I have been a fan of Smith & Wesson sixguns seemingly forever. My first in 1957 was a WWI Model 1917 in .45 ACP. Virtually every one of us teenagers had such a Smith & Wesson, as well as a surplus 1911 and a Springfield 1903-A3. They were the cheapest guns available. In 1958, I purchased my first new Smith & Wesson, a 4" Highway Patrolman, and then for our first Christmas together in 1959, Diamond Dot gave me a 1950 Target .44 Special. My first .44 Magnum from Smith & Wesson was purchased in 1963. Over the following years there have been many Smith & Wessons in all the various chamberings, including a dozen or more .44 Magnums. The N-Frame Smith & Wessons are simply my favorite double-action revolvers.
King of Sixguns
S&W Performance Center’s .44 Magnum Hunter
If the truth be told, I would not be afraid to bet there are more .44 Magnums sold than all the rest of the more powerful sixguns combined. The .44 Magnum has been used to cleanly take all big game including Alaskan brown bear, polar bear, African elephant, Cape buffalo and African lion. And since we are being truthful I would also be willing to bet the .44 Magnum is the most powerful sixgun the vast majority of shooters can actually handle. It may not be regarded as awesome as it was in 1956; however, it is just as powerful now as it was then, actually more so with all the different ammunition choices now available. More than once I have called the .44 Magnum the King of Sixguns; I see no reason to change that in the twilight years of my life.
The M629 Hunter comes with traditional fully-adjustable iron rear
sights in addition to the Leaper’s red/green-dot sight.
I have to admit I have not been enamored with all the creations emanating from the Performance Center, but the current model is not only one of the best looking Smith & Wesson big-bore sixguns I’ve ever seen, it also has a function matched up perfectly with its form. It handles the .44 Magnum with ease while visiting a minimum of felt recoil upon the shooter without being overly heavy and cumbersome. They did it right!
The basic platform for the .44 Magnum Hunter is the Model 629, stainless steel version. Actually, it does not look like a normal stainless steel sixgun as the frame is matte black, as is the barrel. The 2-tone effect comes from the polished stainless steel cylinder, and the flats on both sides of the barrel. The 7-1/2″ barrel itself is not of the heavy underlugged variety, but closer to the original configuration of 1955. The flat on the left side is polished and inscribed, “PERFORMANCE CENTER” while the right side says, “.44 MAGNUM HUNTER” with with quite bold and exceptionally attractive lettering. It appears to have been cut with a laser. The hammer and trigger are both of the target style and are plated carbon steel.
The rear sight is the standard Smith & Wesson adjustable, matched up with a red ramp front sight in a dovetail. As supplied by the Performance Center, the .44 Magnum Hunter comes with a Leapers red-or-green-dot 1X scope mounted on the barrel. This is an entry-level scope, which provides out-of-the-box performance for the hunter while at the same time not adding much to the cost. With the Leapers there are five choices of red-dot intensity and five also of green. The reasoning for this low-priced scope is many will opt to provide their own choice of optics, whether red dot or traditional pistol scope. My choice for anything, other than up close hunting in deep cover, would be a traditional 2X or 4X LER scope. The head of the Performance Center, Tony Miele, was thinking boar hunting and this red/green-dot scope appears to be a perfect choice for such applications.
Like all modern S&W revolvers, the firing pin is now mounted in the frame. The top of
the hammer is wide and sharply checkered for easy cocking for single-action shooting.
The barrel (above) is fitted with a muzzlebrake and, combined with the revolver’s
57-1/2 ounce weight makes for a pleasant shooting .44 Magnum. A backup iron
front sight is dovetailed into the barrel. The swing-out cylinder (below) is unfluted
and left unblackened in contrast with the frame and barrel.
When compared to all the double-action .44 Magnum revolvers that have come after the original Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, the latter is quite a bit lighter resulting in heavier felt recoil. To combat this Smith & Wesson has done two things with the Magnum Hunter. First we have a muzzlebrake added to the end of the barrel, it appears not to be removable, and is drilled with holes for the full 360 degrees. At the other end we have recoil-reducing rubber fingergrooved grips. Rubber grips are never attractive but their lack of form is highly overshadowed by the great function they perform. Add in the weight of the red/green-dot scope and we have a .44 Magnum that is quite comfortable to use.
Ten factory loads weighing from 180 to 300 grains were fired in the Performance Center .44 Magnum Hunter. It performed well with all loads and when sighted in with 240-grain bullets, as expected, shot slightly high with the 300-grain bullets, and slightly low with the 180-grain loads. Of the 10 loads tried, nine were jacketed while one was a gas-checked hollowpoint cast bullet, “The Deer Magnum” from Buffalo Bore. The Magnum Hunter shot the latter just as well as it shot jacketed bullets. The average group size for five shots at 25 yards using the red-dot scope was less than 1-1/8″. Looking at both ends of the spectrum, Hornady’s 180-grain XTP-JHP grouped into 5/8″ for five shots while the 300-grain version did 7/8″. That is excellent performance for the ammunition, sixgun and this very well seasoned shooter.
Over the past year, I’ve written up several Performance Center Smith & Wessons for both this magazine and our sister publication American Handgunner. For the latter it was the .500 S&W Bone Collector, and for GUNS it was my pleasure to do both a Packin’ Pistol .44 and a Hunter Model .44. The latest version is my favorite of the four. I also think it’s the most attractive of the four big bores. In talking with Tony Miele of the Smith & Wesson Performance Center, I found the idea behind this latest creation was his concept of the perfect sixgun for hunting wild boars. Of course, it is not confined to that as it also will work just fine for any other hunting application a .44 Magnum might be called upon to perform. Set up as it came from the Performance Center, it is just about perfect for deep woods use.
The Model 629 Hunter comes with a Leapers dot sight selectable for a red or green
dot depending on hunting conditions—a perfect set up for wild boar in cover. The knife
is a Grayman Knives Suenami (www.grayman-knives).
Model 629 Hunter
Maker: Smith & Wesson
2100 Roosevelt Ave.
Springfield, MA 01104
(800) 331-0852
www.smith-wesson.com
Action Type: Double action
Caliber: .44 Magnum
Capacity: 6
Barrel Length: 7-1/2″
Overall Length: 14″
Weight: 57-1/2 ounces
Finish: 2-tone stainless steel
Sights: Adjustable iron sights, dot sight
Grips: Rubber fingergroove
Price: $1,329
SCP-RD40RGW
Maker: Leapers
32700 Capitol St.
Livonia, MI 48150
(734) 542-1500
www.leapers.com
Tube Diameter: 38mm
Objective Diameter: 30mm
Field of View: 16.5′ at 100 yards
Eye Relief: Flexible
Exit Pupil: 25mm
Click Value: 1/2″ elevation & windage at 100 yards
Length: 119mm
Weight: 7.4 ounces
Batteries: CR2032 3V
Reticles: Red and green dot
Price: $43.95
Fine Pedigree
The .44 Magnum in its original form from Smith & Wesson is one of the finest, perhaps the finest sixgun to ever come from the Springfield factory. Starting with the 1950 Target .44 Special as the basic platform, the cylinder was lengthened to fill out the frame window, the barrel was changed to a bull-barrel configuration as found on the 1955 Target .45 introduced earlier in the year, special heat treating was applied, a target trigger and hammer along with target stocks were utilized, and the sights consisted of a white-outlined, rear-adjustable sight matched up with a red ramp front sight. All in all, it was a most magnificent sixgun!
I have recounted in the past my first experience with the S&W .44 Magnum. The local gun range rented a 4″ version with six rounds of ammunition to anyone brave enough to try. My teenage friends and I tried, almost cried, and then we lied and said it wasn’t bad. It would take several years before I could even come close to handling the .44 Magnum. In the ensuing years I did a lot of growing up.
The .44 Magnum cartridge in its original form used a 240-grain bullet, at the same muzzle velocity as the 158-grain .357 Magnum from 20 years earlier. Elmer Keith said the recoil would not bother a “seasoned sixgun man” and was actually less than a .38 Special J-Frame. He also called it the greatest revolver and ammunition development in his lifetime. Major Hatcher of the NRA said shooting the new Smith & Wesson was like getting hit in the hand with a baseball bat. Colonel Askins, always one to try to stir up controversy, said he thought the good Major probably had lace on his panties. A few years later Askins would say the .44 Magnum should have been stillborn.
With the introduction of the .44 Magnum and the tremendous power it gave to sixgun hunters, there were still detractors who said: “Yes, but it’s not a .45!” It is simply impossible to please some people. Since the introduction of the .44 Magnum there has been a long list of more powerful cartridges chambered in factory sixguns. In fact, while Smith & Wesson was developing the .44 Magnum, Dick Casull was working on what would become the .454 Casull. Just over 25 years after the introduction of the .44 Magnum, Freedom Arms started manufacturing the .454 which allows the use of a 300-grain bullet 200 fps faster than the original .44 Magnum. Over the past 1/4 century the .44 Magnum has also been overshadowed, at least in some minds, by the .445 SuperMag, .475 and .500 Linebaughs, .480 Ruger, .500 Wyoming Express and even two more S&W Magnums, the .500 and .460.
Smith & Wesson’s original .44 Magnum was available in blue and nickel finishes with barrel lengths of 4″, 6-1/2″ and 8-3/8″ cataloged along with a special run of 500 5″ sixguns in 1958. All were magnificent sixguns. But since we are being truthful I will admit today’s sixguns are better built with tighter tolerances, better steel and they mostly shoot better. They just aren’t “classic.” I think that is an attitude that comes with being a “seasoned citizen.”
During the heyday of long-range silhouetting in the 1980s, there was also a 10-1/2″ model with special sights. The original .44 became known as the Model 29 in 1957 and then was joined by a stainless steel version, the Model 629 in 1979. Although we learned to handle the recoil of the S&W .44 Magnum that had so intimidated us in the early days, the reality of heavy recoil did change. In the early 1990s, Smith & Wesson addressed this by the introduction of the Endurance Package, which lessened the stress of interior parts against each other and added weight with the heavy underlugged barrel. In the beginning decade of this still relatively new century, the Smith & Wesson Performance Center began offering special editions of their revolvers. The latest is the Model 629 .44 Magnum Hunter.
John found the Smith & Wesson Performance Center Model 629 .44 Magnum Hunter (above)
a pleasant shooting and pleasantly accurate sixgun. These targets (below) were shot with
180-, 240- and 300-grain bullets. Notice the different points of impact.
Forever Changed
Sixgunning was forever changed with the introduction of the Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum in 1935. Up to this point the most powerful factory loaded cartridge available was the black powder, (yes, black powder) .45 Colt. The .357 Magnum used a 158-grain bullet at over 1,500 fps from an 8-3/4″ barreled sixgun; this was unheard of power in a revolver.
However there were those who looked at the .357 Magnum and said, “Yes, but it’s not a .44 Special.” Those devotees of the .44 Special had already been loading heavy .44 Specials for nearly 10 years and, led by such experimenters as Elmer Keith, John LaChuk and members of the .44 Associates, they continued to push for a factory loaded heavy .44 Special. They finally got even more than they asked for and the result in the waning days of 1955 was Smith & Wesson’s .44 Magnum with ammunition developed by Remington.
