Been shooting .38 Short Colts for two years but never could get them to group better than 2 1/2 inches at 25 yards from a rest. Went back to my old load of 4 grains of Solo 1000 in my .38 special brass and here is the first group from 25 yards rest.

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Looks like a good load, what gun did you use. Also I have a firefighter friend that lives in Surprise, named Cory Vance...have you heard of him?

AZShooter, are you using these for competition?

I've shot .38 Short Colts in .38 spl and .357 mag firearms, .44 Russians in .44 spl and .44 mag firearms and experimental shortened .41 cases in .41 mag. firearms. One thing I noticed was a decrease in accuracy that increased with the decrease in length.

Now I hear using .38 Short Colts for competition is getting popular with action pistol gamers for faster reloads, are they getting poorer accuracy too? Are any of them having special .38 Short Colt cylinders made for their revolvers?

Not sure if this is what you're suggesting but I've had similar experiences.

Spent a lot of time and effort trying to "improve" of a favorite cartridge. Endlessly tried different bullets, powders, pressure levels, loading details and so on with varing degrees of sucess.

Finally went back to my original loading and it performed far better than I remembered. Either is was pretty good to start with or all the time and effort spent had improved my shooting skills.

I'm using a standard S&W 686 6 inch with a trigger job I did myself. Breaks clean at 5 lbs double action. I don't bother with single action even when testing loads.

A lot of ICORE shooters are going to 38 short oolt for the faster reload. I don't see enough of a difference. You still have to move your hand to the cylinder and it's the same physical distance with 38 specials and short colts. My reloading times are about the same with each and not enough difference to worry about.

Looking at loading data on another forum, the best group posted by one of the top shooters I know is 2 1/2 inches and that's with a red dot on his gun. I'm shooting Iron sights. I haven't seen anyone make a short cylinder yet but someone probably will.

I don't know Cory sorry.

I'm an experimentre and love to take shooting to the next level. Here I actually had to go back a few steps to improve.

Thanks for the comments.

Personally I have not seen any difference in accuarcy between loads in 38 Special vs 357 Magnum cases but have never tried 38 Short Colt cases. A local shooter tried and said accuracy suffered. While in AZ this winter a local shooter claimed he did not expereince any problems with 38 SC cases in a 627. For the speediest reloads one cannot beat a 625, those 230 gr slugs are aided by gravity and those huge holes in the cylinder.