Another Old West Question, 44 or 45?

[max]

Say you were living between 1873 and 1876, would you carry a 44 so that you could use the same ammo in your Winchester rifle or would you carry a 45 and then use different ammo for your rifle?

 

[zzzippper]

44-40 all the way. Killed more men, good and bad, than any other caliber. At least to a point.

 

[mc5aw]

One caliber, one cartridge belt, one bandoleer for SA revolver and rifle.

 

[OFT II]

Another vote for the 44/40. It'll do anything that a 45 Colt will do. The 38/40 wouldn't be a bad choice either.

 

[kamloops67]

theyd have to be different for me ,id want to carry a no3 in 44 russian and a springfield rifle in 45-70

 

[mg357]

44-40 is what I would chose so that would only have to purchase and carry one caliber of ammunition for my rifle and my revolver.

 

[Warren Sear]

If I were serious about killin' stuff at long range, I certainly would not want to be using a handgun cartridge in a rifle. I would want the highest powered rifle (with optics) available at the time and either a 44 or 45 caliber revolver.

 

[Alpo]

Interesting question.

I, too, thought of the 38 as a better choice, but he gave a top-year of '76, and I don't know if Colt was chambering theirs in that, yet. Supposedly, the 38 'hits harder". 180 grain 40 caliber slug at 1100 does seem like it might hit harder than a 200 grain 43 caliber slug at 900.

But, of those two choices, I'd go with 44. While the 45 is, I believe, a better pistol round, it's not THAT MUCH better, and it seems more likely that, in some out-of-the-way trading post, if they only had ONE caliber of ammunition, it would be the most common rifle ammo. So having a pistol chambered in that rifle cartridge would be a plus.

 

[Seldom]

Colt did not chamber the 1873 SAA in .44-40 until 1877 so I probably would have stuck with my 1860 Army revolvers and a couple of extra pre-loaded cylinders. The straight .45 cartridge does not lend itself well to black powder loads. The necked .44-40 is thinner and expands more to fill the cylinder. That allow for less fowling behind the barrel and smoother running. My Winchester of choice would have been the .44-40 caliber 1873 sporting rifle with 24" barrel. It carries more rounds in the magazine than the carbine. I have used this combination CAS.

 

[Stevie]

I don't think they brought out Colt SAA in .44WCF until a bit later..like 1878 or 1879...could maybe get something else in .44WCF

 

[jimmyj]

Colt SAA .45
Springfield M1873 .45/70 Carbine.
Ammo available at Army Posts.

 

[max]

I read my dates wrong and stand corrected. The 44 was not available in the Colt in 1873. Therefore you would have had 2 caliber to contend with.

 

[Qball]

I would stick to my .44 Cap & Ball revolvers.

 

[nawilson]

The straight .45 cartridge does not lend itself well to black powder loads.

Please explain. It was designed for black powder.

 

[Seldom]

.45 brass is thicker than .44-40 brass so it doesn't obdurate as well as the latter. The better the seal in the cylinder, the less fouling you get on the cylinder contact surfaces. .45 brass works for BP but you have to clean sooner especially in low humidity. That is why Oliver Winchester never chambered his lever-action rifles in .45 caliber. The necked cartridges like .44-40, .38-40 and .32-20 just work better with BP.

 

[Alpo]

The reason Winchester never chambered their gun in 45 Colt was, until the advent of the solid-head case, where an extractor groove could be put into the head, there was never enough rim for an extractor to grab.



And the original ones, with the Benet priming had even less rim.



And then there is the "we don't want to put the competition's name on our guns" thing.

 

[Muley Gil]

I'd pick the .45 Colt. Several folks from the 1800s wrote that their .44-40s froze up on them while firing. Jeff Milton, an oldtime lawman, wrote about this.

 

[kwselke]

Ammo availability was a concern then as it is today. I believe the .44 was more widely available, so that's probably what I would have chosen. I wonder if the Walmart in Tombstone carried both .44-40 and .45 Colt?

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

Remington's new army was available on special order in 44 RF and convertible to Center fire, plus 44 cap and ball cylinders, so it would fire 44 Henry, 44 Russian on the same cylinder and cap & ball. That goes great with a Henry Rifle. Remington had the Split Ring and later Solid Ring Rolling blocks, and of course there were Sharps 1874's in 50-70,50-90, and later 45-70 & others. But if you are limiting the hand gun to a Colt, I'll go with 45, because it works and works well. The Texas Rangers provided their own arms, and many went with the 44 WCF combo. Later the state had some federal surplus rifles, in 30-40 US, the Rangers that had them went to 45 Colt. The only Ranger owned SAA my family ever had was in 45 Colt (it was a Beasley model). We bought it from a Ranger's widow, in her affidavit, she stated how her husband refused to own anything smaller. Ivan

 

[Alpo]

There was a case of a Texas Ranger named George Lloyd, who, in 1879, was in a gunbattle with some Apaches.He loaded a 45 Colt into the magazine of his 73 Winchester, and when he attempted to chamber it - Jam City.

He had to take his pocketknife and remove the sideplates, to clear the cartridge, to get his gun back into action.

Would not have had that problem if his pistol had been a 44.