Old & New Ruger
Blackhawk .44

In the last days of 1955 Remington and Smith & Wesson unveiled the most powerful of handgun cartridges for its day — the .44 Remington Magnum. Then, very quickly in 1956 Sturm, Ruger and Company introduced their .44 Magnum Blackhawk. A slightly increased frame size over .357 Magnum Blackhawks was required to accommodate the bigger .44 cartridge.

First Look

The first time I actually saw a Blackhawk .44 Magnum was in a gun store on the main street of Paso Robles, Calif. It was January 1973 and I was visiting a friend with whom I had worked with in Yellowstone National Park. The .44 was priced at a mere $95. I had the money but not being a resident of the state it might as well been on the moon. Later the same year, after the same friend and I finished working on a forest fire crew in Montana, we wandered into a gun store. There for the first time we discovered something called a New Model Ruger Blackhawk. I was a bit nonplussed by the action change. No half-cock notch and cylinder rotated freely when the loading gate was opened: What on earth was happening?

Finally in 1989 I became the proud owner of a BlackHawk .44 Magnum, a gift from a good friend. It’s a wicked beast with full bore loads so to me it has always been a .44 Special with the option of more power if needed. In 2020 while perusing the Ruger website my attention landed on the New Model .44 Magnum Blackhawk and so I decided to finally give one a try.

Old And New

Here’s a brief comparison. My Old Model .44 Blackhawk has a 6-1/2″ barrel. New Model Blackhawk .44s’ barrel lengths are 5-1/2″. My OM .44 has an aluminum alloy grip frame but the NM .44 has one of steel. And finally, my .44’s rear sight sets up where it can be knocked about in rough traveling but the new one has those protective sides. Interestingly, the unloaded weights of the two .44s were identical at 41 oz. My older Ruger has no safety warning printed on its barrel but someone at Ruger wised up and now the lawyer-mandated safety warning is under the barrel instead of alongside of it.

And, of course, with its transfer system of action the New Model .44 Magnum can safely be carried with all six chambers loaded while my Old Model .44 is a five shooter for safety’s sake. It should (MUST!) be carried with five rounds chambered and hammer down on the empty sixth chamber. I personally have known two fellows who ignored the safety warning and shot themselves — one fatally.

Going along with my idea Ruger Blackhawk .44 Magnums are .44 Specials with the option of also being .44 Magnums as needed, I only shot them with .44 Special factory loads. I was surprised at the difference 1″ of barrel made. Velocity from the 6-1/2″ length was 770 fps but from a 5-1/2″ it was 723 fps. As far as accuracy goes, I couldn’t tell a bit of difference between the two. Groups for five shots ran in the 2″ range at 25 yards give or take a half-inch or so.

Ruger.com

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