Help me understand why the .41 Mag is better than .44 Mag

[jmr40]

As soon as I can figure out a way to objectively measure recoil, I am going to run an experiment between three Super Redhawks, 44 Mag, 454 Casull and 480 Ruger. If anyone in Alaska has a .41 Mag SRH to toss into the mix, PM me.

http://www.handloads.com/calc/recoil.asp

If you can put your guns on some postal scales to get an accurate weight of the gun and shoot them over a chronograph to get actual velocities this is accurate. If your guns weight, velocity, bullet weight and powder charge can be determined this will give you the actual recoil.

It will not tell you the felt recoil. The grips, grip angle, barrel length, and many other factors can often make a gun with more actual recoil feel as of it has less than it does. That is all subjective, at least to an extent.

 

[orionengnr]

I'm not sure anyone can make the case that one is "better" than the other.
That will not keep people from expressing their preference for one over the other...as it should be.
I owned three ".429s", but currently own none. I do own a .41Mag and a .45LC, and prefer both of those to the .429.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a handloader, and that affords me a lot of lattitude.

 

[wyatte]

My response is a little off the mark from the OP's question, but the reason I like the 41 mag is, it is my sentimental favorite. It was the first N frame that I bought soon after getting married. Even my wife thought it was beautiful (a 6" model 657 ) which I let get away from me. Over the years I have bought a number of 44's and 41's. I like them both a lot, but I currently own four 41 mags, and no 44's. I would like to get another 44 mag in the near future though. So for me, it is more out of a sentimental reason. I do consider it to be the "ideal" size cartridge for the N frame revolver, however. The model 629 44's are great also. wyatte

 

[buckhorn_cortez]

I've owned a Ruger Super Blackhawk in .44 magnum, a Ruger Redhawk in .44 magnum, a S&W Model 29 in .44 magnum, and a S&W Model 57 in .41 magnum. The easiest to shoot and most accurate of them all is the S&W Model 57 .41 magnum. Given the choice of all of the pistols to keep or sell, I'd keep the .41 magnum.

 

[Drail]

To me one of the biggest "advantages" of the .41 is that just about every manufacturer I can think of bases their .41 guns on a platform designed for the .44 (.429). This means that given the same exterior dimensions of the barrel and cylinder by boring a .410 hole in them will leave more metal than the .429 does. The barrel is heavier and the chambers have more steel between them. Heavier gun = less recoil and a little more strength for handloading. To fully appreciate the difference in trajectory you need to shoot a Bisley in .41 at ranges out to 200 to 300 yards. It makes it much easier to connect with those steel targets that look so small. I love the looks on guys faces when you walk up to the line and they laugh and say "you'll never hit that from here with a handgun". "BOOM.......CLANG"

 

[jdh]

I don't have to prove anything to you...the market has spoken. YOU can buy whatever you want...but YOU cannot logically dispute that the market has made very clear which it prefers and that generally does not mean that a caliber plays second fiddle to another so people choose to buy the lesser. As far as Dirty Harry goes, that was 40yrs ago and he knew it was the best then, also...most of the folks buying guns today were not even born then. It is one thing to have a preference, but it is something else to be in denial about what has actually taken place.

You need to prove to me you do not have a reading comprehension problem. I don't care what you think is best. The numbers speak for themselves. Between the 41 and the 44 there is no clearly superior performance difference. The market was unduly influenced by hollywood hype. All I said was had the roles in the film been reversed this conversation would be the opposite of what it is now.

Yes, I have a preference. I have not stated what it is yet and most likely won't. I will say the reason for my preference and it is the same as wyatte's in the previous post. I like the one I like because it was my first, and was the first sidearm I used to start my LE adventures. For the record I have 4 357s, one 41 and currently no 44s. The reason for that is my 44 was lost in the recent great conflagration and I have not found a suitable replacement for it.

You make assumptions most of which are incorrect and have the unmitigated gall to tell me I am in denial. One of the assumptions you make is that people are still buying the 44 in large numbers. They are not. Since the 500, 460, 454, 480, etc., so on, and so forth, have hit the market the 44 is no longer the king of the hill and has been bypassed by the "Mine is bigger than yours crowd" and relatively few dedicated shooter are even buying enough ammo for the LGS here to justify keeping it on the shelf in the quantities it used to.
So I guess the market has spoken again and the 44 has been usurped from its once lofty perch.

 

[Lost Sheep]

Leave Harry out of it

In the first Dirty Harry movie, the gun WAS a 41 Magnum.

The script said 44, but the prop people couldn't get one, so they used a 41. These two "N" frame guns are indistinguishable for the camera.

What has a fictional character contribute to answering the question? After all, he was not even shooting magnum loads out of it. He just used that line on the bad guys for effect. In reality, he used "light special loads" as he told David Soul's character in "Magnum Force".

Lost Sheep

 

[shootniron]

One of the assumptions you make is that people are still buying the 44 in large numbers.

I have the unmitigated gall to say that the .44mag still outsells the .41mag multiples to one. So much so, that I would be willing to bet that there is not a .41mag revolver in a gun shop within a 200 mile radius of my home and I live in a pretty well gun happy region in the south. In this same area, every gun shop will have at least 2 or 3 .44mag revolvers and most of them will also have at least one lever rifle in .44mag. And, the reason for that is that most gun shops do not stock inventory that is a slow mover. In the court of public opinion the .44mag is number ONE in a contest with the .41mag,whether you like it, can accept it or understand it... or not. Also, this discussion is about the .44mag as compared to the .41mag...not as compared to all other big bores...not trying to call into question YOUR reading comprehension.

One more thing and I am done with this lesson. There will never be a time when the 500,460,454,480,etc., so on and so forth will outsell the beloved .44mag. There will be more handguns chambered in .44mag sold of one model gun, the Ruger Super Blackhawk, than all of the others combined for many years to come. This fact will not be because the .44mag is superior to them, it will be because of the intial cost of the gun and the cost to shoot it as the vast majority of shooters do not reload. This makes the .44mag much less expensive to own and shoot while still being sufficient for the role that most big bore revolvers are bought to serve in.

 

[CraigC]

The 44 being about 10 years older does not mean it was cemented in anyone's heart.

You do understand that the .44Mag was not the first .44? That it had a father, a grandfather and a great grandfather??? You do understand that Elmer Keith had been writing about his heavy .44Spl loads since the 1930's, correct? That yes, the .44 had been a staple among shooters and sportsmen looooong before the Dirty Harry came into being.

The .41 has no such lineage.

 

[jhvaughan2]

I'm gonna throw a new view at you. The .41 is not designed to be better than the 44 magnum. It was designed to be better than the 44 special. It is to easy to equate the birth of the .357 to the .44 mag.

The .357 was created to boost the anti-personel power of the .38 due to automobiles and armor. I.E. to make a better Law-enforcement round.

The .44 mag was not created to improve the LE capability of the .44 special. It went beyond that to make it a champion hunting round.
It was not until the .41mag that the purpose was to make a better LE big bore round. Its purpose was not to make a "tamer" 44 magnum.
The problem was not that the cartridge did not succeed in its design, but it came too late. The LE revolver was on its way out.
The Idea of the .41 Mag was "proven" when the concept was re-enginered into the 10mm.

Can a LE round be use for hunting? Sure. Is it better? Hard to prove. Does the range provided by reloading make the point moot. Yes.

 

[22-rimfire]

I developed a preference for the 41 magnum. I feel sure it is subjective. I have owned 44 N-frames and 41 N-frames and I always seemed to shoot the 41 mag better. I actually started with the 41 mag and got the 44's later and just couldn't see any reason to own a 44 mag so I eventually sold them.

In my revolver world, I go from 22LR > 38spl > 357 mag > 41 mag > 480 Ruger in terms of power and it fits well for me.

It was designed to be a LE round, but they produced magnum level ammo that was not comfortable to shoot by LEO's. They eventually made a round at around 1100 fps, but it was too late. The N-frame Smiths are just a bit too big for most LEO's back in the day. A 41 Special would have worked well with a smaller frame, but law enforcement agencies started migrating to the wonder 9's in the late 70's. By the late 80's, it was hard to even sell a revolver except to the diehard revolver afectionotto's. The 40 S&W was the cartridge that LE wanted and they made it giving many of the same benefits of a 41 special in a semi-auto double stack platform without the recoil of the 45ACP. Since that time, the 9mm's preformance has improved.

 

[Owen Sparks]

The .44 can be found everywhere that sells ammunition, even WallMart. That alone makes it better.

 

[Cosmoline]

The .41 Magnum was, IIRC, designed by EK to serve as an amped-up service revolver cartridge that would offer excellent stopping power with less recoil than the .44 magnum. At that time the .44 Mag was seen as a hunting round almost exclusively, and loaded accordingly. Loads were maxed out, bullets were hardcast lead. And in fact the .44 Mag never made ground as an LEO cartridge or even much for self defense due to the bulk of the firearms and the recoil. The .41 Magnum, loaded as intended, can be fired without excessive recoil from standard size revolvers.

Unfortunately, the round never gained much ground. Within another decade the wondernines had started sweeping away the wheelguns and the .40 then took over. Most people buying a revolver who consider a .41 are looking at large frame revolvers that are pretty much the same as the .44 Mag counterparts. So the sensible question is -- why use the .41? If there were concealable .41 Mags out there, and if the round had a more established track record for its intended use, then things would be different.

 

[Confederate]

There's really no reason to own a .41, period.

The .44 mag does everything a .41 does and more. You can create light loads or heavy loads, and the .44 works better against large animals. It may not be that much better, but it does add the extra oooomph that the .41 doesn't have.

The .41 was designed mostly for law enforcement personnel who wanted to add substantial power to assist them in their jobs. In short, they wanted to add some power to the .357 magnum round. Did this happen, and was it needed? In my view, yes, it added power to the .357 magnum round, and no, it wasn't needed.

If the officer used loads that were more powerful than the .357, then those rounds would be too powerful for LEOs to use. Data collected over the past three decades show that the .357 magnum with 125gr JHPs to be the ultimate revolver manstopping loads. More power is not only not needed, but not wanted. Any .41 round would either have less manstopping power, or would encroach on the .44 magnum power.

Bottom line: The .357 is the ultimate revolver manstopper, bar none. Not even the .41 can beat it as the bullets generally stay in the body of the person being shot. In other words, to beat the .357, .41 loads would have to approach the .44 magnum's in power, and then there would be no reason for a .41 Also, any energy expended when the .41 (or .44) bullets passed through a human body would be wasted. Thus, the case could be made that the .357 125gr JHP could beat any .41/.44 for law enforcement purposes. And that any .41 load for big game would have to virtually duplicate the power/loads of the .44. So with that in mind, the .41 doesn't match the .357 because of penetration problems and doesn't do anything for the .44 mag, being rendered superfluous by both calibers.

Cases for the .41 also are expensive and difficult to find!

 

[Lost Sheep]

Bottom line: The .357 is the ultimate revolver manstopper, bar none.

Is a 158 grain .357 at 1,300 fps better than a 170 grain .41 at 1100 fps?

Cases for the .41 also are expensive and difficult to find!

Easy for me to find. There is one in every chamber of my just-fired 41 Mag.

No disrespect intended. Just a difference of opinion. And a little humor.

There are many overlaps in the performance envelopes of many calibers and handloaders can extend those overlaps to phenomenal levels. Really.

Lost Sheep

 

[336A]

I don't have much time so I'll probably have tohit this up again later today. The .41 mag does have its' own unique history. It really started with Elmer, Jordan and Skeeter wanting a straight walled cartridge that was .40" that would replicate the ol' .38-40 performance. In the the 1920's a gunsmith by the name of "POP" Eimer was making his own .40" wildcat called the .401" Eimer special. It kicked out a 200gr bullet at roughly 1100fps.

Yet another gunsmith by the name of Gordon Boser picked up on the concept later with his own .40" wildcat as well. The only difference was that 2400 powder was now on the market and velocities of 1400 could now be reached with the same 200gr bullet.

In 1961 3 years before the .41 mag Hereters introduced the .401" PowerMag. However the no mainstream companies such as Ruger or S&W picked up on it, then the gun control act of 1968 killed it off. http://www.lasc.us/Fryxell401PowerMag.htm

Even Colt almost brought forth they're own .40" magnum round but for what ever reaon failed to do so http://www.singleactions.com/400Colt.pdf

S&W brought out the .41mag in 1964, Elmer stated in an article that .41" was chosen so that the new cartridge could not be used in any of the older .41 Colts. I think it was a marketing ploy though so that it could not be stuffed in any of the .401" Powermag guns read pg25 http://www.elmerkeithshoot.org/GA/1969_01_Elmer_Keith_Favorite_Load.pdf

Cases and components for the .41 mag are not more expensive or harder toeither. I just got new Starline cases for $19.99.

 

[CraigC]

To say that the works of Gordon Boser and Pop Eimer on .400" cartridges contributed to the development of the .41Mag is a bit of a stretch. IMHO, this work crested and ended with the .401Powermag. The closest a magnum .400 came to real commercial success was Colt's experimental .400" cartridge. It 'might' have had a chance, as it even preceded the .357Mag. All these .400" wildcats were sporting rounds, not the law enforcement round the .41 was meant to be. No real, direct lineage. As Taffin writes, the .357 and .44 magnums had parents, the .41Mag had aunts & uncles. The .44 simply had more support behind it, with not only Elmer Keith but John Lachuk and the other ".44 Associates".

IMHO, it was Elmer Keith and John Lachuk who cemented the .44's place in history, not Dirty Harry. The movie may have spurred a bunch of greenhorns to get a S&W 29 but a great many of those ended up back on used gun shelves with barely a cylinderful fired through them. No sir, it was Keith's and Lachuk's work going back 40 years earlier.

 

[DM~]

In the first Dirty Harry movie, the gun WAS a 41 Magnum.

The script said 44, but the prop people couldn't get one, so they used a 41. These two "N" frame guns are indistinguishable for the camera.

What has a fictional character contribute to answering the question? After all, he was not even shooting magnum loads out of it. He just used that line on the bad guys for effect. In reality, he used "light special loads" as he told David Soul's character in "Magnum Force".

Lost Sheep

That "myth" keeps on being repeated, but in the past, on other forums, it's been proven to NOT be true. YES it was a 44 that was used.

The use of 44 spl's was also addressed. It's been accepted that the reference to 44 spl's was for the "competition" in that movie, not duty use.

DM

 

[CraigC]

Doesn't matter, whatever model was used, it was most assuredly converted to use 3-1 blanks.

 

[jdh]

In the first Dirty Harry movie, the gun WAS a 41 Magnum.

Is John Milius's word good enough for you?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x-tGz6dNdg

Craig, The thread tittle is 41 MAG vs 44 Mag. FWIW, I carried a 2" 5 shot 44 spec Taurus as a bug/off duty until the chief decided Taurii were junk guns and forbade their use. He is also the one who made it policy to not allow the carry of magnum loads in duty guns effectively rendering the 41 off limits as there were no loads headstamped 41 spc available at the time. So I gave up on revolvers for duty carry and went to a 1911 with 230 gr tuncated cone FMJ ammo for duty carry.

Shootniron,
I'll offer you this olive branch, what you say may be true in you part of the country. Here in the shop I worked for the past few years 44 mags guns and ammo do not sell well. It got to the point the store owner would not take them in on trade or gave a very low ball offer if you insisted. So, perhaps each of our perspectives based on conditions in our local area may be skewed.

 

[Bushpilot]

From a technical / ballistics standpoint I don't think there is enough of a difference between the two that it really matters much either way, with the possible exception of, as others have stated, really heavy bullets in the .44. Otherwise the differences are so miniscule that at handgun ranges they are irrelevant. Anything one will do so will the other. However, from a practical standpoint, the .44 has all the advantages. There are sooo many more options in guns, dies, molds, availability and factory loads for the .44 that make it clearly the "better", no contest. Having said that, the 41 is kindda cool with it's "unique" factor. But, if I personally could only afford one large wheelgun it would never be a 41.

 

[shootniron]

jdh


Shootniron,
I'll offer you this olive branch, what you say may be true in you part of the country. Here in the shop I worked for the past few years 44 mags guns and ammo do not sell well. It got to the point the store owner would not take them in on trade or gave a very low ball offer if you insisted. So, perhaps each of our perspectives based on conditions in our local area may be skewed.

Yeah man, I will take the peace offering and I will go ya' one better. I honestly feel like there is so little difference between the 2 cartridges that it is a moot point in most situations with the only performance advantage that the .44 enjoys is with heavy bullets. I reload and cast bullets, but have never taken the plunge into the .41 even though I did buy a set of dies that are on the bench right where I put them when they came in some years ago. I think that someone is better off with the .44 because of availability of ammo and things of that sort. So, I hope the gulf between us has been breeched on the .41/.44 subject.

And, I was really just yanking your chain cause I like to harass .41 and .45lc lovers...even though I have great respect for both.

 

[336A]

To say that the works of Gordon Boser and Pop Eimer on .400" cartridges contributed to the development of the .41Mag is a bit of a stretch. IMHO, this work crested and ended with the .401Powermag. The closest a magnum .400 came to real commercial success was Colt's experimental .400" cartridge. It 'might' have had a chance, as it even preceded the .357Mag. All these .400" wildcats were sporting rounds, not the law enforcement round the .41 was meant to be. No real, direct lineage. As Taffin writes, the .357 and .44 magnums had parents, the .41Mag had aunts & uncles. The .44 simply had more support behind it, with not only Elmer Keith but John Lachuk and the other ".44 Associates".

I don't think it is much of a stretch to think so. Kieth and Jordan both were lobbying for a .40" cartridge and the .401" PowerMag debuted 3 years before the .41 mag. It easily offered what both men were looking for and then some. From a marketing stand point it was IMHO a shrewed business decision to decide on a .410" cartridge so as not to cause the public to purchase a cheaper firearm that could fire a .400" S&W magnum cartridge, if S&W decided to go that route. We will never know the real truth however and could go on and on til' the cows come home.

Actually it was the .401 PowerMag that came the closest to commercial success where .400" magnums are concerened. Especially since small numbers of both ammo and firearms were sold, the .400" Colt didn't even make it beyond prototype status. But in the end the .41 mag prevailed which is perfectly fine with me. Whether it is directly or indirectly the .41 mag does have some form of lineage and it did start with the .400" calibers.

However as Elmer stated in the article I posted a link to earlier "Doug Hellstrom decided to make the new cartridge a true .41 instead of .400".

 

[kevin7769]

Lot's of good info here as to why the .41mag.. I own 3, all S&W 57's, 4"blue(1978), 6"blue(1964)and a 8 3/8" Nickel(1982) with Dirty Harry style shoulder rig. I also own a 29 with 10 5/8" Silouette barrel(about 1983 I think). I prefer the 41mag. I plan on trying some 41special when I can get around to ordering it. In just standard type loads the 41 is more manageable(at least IMO), but when I get into the serious hunting type loads like Winchester Platinum 41 mag it feels about the same as 44. I also like 10mm, what can I say.. If its a popularity contest then sure 44 wins(not at the gunshop I work at though, 500 rules the roost with ammo and gun sales). If its comparing 41 handloads to factory 44's, the 41 probably wins.. but now there are some great reloading stuff for the 44 it equals back out.

 

[Brian Williams]

Help me understand why the .41 Mag is better than .44 Mag

It is not better, just different.

There's really no reason to own a .41, period.

here is one, If you want something bigger than the 357 but smaller than the 44.
This would be great with a S&W 581/586 in 41 magnum