for Christmas.

I went to an indoor range with some shooting buddies up there and the range rules forbid shooting at targets any closer than 25 yards, which meant running the targets all the way to the backstop.

I normally vary my distances, but mostly shoot from 7 to about 15 yards, only occasionally shooting longer distances with handguns.

So anyway, I took the Para Ord P12-45 along to show off to my Pittsburgh buddies and after they tried it out, I shot a magazine of 12 at a full-size-man silhouette target at 25 yards. All were in the black, but a few strayed out of center mass. Even though I was trying to slow down and shoot a good group to show off to my buddies, I still hurried a few shots.

That P12 trigger is so sweet it's hard to shoot slow.

Then I loaded up my Charter Bulldog Pug with 5 .44 Special Cowboy loads and shot them double-action at the same target.

You couldn't tell the .45 holes from the .44 holes, but lo and behold, there were no new holes out of center mass. Obviously, I shot all five in the "kill zone" even shooting double-action.

It certainly increased my confidence in carrying the Bulldog .44, which I did in a shoulder harness for the trip up and back, as well as my usual Kel-Tec PF-9 in my pants pocket.

And though I still love my other carry handguns, 9mm, .357 Sig and 10mm pistols and .327 Magnum, .357 Magnum/.38 Special and .44 Magnum revolvers, I got a sneaking suspicion I'm gonna be carrying the P12-45 and the Bulldog .44 as the two leaders of the pack.

I guess I knew all along I'm a .45 and .44 kinda guy, but to find I shoot those two favorite calibers as well and perhaps even better than the others certainly supports my preferences.

.44 Special Hollow-Point Testing: Speer Gold Dots the clear winner

There's a big problem with carry handguns with fixed sights. If you can't adjust the sights, you have to find an ammo combination that fits the sights.

It helps if you know what the manufacturer had in mind when the fixed sights were set up at the factory and in the case of common cartridge/pistol combinations, it's easy. For instance, Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolvers, particularly the older ones like the Model 10, are set up at the factory for 158-grain lead roundnose bullets.

I had that point illustrated quite well at a recent N.C. Concealed Handgun Permit class. One of my students was using a S&W 10 .38 Special, the original Military & Police model, and when he started firing the first set at 3 yards, I told the students to aim for a head shot, right between the bad-guy-target's hairy eyeballs.

I figure if they can't make a head shot at 3 yards, there's not much point in asking them to do it at the increasing distances for the qualification firing, 5, 7 and 10 yards.

So this guy starts firing away at the target and I hear this loud clanging noise and sparks start flying. We stop the shooting and take a look and his rounds are hitting the target clamp a few inches above the BG's head.

Thank God the clamp was heavy duty at the local National Guard Armory range because no damage was done.

But I dug into my range bag and came up with a box of .38 Special 158-grain LRNs to give the guy and immediately he started drilling holes right between the BG's hairy eyeballs.

In the first outing with my new-to-me Charter 2000 Bulldog Pug .44 Special snubby, (top photo and at top in 2nd photo) I discovered the good folks at Charter set up the iron sights for full-house-load 240-grain bullets.

I had a box of Cowboy Load 240-gr. ammo which is certainly no wimp at 760 FPS, classic numbers for .45 ACP .230-gr. FMJs.

But the Charter's iron sights placed the Cowboy Loads about 2-3" low on the target. Then I tried some full-house-load 240 gr. SWCs and they were exactly what the iron sights liked, right on the bull.

So the next step in using the Bulldog for a carry pistol is to find a jacketed hollowpoint load that will line up with the iron sights.

I never did find a JHP load that lined up with the iron sights of my Charter Patriot .327 Magnum (bottom pistol in 2nd photo), so I had to get a set of Crimson Trace Laser Grips to enable it to hit where I'm aiming.

I suspected that might be the case with JHPs for the Bulldog Pug. I had four JHP loads to test. Top left on the target board, standing two-handed at 25 feet, are some 200-grain Georgia Arms Gold-Dot JHPs. Printing low and with a lot of muzzle blast and recoil. Not pleasant. The three clustered at 6 o'clock about 3" low are mine, the other holes are by the sergeant at the Armory, whose rounds drifted even lower and to the left. All the rest of the holes in the other targets are mine. Three of the GA Gold Dots were all the sergeant wanted to try. Can't imagine why.

Top right target are some CCI steel-case JHPs, probably 200-grain but they were some loose rounds we had at the gun shop with no box, so that's just a guess. Even hotter and more unpleasant to shoot than the GA Gold Dots and though still low, closer to the bull by a bit.

Then bottom left are five holes with Winchester Silvertip 200-gr. JHPs, much more pleasant to shoot and getting pretty close to the bull.

Finally, bottom right is the clear winner, five rounds with Speer Gold Dot 200-gr. JHPs, right on the money and also fairly pleasant to shoot. I am delighted to find a carry load so easily and not to have to add CT Lasergrips for the Bulldog. I may still add some grips later, but not right now when I've got other pistols to buy hopefully in my near future.