New Favorite gun

[hogwash]

I just got a Hartford '92 clone in .357. Shot it for the first time this morning. That little gun is awesome. The 20" barrel is just the right length. I'm not sure about the sights on it. I'm going to look into the other options out there. I was wondering about the ballistics of the .357 out of a rifle. I have looked all over the place but can only find numbers for this round out of a pistol. I'd imagine that the long barrel helps the ballistics quite a bit. Can anybody give me a link or just know the ballistics? I'm not looking for precise ballistics just ballpark so i know what I'm working with. Thanks.

[Halwg]

With my 18.5" barrel on a Marlin 1894C, I have gained about 400 fps over my 6" revolver.  I was getting 1260 out of the handgun, vs 1670 out of the Marlin.  You should do a bit better with a 20" barrel.

[mannyrock]

  With a standard factory load, 158 grain soft point (such as the Remington Core-Lock), the energy you achieve out of a rifle is about 1,250 foot pounds at the muzzle, and about 750 foot pounds at 100 yards.  Yes, an extreme increase over the power you obtain from a handgun.  It is apples and oranges. 

  If you shoot a high powered factory load, such as those sold by Core-Bon or Buffalo Bore (or is it Garrett?), you will get about 1450 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle!  And probably 900 foot pounds at 100 yards.

  This makes the .357 carbine an extremely versatile rifle.  Good enough for medium to large sized varmints out to 125 yards, whitetails out to 100 yards..

  At 200 yards, with a standard factory load, you are still delivering 350 foot pounds of energy on the target.  I.e., approximately the same as a 9mm pistol shot delivers at the muzzle, but  with a .35 caliber soft point bullet! This makes it a viable self-defense rifle out to 200 yards.   Just sight in your rifle to be 6 inches high at 100 yards.  When shooting varmints or whitetails out to 100 yards, holding 6 inches low is very easy to do when looking through a scope. 

Regards,

Mannyrcok

[Oldshooter]

Just curious, could one expect that sort of improvement in a 44 mag also!

[Hodr]

Hey Hogwash,
You don't know what fun is yet.  I have a .357 winchester trapper.  Use or make your own 38 special loads and the recoil and noise drops dramaticly for plinking.  Use or load your own 125 grain 357 and you have a deer/varmit gun that can be quite useful out to 100 yds.  Get some buffalo bore loads and large pigs are pork chops out to 75-100 yds.  Get a peep/ghost ring rear sight along with a firesight you can snapshoot out to 100 yds after a little practice.  Scopes are nice but Iv'e always thought of them as a failure point since Army days. Look around the forums and you will find loads for this rifle and in the reloading books.  Watch out though there are a lot of old timers  that use 357 for camp meat and are going to try to trade you out of it. 
Shoot it often until it feels like a part of your arm and eye.
blindhari

[dpe.ahoy]

Oldshooter, you will get a large increase but not quite as much as the 357.  The 357, 41 mag, 44 mag, 454 Casull and a Ruger level 45 Colt all show a very nice increase in speed/power out of the rifle tubes.  The larger the bore, the less the increase at the same pressure level.  There can be some other varibles due to different powder burn rates and whether the pressure is spread out or peaks quickly, but that is getting in to deep for now.  DP

[BBF]

How do the pistol bullets hold up at those velocities?

[Badnews Bob]

Very well I have been using .357 rifles to hunt whitetails with for years now with great success, 158 gr Rem bulk SPs work well but my bullet of choice is a 180 gr LBT style LFNGC they punch right thru a deer which is what I want.

How do the pistol bullets hold up at those velocities?

 I have three NEF handi rifles in .357 ( one is a maximum) and one marlin 1894 I love'em all fun to shoot and deadly too.

[salvo]

Hogwash & Oldshooter, here is a great web sight, that should answer your questions. Ballistics by the inch
You will also notice that a 16" barrel is about optimum for the .357

http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/results.html

[hogwash]

Thanks for the link. That is a great website. I couldn't find anything on velocities of those pistol calibers when shot through a rifle. Thanks for the help.  By the way, I love that '92 .357. It is sweet!

[Warhawk]

You probably found your answers a long time ago, but I too have an EMF 92 in 357. Mine is a blued 20 inch saddle ring carbine with a color case receiver.

Here is some info on the 357 in a rifle that you might be interested in....


When you think about the 357, keep in mind that it gains almost 500 feet per second when fired from a rifle (versus a revolver).  The best thing to do here would be to listen to someone (Marshall Stanton of Beartooth Bullets) with a lot of experience shooting game with a 357 levergun.

I'm really partial to those .357 carbines. I did quite a lot of agricultural depredation work in Southern Oregon in the fruit orchards there using nothing but a little .357 carbine. Always dropped them nicely. Never recovered a bullet. Always had exit wounds, two faucetts in the critter, one on each side.

http://shootersforum.com/showthread.htm?t=12941


Some more reading on the 357 in a levergun.

http://leverguns.com/articles/357_magnum_safari.htm

http://leverguns.com/articles/paco/357_magnum_and_the_literature.htm

http://leverguns.com/articles/taylor/357magnum.htm

[Oldshooter]

Hogwash & Oldshooter, here is a great web sight, that should answer your questions. Ballistics by the inch
You will also notice that a 16" barrel is about optimum for the .357

http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/results.html

Good information, thanks I had lost this thread!