Recently I had to develop a .45 Colt load for Cowboy Action Shooting. For many people the thrill of CAS is the sheer fun of dressing up in costume to fire the matches, and the camaraderie of their fellow CASers. Then you have the more competition-oriented shooters who, while they enjoy the other aspects of the sport as well, want to do their best at the match. Such people usually fire .357 Magnum-chambered revolvers with light .38 Special loads.
But many folks, for whatever reason, choose .45s instead of .38s and would like to tame the big Colt cartridge’s recoil down to something that’ll be competitive with the guys firing the smaller bore. That means dropping bullet weight or the weight of the powder charge – usually both.
The problem with dropping powder charge to lessen velocity in .45 Colt is its huge internal case volume. Light powder charges in such a large case can become very position sensitive. In other words, extreme variations in pressure occur based on just where in the case the powder was laying at the moment of ignition, with attendant inconsistent recoil impulse and generally lousy accuracy. This tendency increases when you combine a light powder charge with a light bullet – the lighter bullet doesn’t have enough inertia to allow pressures to build to a decent level before it uncrimps.
If you want to be competitive, you pretty much have to download the .45 Colt somewhat. The question is: How to do it while avoiding all the pitfalls? As I saw it, I had three choices to make: (a) choose a casing – .45 S&W or .45 Colt, (b) choose a bullet weight, (c) choose a powder and charge weight thereof.
(a) Casings: The .45 Smith & Wesson (often called .45 Schofield) bears the same relation to .45 Colt as .38 Special-to-.357 Magnum or .44 Special-to-.44 Magnum, a subload that, though slightly
shorter in the case body, can still be chambered and fired in a longer chamber. Thus, you can take up a lot of the .45 Colt’s excess airspace simply by making the case smaller.
Only one thing stopped me from going that route. Many CAS stages require reloading the revolver. In some of Bounty Hunter’s videos I had watched his reloading technique, in which he simply points the gun straight up and slowly spins the cylinder – the empties just drop out of the gun. Part of this is that his guns’ chambers have been mirror polished, also he’s running .45 Colt loads so light the casings don’t expand violently enough to fireform themselves to chamber walls.
This technique is much faster than using the ejector rod to punch out empties one at a time. Unfortunately, when using the “cylinder spin reload” I found the .45 S&W rim is so much larger than .45 Colt that it’ll catch in the loading port before empties can totally clear the gun. So, my casings would be .45 Colts.
(b) Bullet Weight: Traditional bullet weight in .45 Colt is 250-255 grains. There are cast .45 Colt bullets in as light as 155 grains available to the cowboy action shooter, but I decided to avoid the really light bullets. In my opinion, the problems of inconsistent accuracy with the truly light .45 Colt bullets are more severe than can be justified by their softer recoil. It doesn’t matter how light the kick, a gun/bullet combination still has to be accurate enough to hit the target!
I settled on 200 grains for bullet weight. Light enough to seriously attenuate the recoil impulse, heavy enough to avoid problems of inconsistent pressures and accuracy. Also, and this may sound silly, but I wanted to the keep the bullet heavy enough that, well…I wanted my bullet weight starting with a “2.” It seems when you drop .45 Colt bullet weight TOO much, you’re always gonna have that one guy who starts screaming, “Wimp loads!” and “Gamer!”
Personally, I think this is the mating call of the marginal shooter who’s just been beaten by a better pistolero…but still I’d just as soon avoid that altogether.
(c) Powder/Charge Weight: Two powders kept coming up again and again in my discussions with knowledgeable .45 Colt men, both from Hodgdon: Clays and Titegroup. I chose Clays because its
burning characteristics give sufficient pressure to ensure consistent accuracy with a lesser powder charge than Titegroup, less velocity and thus less recoil.
And thus, I had my load: a 200-grain lead roundnose flatpoint in a .45 Colt case, over Hodgdon Clays powder, touched off with a Winchester Large Pistol primer. Accuracy is more than sufficient for my needs, bullets have enough mass and inertia to flatten steel knockdown targets, recoil is controllable, and casings fall out of the gun with a “cylinder spin reload.”
What more can you ask from a .45 Colt Cowboy Action Shooting load?
