Remington No 1 Creedmoor

[Don McDowell]

You can spend many hours pouring over Roy's book on Rollers. Great photography and descriptions.

Now, Bruce-Don-Kurt.........let me offer a little something as you wax poetic over the 44-77 cartridge for long range target applications.

Louis Lobdel Hepburn was both a long range target shooter and a Remington employee. He was instrumental in providing accurate rolling block 44 S rifles for the U.S. Team and for other prominent shooters of the day including those that shot for Remington, as in Rolling Block Rifles in lighter calibers for target work.

In those combined pursuits he designed and developed a rifle primarily for long range target work in the #3 Remington also called by his name Hepburn. For this rifle that bore his name Remington and Hepburn developed improved long range cartridges for the #3 designated as 44 2.4 44-90 Remington Straight and 44 2.6 44-100 Remington Straight. These were specifically designed for Long Range Target Competition.

Is it reasonable to assume that those two improved cartridges were developed to improve the performance of existing chamberings IE the 44 S series? And, if so that they proved to be superior to their predecessors? And, this was determined approximately 130 years ago?

OK, so the 44 S series loaded cartridge appeals esthetically. Do you go to a rifle match to look cool or to shoot? Check the performance while you are making your selection for the rifle & cartridge you take to a long range match to do well.

They surely started out with the 44-77, then like today, while the lowly 30-06 will do anything needing done with a rifle ( well actually a 30-30 will too) there are some that just absolutely feel the need for more horsepower, or they just simply think more testosterone oozes out when the close their eyes, and yank the trigger...
Any how it seems as tho the bottlenecks get a bad rap from heavy recoil... I've not found that to be a problem. Then I'm reminded of a modern shooter that had a 44-90 bn, complained it kicked to much, rebarreled the rifle and chambered to 44-77, then decided Jamison brass was cheap crap, because he was splitting cases trying to triple compress so he could get 90 gr. of powder in the case....
Match the bullet length to the rifling twist, go forth and shoot good scores..