Nice weather here in Central Texas today. Cooler and overcast. I hit the range early with my old model Ruger Flat Top .357 and the USFA .44 Special.

I had some round ball loads I wanted to try in both guns, plus regular ammo to shoot. The loads for the Ruger .357 were a .375" round ball and .38 Special cases. I loaded 2.4 grains of Bullseye under the round ball and put a dab of grease on the ball before loading the cartridge into the chamber. I lubed 3 out of 5 and that worked out well, the bore staying clean and oily.

The powder charge was 'way too light for the length of the cartridge. I should've loaded them in shorter cases. If the gun was tilted up and tapped before lowering it and firing, they gave a loud POP. If you did not do that it would go FLOOP and the ball would barely make it 20 yards.

This was about the best I could do.

After shooting all the round ball loads I had I switched over to .357 Magnums. These are some that I loaded about 25 years ago. A hard cast 158 gr. SWC over a heavy dose of some military surplus powder that was supposed to be one or other of the AA powders. I don't remember which and the label has faded until I can no longer read it. So I just need to shoot these and reload them. I only have 400 or so of them to do.

Done with those, I switched over to the USFA .44 Special. I had a .457" round ball loaded on a .44 Russian-length cartridge made from .44 Specials. The powder charge was 3.1 gr. of Bullseye. It was a light load but in the short case they shot just fine, though next time I will probably run 4.0 grains of Bullseye.

After the round balls I shot loads that were a 240 gr. SWC over 5.0 gr. of Green Dot. The bullet is commercial one that I somehow ended up with some years ago. It has a shorter nose and thinner front band than the Keith SWC but seems to be pretty accurate.

My worst target:

My best target:

Which goes to prove that if you shoot enough sometimes you get lucky and they all go where you wish they would.

It was a nice day and good one to go shooting!

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Ele era velho.
Ele era corajoso.
Ele era feio.