Thread: Barbecue Guns
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Jeff Higgins Jeff Higgins is online now
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Higgs Field
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I've hunted with a variety of revolvers, but here is my "main", or "go-to" dedicated hunting revolver. It's an Interarms "Virginian Dragoon", made in Alexandria, VA in the late 1970's to early 1980's. They were proud of the fact that it was the first and only revolver manufactured in a Southern state since The War of Northern Aggression. Meant to compete with Ruger's Blackhawk and Super Blackhawk, it failed commercially. It was half again as expensive, but much better made, which in the end didn't matter much. I have three, this one in .44 magnum, the other two blued and in .357 magnum and .45 Colt.



Here is a typical target, shot offhand at about 25 yards. It groups into about an inch at that range from a rest, so the dispersion is just me. Actually, though, I was re-zeroing after having sighted it for 300 grain bullets, so the vertical is the result of several sight adjustments along the way.

Anyway, that's its favorite load, a bullet cast in the RCBS mold number .44-250 K ("K" for "Keith", or Elmer Keith, his famous semi wadcutter design), seated over 22 grains of 2400 and lit by a CCI standard large pistol primer, (Keith's recommended load) for about 1,450 fps with the 250 grain bullet. Pretty smoking' hot .44 magnum load by modern standards.



I've never taken very many hunting pictures. I wish I have. Here, however, is a young-ish me, just inside the Arctic Circle on the Tagagawik River, probably in the early 1990's. Said revolver and load, with a caribou still in velvet, so it must have been August or so. I wanted one in velvet to bring home, which turned out to be a big mistake, since the plane wasn't due to pick us for for another ten days. All of the velvet had fallen off by then. Oh well.



Probably plenty of stories to qualify as a BBQ gun.
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Jeff
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"God invented whiskey so the Irish wouldn't rule the world"
Old 08-04-2025, 02:29 PM
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