A day at the Range with a Raging Bull - .44Mag Style...
Yesterday during a moment of boredom at work I decided that I needed a .44 Mag revolver (well - wanted anyway - does anyone actually need a .44(?)) so I headed off to my favorite gun shop in OKC to buy one.
I've heard lately that Taurus has improved their quality so I thought I'd check them out while I was at it - who knows - might be able to save a few bucks.
I already have a S&W 686 in .357 and it is a quality revolver so when I got to the shop I put my hands on a Taurus 608 which is the nearest thing they make to the 686 as a quick apples to apples comparison/sanity check of Smith vs Taurus. I checked lock up, cylinder gap and the trigger. If one assumes that the Smith has a 95 out of 100 quality rating (if there's a 100 out there I've not handled one yet) then the Taurus 608 would get about a 93 based on just handling it, dry firing it etc. Why is this important - because when I walked in the store my intention was just to check out the Taurus and buy a S&W 629. But after a direct comparison between the Taurus 608 and the Smith 686 with which I'm familiar I decided that there probably isnt' $200 worth of difference between Taurus .44 and a Smith .44. So I put my eyeball on the shop's .44 Taurus offerings.
They had both the M44 and the Raging Bull in stock. They are essentially the same weapon with some differences in grips and sights. In addition the Raging Bull has double cylinder locks that the M44 doesn't (marketing BS???). I preferred the sights on the M44 but the grip on the Raging Bull. Since we're talking a .44 Mag here I thought a comfortable grip was more important. So I chose the Raging Bull with 6.5" slab sided, ported bbl. I checked lock up and cylinder gap on the revolver they brought out from the warehouse and it locked up better than any revolver I've ever held or used. It was rock (and that's no exageration) solid. There was no lateral, front to back or rotational slop at all. In fact the lock up was so solid I wondered if that might not be a problem. The cylinder gap (thanks to the trusty feeler gauge I keep in my car) was a bit over .004". I checked the trigger by dry firing it a few times. There was a tiny amount of creep in SA but it broke crisp and was almost as good as the SA trigger in my S&W 686. In DA the pull was long and a bit hard for me but I don't fire revolvers DA anyway so blew that off (as it turns out a bit of oil placed down in the action later loosened the DA pull up quite nicely). Purchase price $420 vs a purchase price of $579 for the S&W 629 - so I did save a few bucks.
Taurus calls the finish on the RB I chose Bright Blue and that is no exageration. The finish is as black as black can be and a very shiny, smooth and deep black it is. The top strap and the top of the barrel rib has a satin black finish which is also very good looking (and to be honest I'd prefer that the whole gun be done in that but what the heck - that Raging Bull is a very, very masculine looking hunk of steel). The RAGING BULL logo in large light gold block italic letters is prominently displayed on the left side of the 6.5" barrel below a smaller .44 Magnum title. The boldly visible lettering is surprisingly neither gaudy nor pretentious. In fact it is my opinion that both add considerably to the personality of the gun.
The grips are a medium soft rubber and I figured that would really help in controlling this monster (do I sound intimidated by the .44 - well I was - emphasis on WAS).
Next stop was the ammo counter where I picked up a box of PMC 240gr JHP and a box of PMC 240gr LSWC's. The JHP's exit the barrel at 1300 fps and I don't know whether that's a full .44 mag load or not but it seemed like it would be pretty stout to me. I hit the check out stand and reluctantly went back to work.
After getting home I did the necessary new gun cleaning and was surprised that quite a bit of golden brown stain (looked like cosmoline to me - nahhhhhh - couldn't be) came off of the outside of the gun and out of the cylinder. I expected that upon cleaning the barrel I'd get the normal black patch out like I've gotten on all the other new guns I've purchased. Surprising I didn't. Does Tarus test fire the weapons they make before sending them out of the factory?
NEXT DAY:
Around about 10AM wife says let's go to the range - it's gonna rain tomorrow. OK - makes no difference to me (it did as it turns out) so off we go packing up my new Raging Bull, an M1 Garand, a CZ-75B SA, my S&W 686 and my Sig P220 riding my hip. Got plenty of ammo in a GI ammo can and plenty of targets and other miscellaneous items in my range bag.
It's a 30 mile drive to the range and I mentioned to the wife that since it was Saturday she should expect it to be more crowded than it normally is on Sunday morning. Turns out I was right. There were at least 40 people there compared to Sunday morning when 5 or 6 is a crowd. Anyway we checked in and headed to the pistol ranges and setup. I use small bore NRA 100 yard targets and paper plates at 15 and 25 yards for pistol shooting. So I waited for a cold range and set up bunch of paper plates and two small bore bullseye targets (wanted to sight in the new red dot on my .357). Broke out the .357 and BAAAMM! the battery's dead. What a moron - I left the dang thing on last time I was dry firing it. No big deal - I just break out the Raging Bull.
Now I've only fired a .44 Mag once before and those were a guy's handloads, in an uncompensated 629 and 300 gr bullets. After about 6 of those my elbow started hurting so I chose to not fire that thing anymore. I was - understandably - a bit apprehensive. I loaded up 6 240 gr JHP's in the RB, pointed down range, cocked the hammer, took careful aim at a paper plate (marked with a .75" colored dot in the center as an aiming point) and carefully, slowly squeezed the trigger. Bang! One each bullet hole about 1/2" from the colored dot. Huh? That's it - HELL! That wasn't so bad (most recoil of any gun I own bar none - but those rubber grips and the 53 oz weight of the thing really eat up the recoil). So I shot for groups and had to adjust windage 1 click to the left.
Now that compensated barrel makes a really big bang and people to my left and right were looking over at me. One of the guys with 22's to my left commented "Damn Rambos - oughta ban them from this range". Normally I'd have given that prick a piece of my mind since I'm about as far from being Rambo as one can get but I was having too much fun shooting my hand cannon and blowing big holes in paper plates to bother.
I couldn't believe how well this thing shot. It is more accurate than the S&W 686. When I sat down and shot off a rest to see just how good it was I was amazed. The range hands out targets when you sign in that I usually just give away. Hadn't done that yet so I put one up. Those targets have 4 small bullseyes, 1 large bullseye in the center and two 1" squares, 1 to each side of the large center bull. I consistently put 3 of 6 rounds inside the square with the other three being on an edge or very close by. The only other gun I've got that I can do that with is my CZ-75B SA.
Next on the list is my paper plate drill. I normally only do it with a semi-auto but figured what the heck let's see what this Raging Bull will do. With an auto I put 2 rounds into each of 6 paper plates as fast as I can. The paper plates are set up 2 by 2 by 2 vertically. Since the revolver only has 6 shots I figured one per plate instead of my normal two per plate. Here goes. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! six shots, 4.75 seconds and 6 paper plates with holes in them. Now I'm more amazed. I can do that with an auto pistol with out even thinking about it. I can do it with my 686 and 38 specials but I cannot do it firing .357's out of my 686. I shouldn't have been able to do it with a .44. Must have been a fluke. Tried it again. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! 6 Plates - 2 holes in each now. 4.82 seconds. I'm mystifed. I am in AWE! This is the coolest!
An old guy and his adult son are in the lanes to my right. He walks over and comments on the shooting and how big the revolver is. Is that a .44 Magnum he asks? Yep - wanna shoot it? Nope - he says but can my son shoot it? (His son is showing my wife his Smith .357 snubby and she cons him into letting her shoot it). Sure says I. A few minutes later after my wife finishes up shooting his .38 he comes over and I hand him the Raging Bull. He takes a stance, takes aim and BOOM! the sucker rises all the way up to about 45* up. He shakes his head, releases his right hand from the grip and shakes it a bit and then regrips the pistol. It took 2 more shots but he finally got on paper. His last three were well within the upper right bullsey he was shooting at. That wasn't bad at all he said. As he walked away I watched him rattle his wrists a bit.
I fired off the rest of the 50 round box with equally impressive results and then switched to the wad cutters. Those wad cutters shot equally well but as I found out later they leaded up the barrel and cylinder face quite badly. What a pain that was to clean.
After 100 rounds of 44 Mag I was getting a bit tired so I switched over to the more tame CZ75B SA in .40 S&W for some slow and easy precision shooting just to calm my nerves and give my hands, wrists and elbows a break. That .44 must have put me in the zone because I shot that .40 better today than I have in a long time completely tearing the center of 5 different 1" squares right out. By then it was time to move on down to the 100 yard range and break out the M1. About half way there I noticed just how crowded the range was and said screw it - the M1'll wait till next week.
All in all I'm very impressed with the Taurus Raging Bull. It's easy and more importantly fun to shoot; it's accurate, the barrel porting controls the recoil (or maybe I just expected it to be worse than it actually is) and it just plain looks good - meaning it looks BAAAAD! I'd recommend one of these without hesitation to anyone who asked.
Yesterday during a moment of boredom at work I decided that I needed a .44 Mag revolver (well - wanted anyway - does anyone actually need a .44(?)) so I headed off to my favorite gun shop in OKC to buy one.
I've heard lately that Taurus has improved their quality so I thought I'd check them out while I was at it - who knows - might be able to save a few bucks.
I already have a S&W 686 in .357 and it is a quality revolver so when I got to the shop I put my hands on a Taurus 608 which is the nearest thing they make to the 686 as a quick apples to apples comparison/sanity check of Smith vs Taurus. I checked lock up, cylinder gap and the trigger. If one assumes that the Smith has a 95 out of 100 quality rating (if there's a 100 out there I've not handled one yet) then the Taurus 608 would get about a 93 based on just handling it, dry firing it etc. Why is this important - because when I walked in the store my intention was just to check out the Taurus and buy a S&W 629. But after a direct comparison between the Taurus 608 and the Smith 686 with which I'm familiar I decided that there probably isnt' $200 worth of difference between Taurus .44 and a Smith .44. So I put my eyeball on the shop's .44 Taurus offerings.
They had both the M44 and the Raging Bull in stock. They are essentially the same weapon with some differences in grips and sights. In addition the Raging Bull has double cylinder locks that the M44 doesn't (marketing BS???). I preferred the sights on the M44 but the grip on the Raging Bull. Since we're talking a .44 Mag here I thought a comfortable grip was more important. So I chose the Raging Bull with 6.5" slab sided, ported bbl. I checked lock up and cylinder gap on the revolver they brought out from the warehouse and it locked up better than any revolver I've ever held or used. It was rock (and that's no exageration) solid. There was no lateral, front to back or rotational slop at all. In fact the lock up was so solid I wondered if that might not be a problem. The cylinder gap (thanks to the trusty feeler gauge I keep in my car) was a bit over .004". I checked the trigger by dry firing it a few times. There was a tiny amount of creep in SA but it broke crisp and was almost as good as the SA trigger in my S&W 686. In DA the pull was long and a bit hard for me but I don't fire revolvers DA anyway so blew that off (as it turns out a bit of oil placed down in the action later loosened the DA pull up quite nicely). Purchase price $420 vs a purchase price of $579 for the S&W 629 - so I did save a few bucks.
Taurus calls the finish on the RB I chose Bright Blue and that is no exageration. The finish is as black as black can be and a very shiny, smooth and deep black it is. The top strap and the top of the barrel rib has a satin black finish which is also very good looking (and to be honest I'd prefer that the whole gun be done in that but what the heck - that Raging Bull is a very, very masculine looking hunk of steel). The RAGING BULL logo in large light gold block italic letters is prominently displayed on the left side of the 6.5" barrel below a smaller .44 Magnum title. The boldly visible lettering is surprisingly neither gaudy nor pretentious. In fact it is my opinion that both add considerably to the personality of the gun.
The grips are a medium soft rubber and I figured that would really help in controlling this monster (do I sound intimidated by the .44 - well I was - emphasis on WAS).
Next stop was the ammo counter where I picked up a box of PMC 240gr JHP and a box of PMC 240gr LSWC's. The JHP's exit the barrel at 1300 fps and I don't know whether that's a full .44 mag load or not but it seemed like it would be pretty stout to me. I hit the check out stand and reluctantly went back to work.
After getting home I did the necessary new gun cleaning and was surprised that quite a bit of golden brown stain (looked like cosmoline to me - nahhhhhh - couldn't be) came off of the outside of the gun and out of the cylinder. I expected that upon cleaning the barrel I'd get the normal black patch out like I've gotten on all the other new guns I've purchased. Surprising I didn't. Does Tarus test fire the weapons they make before sending them out of the factory?
NEXT DAY:
Around about 10AM wife says let's go to the range - it's gonna rain tomorrow. OK - makes no difference to me (it did as it turns out) so off we go packing up my new Raging Bull, an M1 Garand, a CZ-75B SA, my S&W 686 and my Sig P220 riding my hip. Got plenty of ammo in a GI ammo can and plenty of targets and other miscellaneous items in my range bag.
It's a 30 mile drive to the range and I mentioned to the wife that since it was Saturday she should expect it to be more crowded than it normally is on Sunday morning. Turns out I was right. There were at least 40 people there compared to Sunday morning when 5 or 6 is a crowd. Anyway we checked in and headed to the pistol ranges and setup. I use small bore NRA 100 yard targets and paper plates at 15 and 25 yards for pistol shooting. So I waited for a cold range and set up bunch of paper plates and two small bore bullseye targets (wanted to sight in the new red dot on my .357). Broke out the .357 and BAAAMM! the battery's dead. What a moron - I left the dang thing on last time I was dry firing it. No big deal - I just break out the Raging Bull.
Now I've only fired a .44 Mag once before and those were a guy's handloads, in an uncompensated 629 and 300 gr bullets. After about 6 of those my elbow started hurting so I chose to not fire that thing anymore. I was - understandably - a bit apprehensive. I loaded up 6 240 gr JHP's in the RB, pointed down range, cocked the hammer, took careful aim at a paper plate (marked with a .75" colored dot in the center as an aiming point) and carefully, slowly squeezed the trigger. Bang! One each bullet hole about 1/2" from the colored dot. Huh? That's it - HELL! That wasn't so bad (most recoil of any gun I own bar none - but those rubber grips and the 53 oz weight of the thing really eat up the recoil). So I shot for groups and had to adjust windage 1 click to the left.
Now that compensated barrel makes a really big bang and people to my left and right were looking over at me. One of the guys with 22's to my left commented "Damn Rambos - oughta ban them from this range". Normally I'd have given that prick a piece of my mind since I'm about as far from being Rambo as one can get but I was having too much fun shooting my hand cannon and blowing big holes in paper plates to bother.
I couldn't believe how well this thing shot. It is more accurate than the S&W 686. When I sat down and shot off a rest to see just how good it was I was amazed. The range hands out targets when you sign in that I usually just give away. Hadn't done that yet so I put one up. Those targets have 4 small bullseyes, 1 large bullseye in the center and two 1" squares, 1 to each side of the large center bull. I consistently put 3 of 6 rounds inside the square with the other three being on an edge or very close by. The only other gun I've got that I can do that with is my CZ-75B SA.
Next on the list is my paper plate drill. I normally only do it with a semi-auto but figured what the heck let's see what this Raging Bull will do. With an auto I put 2 rounds into each of 6 paper plates as fast as I can. The paper plates are set up 2 by 2 by 2 vertically. Since the revolver only has 6 shots I figured one per plate instead of my normal two per plate. Here goes. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! six shots, 4.75 seconds and 6 paper plates with holes in them. Now I'm more amazed. I can do that with an auto pistol with out even thinking about it. I can do it with my 686 and 38 specials but I cannot do it firing .357's out of my 686. I shouldn't have been able to do it with a .44. Must have been a fluke. Tried it again. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! 6 Plates - 2 holes in each now. 4.82 seconds. I'm mystifed. I am in AWE! This is the coolest!
An old guy and his adult son are in the lanes to my right. He walks over and comments on the shooting and how big the revolver is. Is that a .44 Magnum he asks? Yep - wanna shoot it? Nope - he says but can my son shoot it? (His son is showing my wife his Smith .357 snubby and she cons him into letting her shoot it). Sure says I. A few minutes later after my wife finishes up shooting his .38 he comes over and I hand him the Raging Bull. He takes a stance, takes aim and BOOM! the sucker rises all the way up to about 45* up. He shakes his head, releases his right hand from the grip and shakes it a bit and then regrips the pistol. It took 2 more shots but he finally got on paper. His last three were well within the upper right bullsey he was shooting at. That wasn't bad at all he said. As he walked away I watched him rattle his wrists a bit.
I fired off the rest of the 50 round box with equally impressive results and then switched to the wad cutters. Those wad cutters shot equally well but as I found out later they leaded up the barrel and cylinder face quite badly. What a pain that was to clean.
After 100 rounds of 44 Mag I was getting a bit tired so I switched over to the more tame CZ75B SA in .40 S&W for some slow and easy precision shooting just to calm my nerves and give my hands, wrists and elbows a break. That .44 must have put me in the zone because I shot that .40 better today than I have in a long time completely tearing the center of 5 different 1" squares right out. By then it was time to move on down to the 100 yard range and break out the M1. About half way there I noticed just how crowded the range was and said screw it - the M1'll wait till next week.
All in all I'm very impressed with the Taurus Raging Bull. It's easy and more importantly fun to shoot; it's accurate, the barrel porting controls the recoil (or maybe I just expected it to be worse than it actually is) and it just plain looks good - meaning it looks BAAAAD! I'd recommend one of these without hesitation to anyone who asked.
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