Almost Overlooked!

Forgive me, Elmer, for I have (almost) sinned.

This year marks a milestone which I, of all people, should have been observing since January with great fanfare, and no small amount of fireworks! You know, loud booms, muzzle flashes from the eruption of a charge of either Hodgdon’s H110 or lately-scarce Alliant 2400 and JHPs from Nosler, Speer or Sierra, or hard-cast lead pills from a variety of sources.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the .41 Remington Magnum, a caliber with which the likes of the late, great Elmer Keith, the legendary Border Patrolman Bill Jordan and equally legendary former lawman-turned-classic storyteller Skeeter Skelton will be forever linked. And then somewhere down the ladder several rungs, there’s that scurvy no-account fellow at whom I stare each morning in the mirror, who may one day regret he became enamored with the “middle magnum,” but it won’t be today!

This all occurred to me as I was traipsing across the top of Washington’s South Cle Elum Ridge a few weeks ago looking for grouse, shotgun in hand and Model 57 Smith & Wesson on my hip, enjoying a slight chill at about 4,500 feet above sea level, where the air is a little thinner, the sky a little clearer and my mind not nearly as foggy, even at my age.

I was but a twerp of 14 years back in 1964 when I first heard of this cartridge and — shame on me all to hell — it didn’t quite register with the degree of importance it should have, considering where my life’s path has brought me.

Suffice it to say, I consider the .41 Magnum to be nothing short of genius. It shoots slightly flatter than the .44 Magnum (Keith actually said so) recoils a bit less and, with comparable loads, can pretty much do everything Elmer’s beloved .44 Magnum can do. I’ve put down three fat bucks over the years with .41 Magnum handguns, and in the process, set its owner apart from the crowd.

Keith’s Account

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Elmer Keith — the grand old man of long-range handgunning — was largely responsible for development of the .41 Magnum. In his autobiography Hell, I Was There!, he recalled how he was approached by Jordan at an NRA gathering in Washington, D.C., asking that he work on getting a .41 for police and sheriffs’ departments.

According to Keith’s account, the pair strolled around the exhibit hall, contacting all the top officials at various gun and ammunition companies, and spent the evening at an “impromptu meeting” where the details were worked out. The cartridge case length would be the same as the .44 Magnum, bullet diameter to be a true .410 (the .44 Magnum is actually 0.429), with a 220-grain bullet. Remington would develop the ammunition and both Smith & Wesson and Ruger would wrap guns around the cartridge.

“Some six months later,” Keith wrote, “just as Charley Shedd and I were leaving for the Arctic and our polar bear hunt, a pair of 4-inch Smith & Wesson Magnums, with target sights, and triggers trimmed to 3/8-inch, the hammers cut back about ¼-inch, arrived. They had rosewood grips and my name on the side plates of the pair, consecutively numbered, No. 1 and No. 2. Also most of a box of Remington ammunition arrived in a plain box.”

Keith and Shedd took the sixguns along, sighted them in north of Keith’s home in Salmon, Idaho and eventually hunted caribou up around Kotzebue, Alaska. It was then that Elmer determined the .41 shoots “a bit flatter in its trajectory than the .44 Magnum I was used to.”

I’ll second that. Of the three deer I’ve dispatched with the .41 Magnum — two with a 6 ½ inch Ruger Blackhawk and one with my 4-inch Model 57 S&W — the rounds went right where I was aiming, including a walking away back-of-the-head shot on a wounded mule deer that just wouldn’t stay dead.

Silhouettes and Game

As my fondness for the .41 Magnum grew, I had occasion to chat about the cartridge with a couple of other guys, the late Bob Milek and more recently-departed Dick Metcalf, both of whom kind of lit up when I mentioned my own affinity for the round that John Taffin wrote about 10 years ago as the “Redheaded Stepchild” of the magnums, on the caliber’s 50th anniversary.

I’ll not try to duplicate Taffin’s historical prose, as he covered all the bases. Instead, I’ll concentrate on how this cartridge seems to have fans hiding in the weeds all over the landscape. I’ve encountered folks who have used the .41 Magnum for silhouette shooting, knocking over steel rams and chickens at better than a hundred yards.

At the annual Elmer Keith Memorial Invitational Long Range Handgun Shoot held over around Spokane, Washington, I’ve met some remarkably good handgunners, packing 6- and 8 3/8-inch Model 57s and one or two guys with long-barreled Blackhawks.

With my own 6-inch gun, I was once (emphasis on ONCE) able to actually walk shots out to a target approximately 600 yards away, and the guy spotting for me at the time said he was pretty certain I hit it. I’ll take his word for it, although I think a congressional investigation probably should be called for.

I’ve watched as other shooters most definitely hit targets out to 400 and 500 yards with their .41s, using various handloads. Other handgunners have used the .41 Magnum to anchor deer, black bears and other big game over the years. All of this makes a strong argument that the round was destined for hunting and competition more than law enforcement, as the latter never really quite embraced the caliber.

I have fired various handguns chambered for the .41 Magnum, including one produced by Charter Arms some years ago, a five-shooter with a recoil not for the squeamish! That revolver produced a muzzle blast and flash so awesome that, even if you missed, the mere ignition of the round would frighten some ne’er-do-well into immediate submission, if not cause him to faint dead away.

While others have certainly experimented more with the .41 Magnum, I tend to not push my luck at the loading bench because revolvers are expensive and I’m not a millionaire. However, I have found a few loads which have worked rather well out of my guns.

My primary propellants have become Hodgdon H110 and the aforementioned 2400, back when it was produced by Hercules and nowadays under the Alliant brand. I have tried other powders, but I like these two best for consistency. With the difficulty of finding 2400 lately, Accurate No. 9 has been suggested as a good substitute, and soon as I find a pound of that stuff, I’ll give it a try, as I’ve got about 100 brand new Starline cases in a bag on my loading bench.

I have discovered my 4-inch S&W likes a 170-grain Sierra JHP over 24 grains of H110, while my Blackhawks and 6-inch S&W favor the 210-grain Nosler JHP over 20 grains of H110.

I still have a small supply of the old half-jacketed Speer 200-grain hollowpoints and they performed well enough over 2400 to knock over a forkhorn mule deer buck several years ago.

Speer still lists data for this projectile, with a top charge of 16.8 grains of 2400 or 22 grains of H110, but I’d back off slightly on both propellants.

Last year, I started running hard cast 215-grain LSWC bullets with beveled bases from Rim Rock Bullets over 16.5 grains of 2400 and the results were impressive. My loads averaged 1,175 fps. That’s good enough to stop coyotes and you can fill a cooler with cottontails with such a load.

A pal of mine cast some 225-grain LSWC flat-base bullets for the Keith shoot, and his recommended load is 18.0 grains of H110. I tried it and liked it. Fired cases have shown no signs of pressure.

I also tried 200-grain LSWC bullets from Stateline over 17 grains of 2400 and they were comfortable loads producing decent accuracy and no signs of leading, and what I would call moderate recoil.

The maximum SAAMI pressure of 36,000 psi is listed for the cartridge.

Happy Anniversary

I have lived in seven decades, two centuries and two millennia, learning along the way to appreciate the special things in life. One of those things happens to be the .41 Magnum. It is a cartridge which, like the late Rodney Dangerfield, “don’t get no respect,” except in reality, it actually does.

At least one of my .41 Magnum revolvers travels along whenever I head into the High Lonesome, where recent years have seen a growing population of mountain lions and black bears, and now even wolves have started multiplying.

Every now and then, somebody will announce the “death” of the .41 Magnum, and I’ve sat back and chuckled each time. I remember when the .357 Maximum was introduced decades ago, and the late gun writer Ted Wilcox predicted it would replace the .41 Magnum quickly. Ted and I were friends, and we had a spirited conversation about this. It didn’t happen then and won’t happen now.

The .41 Magnum has staying power. Having survived six decades and showing no signs of becoming an anachronism, the middle magnum has earned its place at the table.

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