Super Blackhawk Hunter. Bisley..?..Plow

[CraigC]

For me the Bisley is far and away the best solution but it has to have custom grips. The factory grips are atrocious. The oversized rubbers are even worse.

 

[WestKentucky]

I had a long barrel 44 with plow handles and despised it. 44 specials are fine, and 357 is no big deal in the guns I have shot, but 44 mag seems to be the threshold at which recoil begins to exceed what is useful in a plow handle gun. I wouldn’t consider the gun without a bisley grip. As for the Hogues, I tried them on my 9” 44 and quickly went back to wood. They are ugly, but they are grippy as well. Drawing from a flapped holster was quite a chore and I didn’t feel comfortable trying to get the gun out quickly if a deer were in range, and as clumsy as that setup was I wouldn’t draw the gun once in the stand either for fear of dropping it. They shot well and were comfortable, but that’s a minor concession for making the gun hard to use for its intended purpose.

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

Just to be clear, is everyone calling the Ruger Dragoon grip frame and grips a "plow-handle"? Because I've actually gripped a plow and they don't feel nothing like the Dragoon.

 

[.38 Special]

Just to be clear, is everyone calling the Ruger Dragoon grip frame and grips a "plow-handle"? Because I've actually gripped a plow and they don't feel nothing like the Dragoon.

I first came across the term used in a mid-1920's article discussing the merits of the Colt SAA grip vs. the Colt Bisley grip, and assumed that they were thinking of horse-drawn wooden plows with gently curved handles.



(In searching for that picture, I was amused to note that a lot of old wooden plow handles look more like Colt Bisley grips than SAA grips. It'd be funny as hell if we've all been misquoting Elmer Keith for the last hundred years.)

 

[P89DCSS]

I thought through "plow" was referring to the front plow of a steam locomotive from the 1860s era.

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

I thought through "plow" was referring to the front plow of a steam locomotive from the 1860s era.

That’s called a “pilot” a.k.a. “cattle catcher.”