I have to confess to being a .38 Special bullet weight "snob," preferring to leave the paltry lightweight 110-125 grain bullets to insignificant cartridges like .380 and 9mm (heh). I've had such good results with the 158 grain lead SWC loadings over the years, both standard velocity and "+P", that I'll happily stick with it. I've seen nothing in all the tests and charts bandied about, along with all the photos of expanded bullets and bullet-holed gel, that convinces me that it is necessary for a change. I know where the 158 grain loadings hit with my favorite .38 Specials and have observed through the years what they do on critters up to deer and large feral dogs.

Most +P 158 grain loadings come with hollow points but I'm not even a stickler for the hollow point in the .38 Special or other non-magnum revolver cartridges. Perhaps for the faster stepping magnum revolver rounds they have some marked value,especially for game shooting.

Texas Star mentions: "That post about it giving sticky extraction from a Model 38 concerns me.

I was contemplating some of the .44 Special handloads I've cooked up experimentally in the past after making a post the other day on another forum.

In pushing the envelop a bit with .38 Special, .44 Special, and .45 Auto Rim I've never happened to encounter sticky extraction with even the most "enthusiastic" handloads tried. I have to wonder if one can push non-magnum straight-walled revolver cartridges hard enough to even get to sticky extraction. That's not saying that too-heavy handloads can't be damaging in them for they can and will damage. All I've ever noticed though were flattened, and in a few instances cratered, primers.

When chronographing that heavy +P 158 grain Buffalo Bore loading, the only revolver of the four used in the test that exhibited primer flattening was my old favorite Model 10 Heavy Barrel and it showed flattening on two of six chambers. The cases however, still just fell out of it as normal with the lightest caress of the extractor.

In playing with straight-walled magnum cartridges in the upper reaches of barely sane handloading one will get sticky extraction if he's taken things a bit too far.

Can a fellow experience sticky extraction in a .38 Special revolver when the same ammunition is fired in revolver chambered for the .357 Magnum with effortless extraction?

What say ye?