.357 Magnum question

[teletech]

I love my .357s but I'm always impressed by how scary accurate my 44s are.
For me this would be enough reason. Don't need .44 magnum power, run .44special and still have a lot of gun.

 

[Doug M.]

I'll admit I have long been a fan of the .41 and bought my first in 1979 (I think). That said, depending on your deer size, range, and shooting skill, any decent .357 round should do. I advocate the old school hard SWC in most revolvers, but in today's ammo reality that might be a hard load to find. What you don't want is the typical load designed for personal defense against human attackers; the intended performance is not the same. I'll admit that if I were desperate for food and could get a good shot, I'd be willing to use a good SWC in my K38. That is likely not lawful for your sport hunting season and not needed.

In most factory .357 loads, a heavy JSP or SWC is likely as good as you can get; placement and penetration matter the most. Any decent 6" revolver will do just fine; while I am partial to K frames due to my hand size, the L and N frames are capable of the same quality of accuracy. Good sights that match your eyes will help a lot. The bigger frames, especially with quality rubber grips, will give you less felt recoil.

Several experienced hunters have given you good advice about the placement standard to which you must hold yourself. I'd say, in crude terms, that if you know the target area, stick with broadside shots, and stick to a distance at which you can put all 6 out of a cylinder on a paper plate, you should do ok. Remember that this is a performance standard you need to achieve under pressure, and consistently.

 

[ramblin84]

A Ruger Bisley Blackhawk Hunter in .45LC would fit your criteria to a tee. Yes, there are factory loaded Hornady FTX rounds that will take any whitetail in NA. Milder recoil and a heavy gun.

 

[Sheepdogged]

I think either a well-placed .357 Magnum or 10 mm hunting load will get the job done, but what is your intention for the gun in terms of hunting distances, and for the 360 days of the year when you will not be hunting?

I wouldn't place absolute faith in energy delivered; there are plenty of rounds that are far more effective than they 'should' be on paper. For longer distances a heavier bullet may work better, even at lower velocities (assuming adequate penetration), so that favors the 10 mm.

On the other hand, if you'll be using even a moderate amount of expensive factory ammo for range or hunting practice, that highly favors the .38/.357.

Am I the first one to suggest buy one of each? Good luck in your decision.

Those are great questions and points.

In terms of distance, I'm not sure. Thus far I've mostly limited my shooting handguns to 25 yards (going out to 50 once or twice without much success, so I need practice). I think 50 yards, especially with the use of optics or a thin front sight post, is reasonable.

As far as the rest of the 360 days of the year, it's actually 356 in Ohio. We get 9 days of deer gun season. But as far as those 356 days are concerned, some of those would be for practice obviously. It would also be nice to shoot .38 Special out of the gun at the range as well just for fun.

That said, there are other animals to potentially hunt, but I don't know much about hunting them. We now have feral swine & coyotes which you can hunt with any caliber 365 days a year (though I would have to travel a bit to get to where the hogs currently are. My understanding is that nationwide the line is supposed to travel north with time (and I live in central Ohio). We also have coyote where I live though I don't see them often.

As far as distances are concerned, if .357 Magnum is anything like .357 SIG (my carry gun), .40 S&W doesn't overtake it at distance until about a hundred yards which is much farther than I will ever hunt with a handgun anyway. Buying one of each as you pointed out is a possibility, but not anytime soon. For this year I have to make a choice.

 

[Sheepdogged]

Back in the 1980's the late Robert Shimek published an article on hunting white tail deer with the 357 Magnum. His recommendations, and I agree, were to use a revolver with a barrel of not less than 6 inches, limit shots to broadside only, and at a maximum range of 50 yards. At the time, he was using a Model 19 with the hard to find, 8 3/8 inch barrel and preferred the zippy 125 grain JHP loads. He warned that with the explosive expansion of the 125 grain JHP, contact with a rib or any bone would result in the bullet fragmenting and not penetrating. I think a 158 or a 180 grain JHP would be a better choice.


357 Magnum vs. 10mm Auto, a long standing debate. Do not fall for the old lie that claims the 10mm Auto is close to the energy of a 41 Magnum. I have some experience with the 10mm as well as 357 and 44 Magnums. The 10mm Auto easily matches the energy of the 357 Magnum and, under some circumstances, can slightly exceed the 357 Magnum, but it is well short of being a 41 Magnum. A 10mm Auto can equal or slightly exceed 357 Magnum performance when comparing to revolvers with barrels up to 6 inches in length. A 357 revolver with an 8 inch barrel is likely going to provide more energy than a 10mm pistol, plus it gets you a much longer sight radius and mounting a low power scope on an 8 inch barreled revolver is often fairly easy.


Check out the Ballistics by the Inch website, they did some pretty interesting tests with a bunch of calibers and even experiments with varying barrel-cylinder gaps. Too bad they are no longer adding to their tests.
BBTI - Ballistics by the Inch :: Home

I agree with everything you said but 10mm beating .357 Magnum in energy. There appears to be a difference between what the larger ammunition companies offer and what the smaller ones can do. The most powerful rounds I've found from Underwood and Buffalo Bore certainly favor the .357 Magnum. As I also pointed out, there is more capacity in the .357 Magnum case, and when it comes to producing energy, so long as we're talking reasonably close bullet weights (and not comparing .22 TCM to 10mm, for example), velocity is going to trump mass. Remember, we half mass and exponentially raise velocity when computing energy (k.e. = 1/2 mass x velocity squared). Just as .357 SIG is more powerful than .40 S&W, .357 Magnum is more powerful POTENTIALLY than 10mm. The Underwood .357 XTP round is about 94 ft. lbs. more powerful than their comparable 10mm offering (both being more powerful than I think anything the larger companies offer), and that is significant for a handgun shooting out to 50 yards in my opinion. If we were to shoot both out of a carbine approaching 100 yards or more that might not be the case (and a .40 diameter bullet might retain more energy), but for typical handgun hunting applications or self defense, .357 Magnum is probably technically still a better round unless we're talking bigger game. In that case, I think I'd probably favor a 10mm with a cast bullet over a .357 Magnum, but I don't have that issue in my area. There are now black bear in Ohio, but there are so few and we can't hunt them anyway. Even if we could, I think a .357 Magnum is still sufficient for them (from what I read), but brown bear are obviously much bigger and a completely different animal. But for whitetail deer, I can't see 10mm being an advantage unless I'm limited to buying ammo from the big guys, but that is nonetheless a concern.

 

[Sheepdogged]

Bigger and faster is better when it comes to hunting cartridges, but I think your reading too much into handgun ballistics.

I think you misunderstood my post. I am not asking people to help me choose between .357 Magnum and 10mm (I'm getting a .357 Magnum). What I am trying to discern is why the big ammunition companies underpower their .357 Magnum offerings when compared to 10mm. I think we can all agree handguns don't even come close rifles for hunting, so in my mind a handgun cartridge specifically marketed for hunting mid-sized game should be as close to its potential as possible without exceeding SAAMI specs (or becoming unweiding). The .357 Magnum is a more powerful cartridge, but the big guys are loading it to be less powerful. That is my point, and that is what I am questioning. Why underpower the .357 Magnum compared to 10mm offerings? It just doesn't make sense to me from a ethical standpoint (ensuring you have as much energy as possible considering we discussing hunting medium sized game with a handgun cartridge).

 

[murphydog]

I recall .357 used to be rated at higher pressures but with plain lead bullets; perhaps the big factories download it for jacketed rounds and someone out there is going to put full power loads in guns of marginal strength (not S & W, Colt, etc., but they are out there).

As noted above, Buffalo Bore and a few other specialty makers make highly effective loads right at full SAAMI specs. Expensive or at least they were before everything else got really expensive, but you would be using them in small quantities.

 

[reccpd101]

Remember S&W makes J frames in 357 Magnum !!!! The defense 357 loads hurt my hands in a J frame. I'd be afraid to shoot full power hunting loads in one. I've taken whitetail, black bear, coyote and small feral hogs with 357 full power hunting loads. I like Buffalo Bore 180 grain in N frames and Marlin carbines As many others have said above it's all about shot placement and not overestimating your own ability. Also our southern wildlife tends to have smaller bodies. I use to belong to the "it has to start with a 4" club until I got older.

 

[Sheepdogged]

500 ft/lb's of energy versus 600 ft/lb's won't make a lick difference to a medium sized game animal,

I completely disagree for at least two reasons off the top of my head. First, the difference between 500 and 600 ft. lbs. does make a difference with humans at typical self defense distances. How do I know this? A study of 1,800 bodies shot in gunfights tracked how often a caliber did NOT immediately incapacitate an attacker. These are actual bodies and not gel tests or meat targets. The results for the calibers tracked were as follows (i.e. percentage the round failed to immediately incapacitate):

.32 ACP - 40%

.25 ACP - 35%

.22LR - 31%

.38 Special - 17%

.380 ACP - 16%

.45 ACP - 14%

.44 Magnum, .40 S&W, and 9mm - 13%

Shotguns (80% 12 gauge) - 12%, again, shotguns can over penetrate and spend their energy.

Centerfire rifles, .357 Magnum, and .357 SIG all tied at 9%. Again, centerfire rifle rounds often overpenetrate and waste energy.

.44 Magnum didn't do any better than 9mm because, as one medical examiner stated, he never saw a .357 Magnum leave a body and he never saw a .44 Magnum stay in one. When we're talking about pistol rounds in particular, a .44 Magnum pass through human bone and tissue so easily that almost half its energy leaves along with the bullet.

As a trauma room surgeon stated, a bullet that stays in the body is typically more damaging than one that leaves the body. And more germain to the point, a study conducted at West Point concluded that a body hit with more than 500 ft. lbs. of energy is more likely to be instantly incapacitated than a round below that threshold, and they made the estimate based on experiments by Chinese scientists shooting dogs in the rear leg (and thus instantly shutting down their CNS via hydrostatic shock) and American scientists who did the same with swine.

Now a human-size wild animal is a lot more resilient than a human, which is why deer and other game have been known to travel a long distance after being shot with a lethal wound.

We also have to consider muzzle energy vs the energy that makes it down range if we're handgun hunting medium sized game up to 50 yards with a handgun.

Since we're not dealing with rifle velocities and energy, certainly handguns are comparatively marginally powered. But if canine and swine experiments help scientists predict a >500 ft. lb. threshold increases a cartridge's incapacitation rate on humans, it's extremely likely a difference of 500 to 600 ft. lbs. might make a difference on deer at 50 yards.

A round that has 548 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy, for example, may only have 464 ft. lbs. of energy at 50 yards. A round with 650 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy, however, might still have 525 ft. lbs. of energy. Those are the ballistics of Hornady's [underpowered] .357 Magnum and 10mm XTP hunting rounds respectively. A .357 Magnum round warmer than anything Hornady, Federal or Winchester offers however (like a Buffalo Bore offering), might have 675 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy which maintains 567 ft. lbs. at 50 yards. An Underwood full-powered .357 round starting off with 770 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy might fair even better.

The point wasn't the difference between 500 and 600 rounds anyway. My point was that .357 Magnum cartridges loaded to their full or near full potential can far exceed that which, in my opinion, could make "a lick of difference." If broad-side shots with a pistol are recommended, then it stands to reason any advantage you can gain from a hotter .357 Magnum or 10mm cartridge is welcome, especially when it's useful for a bullet to pass through the other side of the animal to make a blood trail more patent.

That doesn't matter for humans, but it does for game. If a bullet leaves the body with hardly anything left in the tank, you can get both maximum effectiveness and a blood trail (for a handgun caliber; rifles have so much more energy there is no need to be concerned about the bullet staying in the animal because of the desire for a blood trail and preserving as much meat as possible [it's obviously better it leaves]. If you hit the deer in the shoulder bone, for example, you might not do as much damage as you'd like to the lungs. So in some situations a hundred foot pounds of energy likely does make a difference in my opinion).

 

[gfors]

Are you an Auto Guy or a Revolver Guy?
Either caliber will take deer at most ranges most of us can hit the Deer.
I didn’t see Elmer shoot the Outhouse but my Colorado Buddy did see him shoot that Eagle!
That is to say, some folks actually can shoot better than some of the rest of us.

CO requires, at minimum, a 4” barrel, .24 cal expanding bullet, capable of 550 ft. pounds, at 50 yards. To me, those last 2 items take it into .44 magnum territory.
YMMV

 

[BigMuddy]

I don’t think the OP is asking for cartridge suggestions. He has stated that he is getting a .357. I believe he wants to know why factory loads from the big ammo companies aren’t as powerful in .357 as they are in 10mm. (Correct me if I’m wrong).

I’ll wager a guess and say there aren’t any small lightweight 10’s being produced that can’t take the abuse. Lots of little revolvers that I wouldn’t want to shoot heavy loaded.357’s out of.

The smaller boutique ammo companies aren’t afraid to sell with disclaimers to not use their products in certain firearms. The big boys not so much.

Today the only option for “full potential” .357 ammo is to purchase from the smaller companies mentioned or roll your own.

My only other comment is that I am definitely in the “two holes are better than one” crowd. Tracked a .357 shot deer where the 158 gr. JHP loaded heavy didn’t exit. Not a drop of blood on ground. Just walked in the direction it ran and found him.

Dan

 

[oldman10mm]

Back in the days (70s') when I started shooting (and reloading) 357 Magnum, the factory ammo of Remington and Winchester was much more powerful than the ammo of those two currently being produced. 'Watering down' by corporate legal teams. The only 'boutique' ammo back then was Super Vel but their 'boutique' direction was high velocity lightweight bullets. Norma produced handgun ammo (80s' ?) which was considered to be loaded to the max, they stopped making that type of ammo long ago.
Being a collector of the old Remington, Winchester, Super Vel, and Norma ammo, my next project at the range will/should be pulling out the chronogaph and do some comparison testing of the old stuff vs the new stuff. I only have 4" S&W revolvers, a M586 and a M28. I have been watching for a 6" M686 or M28. I would probably use the M28 as it goes back to the era of the old ammo.