One of my favorite movies is Valdez Is Coming with Burt Lancaster as the old US Cavalry Scout. When asked when he hunted Apaches he said, “Before I knew better.” For the most part, my early reloading was “Before I knew better.” I did not label any of my cartridge boxes as it was not necessary. My loads were the .44 Magnum with the 250 gr. Keith bullet over 22.0 gr. of #2400, .44 Special with the same bullet over 17.0 of #2400 and the .45 Colt used the Keith 260 grain bullet over 18.5 gr. of, yup, the same #2400. These are all full house loads, and the last two were certainly not what could be described as pleasurable when fired in Colt Single Actions. As I look back I now realize how much pure shooting enjoyment I missed.

I guess I’m what you would call a slow learner. It took several decades before I realized every handgun does not have to be fired every time with full house loads. There is no written or unwritten rule which says sixguns have to be painful. Macho is a myth with most things, and especially with shooting.

For more than 20 years I have fired virtually every heavy recoiling handgun offered and also spent a great deal of time developing heavy loads. This was a necessary part of my work and I will even say I enjoyed the results obtained; the results, not necessarily the recoil. Most of my reloading these days is designed around powerful, yet pleasurable loads. After years of shooting and hunting I have come to the conclusion big bore sixgun loads with heavy hard cast bullets at 1,200 fps or less, are all we need for most hunting chores.

The only reason to shoot higher velocities are to flatten the trajectory or to have extra power when hunting such dangerous critters as Alaskan Brown Bear and Cape buffalo — neither of which have been found in Idaho for several decades. Actually most of what most of us hunt can be handled successfully with hard cast bullets from around 900 to 1,000 fps. These are what I call everyday working loads in such sixguns as those chambered for the .44 Special and .45 Colt.