Several months ago I mentioned here that my 38 year old nephew had bought a Rossi 92 lever rifle in .44 Magnum caliber, and did anyone have some brass they could spare so I could load him some ammo. Forum Member TLawler generously hooked me up with 160 cases, I let go another 100 so I had 260 cases to make him a stash of .44 Magnum.

I was able to order some Speer 240 grain "DeepCurl" jacketed soft points from Midway USA, they were literally the only pistol bullets of any variety in stock at the time. Ordered 300, 100 for the Nephew, 200 for me....

I had on hand some Missouri Bullet Company 200 grain lead round nose left over from another reloading project, had 60 of those left. I also had a generous quantity of 240 grain Lead Semi Wadcutter I cast from a Lee Tumble Lube mold, cast from wheel weights. I literally have thousands of those on hand, so I figured if his rifle liked them, he would have a steady source of cheap ammo.

So, here's what I loaded:

100 each Speer 240 grain jacketed soft points, 16.5 grains 2400 for an advertised velocity of 1250 FPS.

100 240 grain Lead Semi Wadcutter from Lee Mold, 6.7 grains Unique at 800 FPS.

60 Missouri Bullet Company 200 grain Lead Round Nose, 6.1 grains Trail Boss at 890 FPS.

My Nephew came to stay with us this past weekend to shoot his Rossi and other guns he's picked up this Summer, a Henry Golden Boy .22 and a Ruger 10/22. He has really become enthused with shooting, I think in large part because he has a good place to shoot now, his Uncle's property! Behind the house we have a pretty nice shooting range set up with up to a 200 yard shot.

The Rossi ate every load with no issues, sights were dead on from the factory, smooth cycling. The Nephew was able to hit good with it too, shots from the standing position were hitting my steel targets at 100 yards no problem. The mild cast lead loads were fun to shoot, while the jacketed 240 grainers were hitting steel with much authority. I'm thinking anything that gets within 100 yards of him and this rifle is in trouble.

Here's some pics:

The stash of .44 Mag ammo:



Shooting in the rain from the protection of the cabin back porch cover:





Rossi 92 and steel targets shot from 100 yards, standing position. Targets are 13" in diameter:



Nephew and steel target also shot from 100 yards, target is 12" X 24":



Henry Golden Boy and Nephew, another neat lever rifle he's picked up. We had some enjoyable action shooting together, he with the Golden Boy and me with a Winchester 9422.



In two days we probably spent six hours shooting, half of the .44 Magnum ammo is gone, the empties are back in the tumbler to be loaded for his next visit. We probably burned through 600 rounds of .22 also. A great time was had by all!