[Jeff Higgins]

Yup, the whole idea behind cast bullets is that they penetrate above all else, leaving an exit wound. Nose and shoulder shape are critical, with a flat nose and sharp edges being critical. This design removes material, like a paper punch, rather than pushing it aside like poking a pencil through a sheet of paper. The pencil hole closes back up. In an animal, that allows the bleeding to stop. So, yes - cutting a hole that goes all the way through is what makes a proper cast bullet effective.

Keith, Croft, and others had a big hand in the development of the .357 mag. They had been shooting heavy .38 Special loads in the N-framed Smith & Wesson .38/44 Outdoorsman for years. It was a well proven game load by the time S&W lengthened the chamber to create the .357 Magnum. Keith, Croft, and co. simply wanted heavy factory loads for their .38/44's, but S&W saw producing them as a safety issue (which it certainly was). The same approach led to the .44 mag some 25 years later, by the way. Keith simply wanted his heavy load for the .44 Special to be factory loaded. S&W (quite rightly so) had concerns about them getting into early, weak guns. So they lengthened the chamber, and the case, so the new cases wouldn't fit in the old guns.

Anyway, one of their executives (I forget who offhand) when on a globe-trotting publicity trip with one of the first Registered Magnums in the late '30's, shooting all manner of big game with it, up to at least moose, from what I recall. It was sold initially as a hunting round, not so much as a law enforcement round.

The latter was the province of the also new .38 Super. Chambered in the 1911, this round was actually the answer to the call from law enforcement for something that could penetrate car bodies. It's somewhat pointy round nose FMJ bullet was better suited to that duty than the lead bullet .357 mag loads available at the time.

Interestingly, Lyman still catalogs at least one mold intended for the .38/44. The crimp groove is located so that the final overal loaded length, when loaded in .38 Special cases, is just as long as a .357 mag round. As a result, it has the same powder capacity, merely putting more bullet out in front of the case. Lots of guys make the mistake of buying this mold for use in the .357 mag, and find out they can't crimp in the crimp groove because the round winds up too long to fit in the cylinder. The right fix is to simply use .38 Special cases, but most guys cheese out on this and crimp their .357 cases over the front driving band.

Lots of interesting history from those days. Unfortunately, as it gets repeated down through the generations, many of the facts have gotten a little muddled. One gunwriter simply reads what the last gunwriter wrote about it and takes it as the gospel truth. It's like the old "tell a secret" game, where by the time the original makes it once around the room, the originator cannot recognize it as what they had originally said. I've come to simply ignore most of today's gun press. Most of those wankers shoot better with a typewriter than a gun, to paraphrase Keith. I have a huge library of old firearms literature dating back to the early 19th century, written by the guys who were "out there, doing that". Nothing beats going back to the source. And finding out, for yourself, just how right they were.