Another old school hunting gun
My time has been pretty limtied lately so if you see me doing something it is in between the cracks. Fortunately I found a couple of cracks last week. One of my have to have guns (thanks to Elmer Keith ) fell out of the sky. 2nd model hand ejector in .44 Special with a 6 1/2" barrel. Although he started his work with the Triple Lock the heavy lifting was done by the 2nd model hand ejector. The availibility of the 6 1/2" barrel using his loads opened up the wolrd of handgun hunt with revolvers to a whole new level. Here is an excerpt from Sixguns by Keith where he mentioned the guns and loads and what was accomplished with them. The 4" gun Elmer mentioned could have been his Triple Lock. Several of you know that the .44 Special occupies a special place in my heart. I fed my family and several more families with a .44 Special killing over 100 deer with a Taurus 441T 6" and a 4X Refield pistol scope. So in the words of Elmer Keith and a pictiure of my latest .44 Special.
Elmer Wrote:
I custom loaded these bullets for many years and shipped them all over the world. They have killed about all American and much African game, and have been used by officers in the Border Patrol in numerous gunfights, with telling effect. Many chaps, wanting their names in the funny papers, have made copies of the Keith -Lyman bullet, slightly changing the shape of the nose or the width of the bands, but with no improvement to the original. Dr. Murphy of the Winnipeg Revolver Club made several 20 yard possibles with the Keith-Lyman 250 grain .44 Special bullet in actual competition , with 6.5 grains of No. 6 powder. Another doctor from Omaha carried my heavy loads with him to Africa and wrote that he had no trouble keeping the whole safari supplied with antelope meat with these loads and his 6 ยฝ inch Smith & Wesson. We have successfully used the load here on about everything including elk, moose, bear, mule deer, mountain sheep and mountain goats. Last fall I killed my mule deer with it from a 4 inch Smith & Wesson while on a fishing trip, being too badly crippled with a broken ankle to think of hunting.
I am having to do research inbetween the cracks. This is one of the "Elmer Keith's improvement guns." Until I get back the letter from Smith and Wesson there will be a few little unknowns but it has the "Special Alloy Heat treated Cylinder" and "magna" grips. Remember the first .44 Special 2nd model hand ejectors built still had the cylinder metalurgy that the triple lock did. That coupled with the 6.5" barrel means it cant get any better unless it was originally shipped to a very notable location. Elmer thought till the day he died that the triple-lock was the finest double action ever built. The one thing the triple lock didn't have was the strength to go beyond his early loads. When the 2nd model came out he immediately began bending Doug Wesson's ear about improvements that could put it over the top. Aside from the infamous magna grips the huge improvements in metalurgy were one of the most significant improvements made in the guns and that started the path to the .44 Magnum. This is the model of gun that made it possible. I can't wait to get it in the woods.