Years ago, before a long-term drought reduced desert quail populations, when Gambles and Scaled quail hunting was wonderful on San Carlos Apache Reservation in Southern Arizona, I carried my Ruger Vaquero 44-40 along with shotgun. Happily, I never did see much/any evidence of illegals, as one does at most areas in southern AZ, TX, NM.

Load was a Speer 0,429, 200 grain jacketed hollowpoint over SAAMI max load of Blue Dot, as given in Alliant 2005 loading manual. Have never chronoed this load but, it is much more powerful than any factory load I tried, perhaps 900+ fps from 5,5 inch barrel.

Note added later:: I chronoed the above load today (13 September) and got a bit over 860 fps at ambient temp of about 70F.

Niklas