All this year I've been celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the best handgun cartridges that anyone has ever seen. Of course, I'm talking about the magnificent .44 Magnum. The first S&W revolver chambered for it was produced in December 1955, and the first ammunition came from Remington. The announcement of that first S&W Model 29 was soon followed by Ruger's introduction of its fine .44 Magnum Blackhawk single-action revolver, the gun we now call the .44 Flattop. As most of you already know, to commemorate the cartridge's 50th anniversary Ruger brought the .44 Flattop back out and Smith & Wesson is building a special Model 29.

The introduction of the .44 Magnum was actually an evolutionary step up from the .44 Special cartridge. The .44 Special was a very accurate cartridge, but in its factory form it only drove the 246-grain bullet at a lazy 755 fps. A lot of savvy handgunners thought that this performance could be improved on quite a bit. Not the least of these was an Idaho cowboy/gun writer named Elmer Keith.

Keith was experimenting with the .44 Special cartridge in Colt single actions and N-Frame Smith & Wesson revolvers. He soon found that in these heavy handguns the .44 Special cartridge was capable of driving a 250-grain cast bullet at some 1250 fps, using the slower burning powders like Hercules 2400 (now produced by Alliant).

About the same time that Keith began to work with the .44 Special cartridge he also designed a new semiwadcutter bullet that would eventually become nearly as famous as his big .44s. Many of today's shooters have come to refer to all SWC bullets as "Keith" bullets, but this is simply not true. Keith's bullet incorporated a long nose and deep crimping and grease grooves. Most importantly, all of the bullet's angles were cut at 90 degrees. In a short time the bullet mold manufacturers realized that Keith's bullets, with their sharp angles, did not drop from gang molds quite as easily as they thought they should. So the companies solved this by reducing the angle and rounding some edges, thus reducing the big bullet's effectiveness and accuracy. Today, the closest copy of Keith's exact design is found in the RCBS 250-K bullet mold that throws some extremely good bullets and should be tried out by every .44 Magnum shooter.

Needless to say, Keith was very pleased with the power and accuracy that he was getting with his heavy .44 Special loads. He was so pleased, in fact, that he began to campaign the ammunition companies to bring out his special loads in factory form. The companies, on the other hand, were really worried that Keith's heavy loads would wreck the weaker .44 Special handguns that were on the market and in shooters' collections.

Now, I never knew Elmer Keith, but I expect that one word would best describe him. And that word would be "tenacity." Since he liked the big frame Smith & Wessons so much, Keith decided to include them in his .44 campaign, and the company decided that the smartest thing to do would be to listen to their cowboy friend.

Smith & Wesson decided to solve the problem of weak, poorly made .44 Special revolvers by bringing out a cartridge with a slightly longer case so that the new cartridges would not chamber in a .44 Special handgun. Bill Ruger Sr., getting wind of the new cartridge, soon had an upgraded version of his Blackhawk single action in the works. The .44 Magnum was born.

You'll recall that Keith's idea for his hot .44 was to be able to drive a 250-grain bullet at 1250 fps. The earliest Remington and Winchester ammo gilded the lily just a bit and produced a factory round that would drive a 240-grain bullet at some 1500 fps. These hot loads caused a good bit of leading, and .44 fans soon found that they could get the best results through handloading. Eventually, the ammunition companies decided to settle on a formula that would push a 240/250-grain bullet at 1250 fps, which was what Mr. Keith had asked for in the first place.