Heavy Hitting with the 45 Colt Part II Two Small Guns and Some Really Big Bullets

I’m sure lots of people outside of the cowboy action shooting community, particularly non-handloaders, can’t  understand why the 45 Colt has survived. It’s old and slow…sort of like me, yet there are lots of guns chambered for the cartridge, lots of factory loads and lots of handload components. The 45 Colt, stuffed into modern firearms, can hold its own against magnum handgun cartridges. As a firearm aficionado, rejecting the 45 Colt would be like riding around NYC in a $60,000 Nissan pickup truck, while watching Shania Twain perform on the vehicle’s flat panel display and insisting you’re a cowboy. Nothing represents salt of the earth America like an American gone European. I digress… It’s the medication.

The 45 Colt, like the 45-70 Gov’t, made its long journey through association with popular guns and being adaptive to modern ballistic expectations. For the 45 Colt the journey lasted, so far, 133 years. The premise for the information that follows can be found in Heavy Hitting with the 45 Colt Part I. Since I began working on the project, I acquired a Winchester Ranger chambered for the 45 Colt and incorporated it into the process. The Ranger is also covered separately.

Personally, I liked the combination of the Ranger and the Bisley; the former a take off on the 1894 Winchester Trapper’s Model Carbine, the latter a not so close approximation of the hammer and grip contour of an 1894 Colt SA target pistol. The Bisley with its 7.5″ barrel and heavy unfluted cylinder represents about the minimum size handgun required to deliver hunting ballistics out of the 45 Colt. The gun has excellent adjustable sights and it is easy to strap on just about any sort of handgun optical sight. The Winchester Model 94, with its 16″ barrel, represents about all that is necessary to extract maximum velocity out of the 45 Colt. It too has excellent metallic sights and can easy be fit with optical sights including those that for some reason find themselves halfway down a gun’s barrel. I’m sure Jeff Cooper is laughing at all of us over that one.

From a shooting perspective, even with heavy handloads the little Winchester is a lot of fun. Recoil is not heavy, but you can always slip your purse between your shoulder and the gun to dampen the maximum of 20-22 ft/lbs of recoil if you’re sensitive. Most heavy loads produce 15 ft/lbs or less. The Bisley, with the same loads, can be a bit disconcerting in the degree and speed of movement, but not particularly physically harmful from the primer side of the cartridge. I will suggest that you do not put your left hand pinky finger between the backstrap and the shooting bench whilst resting on sandbags, that could smart. Also, don’t let that trigger guard creep up on you as a result of a loose grip or all the knuckle rapping with bring back memories of a Catholic school education in the late 50’s – early 60’s.

All of the loads appearing on this page cycle cleanly through the carbine and clear the throat of a Ruger with room to spare, even the longest 1.660″ loads. I deliberately did not attempt to establish maximum length for either as it doesn’t matter, the bullet crimp groove will establish a workable length and overall length is ogive and meplat specific. Don’t ask, it isn’t important. None of these loads exhibited any of the classic excessive pressure loads, although I would suggest some are floating around in the 32,000 PSI range and not appropriate for other types of guns chambered for this round.

The Good, The Bad and The Slightly Ugly

Some of the loads in the table are heavy, some are more modest. I thought I would list them all so there would be a range to work from. It isn’t always necessary to run at the ragged edge and all of the loads seemed fine in both the rifle or pistol. As always, exercise caution and don’t start at maximum loads. This information pertains only to these firearms and, I can’t stress enough, at these COL dimensions.
 

Why push this old cartridge, rather than buy a 44 Magnum?

Well, for one thing it isn’t an old cartridge. In fact, the brass I loaded was produced maybe a month ago, as were the bullets. Physical cartridges have no attachment to a history except, perhaps, date of manufacture. Handloads only respond to bullet weights and construction, powder types and charges and the volume available to contain the burning charge when fired. If there is an “old cartridge” limitation it only exists in the head of the handloader and shooter, not in modern firearms and components. Increased velocity is almost always beneficial because it tends to straighten the arc of the bullet’s path and because it sharply increases the bullet’s kinetic energy. Push a 300 grain bullet only 100 fps faster and the energy will increase 200 ft/lbs. In the Ranger the factory ammo produced 439 ft/lbs of energy. The energy for the handloads topped out at 1777 ft/lbs with lots more near the high end than the factory end of things.

As for trajectory improvements, I think the tables below is a good comparative illustration; 1/5th the drop on an optimized zero and almost 3 times the energy at 200 yards. No, I am not suggesting the 45 Colt is a 200 yard deer rifle. I would set 150 yards as my absolute personal limit for deer size game.
 

Conclusions

The 45 Colt is an incredibly flexible cartridge and has many application in rifles, single shot  and single and double action revolvers. The cartridge has good accuracy potential for recreational target shooting. I am sure there are thousands of those cowboy action guys burning up 45 Colt ammo by the truck load as you read these words. In a compact and easy to carry hunting rifle, the 45 Colt is probably more suitable for deer hunting that the 30-30 WCF. I hope the cartridge continues to have an active life and I hope there is some survival story that will bring it back Winchester as a long standing American company, and let’s hope Ruger keeps going and going and going…

Related information:
Heavy Hitting with the 45 Colt Part I
Heavy Hitting with the 45 Colt Part II
It’s Like a Winchester…Only Shorter
Handload Data – 45 Colt – Winchester ’94 and Ruger Bisley

Thanks,
Joe