44 Magnum Model 29 50th Anniversary

Hickok45 here. If you're watching this video, and I think you might be, what you're about to watch is a video that was posted, but was taken down due to violations of the YouTube Terms of Service. Okay? So, we have edited the video so that it is not in violation. So, be aware of that. And we wanted to thank those people that have been loyal supporters of the channel right now, such as Bud's. Wonderful company. Been with them 10 years. A fixture in the industry, in our industry, right? Silencer Central. High, high quality company. They do one thing, and they do it really, really well. You got to love that, don't you? And then the Sonoran Desert Institute, sdi.edu. You can get certified in gunsmithing. Just a great, you know, distance learning school. Check them out. Then also Alabama Holster. They make some of the best concealment Kydex holsters in the country. I love them. And then, of course, anybody else that helps us. And we just really appreciate you all more than anybody. So, I hope you enjoy the video again. Hickok45 here for a 50th anniversary. No, not my wife. Something way more valuable. My model 29. Now, don't tell her I said that. Let's shoot this thing. 50 years with this baby. And I probably still can't shoot it. All right. Buffalo. First shot. How about a gong? I'd have felt really bad if I'd have missed all those shots. Like I probably missed this one. Let's hit the ram. I wanted to show you I could miss. Sweet. So, that was four shots, right? We've got a couple more to start out right with some pot smoking. Click. Yes, this is my model 29. You knew it was coming. Many of you that have been around a while know that I've had this since 1974. And my Kentucky math tells me, my Kentucky arithmetic tells me it was 50 years ago that I bought this new. Yeah, at a gun show in Nashville. Fairgrounds from Carter Hardware. They were set up there. And it was the old three or five day waiting period. So, I had to go over to the hardware store and pick it up a few days later. But that's where it was. And 44 Magnum. Most of you are familiar with these, but not everybody. Not everybody's a genius and knows everything about every firearm, right? This is 44 Magnum or 44 Special. It's the model 29 when they started making those in what about 55? 1955. And this is the eight and three eighths inch length barrel. They were really difficult to find in 1974 because of some guy named Clint Eastwood, right? So, we're gonna shoot this one and talk a little bit about it and a little history. You know, and this gun has had to have a little bit of work done on it. The trigger pin broke. I don't remember what year it was. It's been about 15 years probably. And Jeff Wally over at Guns and Leather replaced that for me. I didn't worry about getting it reblued or anything, but it works fine. I had an ejector rod issue and I forgot exactly what that was. We got that repaired at one point and that's about it. That is about it. This is all original. Original grips and, you know, all the parts. Key parts. Other than maybe that trigger pin. So, it's been a great gun. As you know, if you follow the channel, I'm up around 80,000 rounds with this thing because it's not one of those deals where, you know, everybody exaggerates, you know, everything these days. I could track primers for a lot of years because this was the gun I shot the most. I didn't have that many firearms. And so, for decades essentially, you know, many years, I shot this as much as anything I have. And I shot it a lot and I hand loaded and just tracked primers. I would say the primer casings and everything. But yeah, I don't know. Since 60 or 70,000 rounds, I've kind of estimated and it's around 80,000 rounds. And it's still cranking. So, for those of you who think a gun barrel wears out after a thousand or 10,000 rounds, not necessarily. Many of the rounds were cast bullets, lead, you know, not jacketed rounds that typically are going to put a little more wear on the rifling. But this thing, it still shoots. I can't tell any difference from when I first bought it. So, I've got a variety of ammo. I'm just going to shoot and talk and tell you a little about the history of this baby. I guess this is kind of an ego video in a way. It's just so neat to have a firearm that I bought that long ago. You know, because we all let firearms get away, don't we? We tend to let them get away from us, trade them off. We need the money. We find another firearm we like a little better or maybe in the long run, we don't even like it that much better. But at the time, we just had a serious desire at Jones for that gun and we traded something off we regretted. You know, that happens to all of us, it seems. But somehow, through the years and decades, I hadn't done this, okay? And I got this, you saw this maybe in the 40-year anniversary. This is the paperwork came with it and this is the big idiot shooting it out at Al Hollow Gun Club in 1975, written on the back in pencil. I was still using crayons and pencil at the time. And that holster is the same holster I'm wearing today. And I don't know if these guys need names, Michael Keyes, Bill Coode and Norman Bates, you know, there that we used to shoot together out there, silhouettes. We were just shooting at metal animals like this from the back of Charlie Hafner's house. His house is right there. And that's where I did a lot of the early shooting with it and muzzle loading and everything else. So let me load some ammo while I'm yakking here. Got some of the people that send ammo, help us out here, Fioki and Steinl and Underwood. I'll shoot some of theirs and my hand loads. Might shoot a couple more hand loads before I get into the jacketed stuff. But yeah, that's where, Franklin, Tennessee is where I lived when I bought it in 74. I was living in an apartment. That was, I guess, second, end of the second year out of college. And lived there in Laurelwood Apartments in Franklin, Tennessee. It was apartments as condominiums now. And I went out there and walked around one day not all that long ago. I was in P5. We lived in P5. If you happen to live there in Laurelwood condominiums now in P5, you're at the birthplace. Had it displayed in the living room there for, you know, a year more before we built the house in 75. But yeah, Franklin, Tennessee. And it's just always been a good shooter. The long barrel helps, you know, always. Right, cowboy? But it's just been a fun gun. As you know, with .44 Magnum, you can load specials, shoot specials in it. Let's hit that two-liter right out there. Or you can shoot Magnums. It's up to you. You can hit bowling pins, whatever you like. Yeah, there's another pot down there to smoke. See if I can hit him. Oh, shook him off. Let's hit the pin. Yeah, I shot a lot of cast bullets, some Magnums. I would buy factor rounds occasionally. I never did really load many jacketed rounds, but I got into loading .44, of course, and loaded a lot of ammo, single-stage press. There was a little cubby. If those of you that live in that apartment are watching or that condo, upstairs in the bedroom of the townhouse, there was a little cubby to the left of the bed as you face the front of the apartment. And it was just a little cubby, not a lot bigger than this table. And I had a loading table in there, and I would load ammo on my RCVS junior press. And I'd just get the ammo at the round, you put the next one in, and it was just slow going, no progressive reloader at the time that I had. And loaded up a lot of ammo, and I'd go out to Al Hollow or the dump there in Franklin, and I'd shoot those rounds. So I'll shoot a little Fiocchi here. This is 240 grain ammo, 1310, warmish little load maybe. And enjoyed that, and built a house there in Franklin, not too far from there, and set up my reloading operation again upstairs. And yeah, so this gun's been with me a long time. And through all the other firearms I've owned and traded off, you know, back and forth, you know, that goes during the same period of time in those early years. I had my first Python, traded it off, and my Model 19 Smith & Wesson, traded it off or something else. But I always hung on to this one. And speaking of holsters, we appreciate Alabama Holster for their support of the channel. They don't make a lot of holsters for this big baby, mostly concealment Kydex holsters. Lots of them, and I've used most of them, and I love them. Appreciate their help. So got some factory ammo here. Let's put up one of these on the gong. Might have a little different point of aim. Popping, all right. Let's try the red. No, let's try that pig, that left pig up there on the top row. There we go. Loud and pretty fast, so I didn't even hear it hit. But I think it hit it. I can tell. I can tell. Let's hit something close, really hard, like that two liter. Boom. How about that buffalo right there? How about the cowboy with one of these? Uh, you know what? Well, I think I'm empty. Yeah, I'll save a powerful one for that watermelon. Yeah, that would be a good one too. So yeah, I lived in Franklin and two or three more years, then I sold that house, moved out to south of Franklin, Coleman Road, a little log house up on a hill in about 81 or 82, and I would shoot this in the backyard. I had five acres there, and I would shoot it, climb around the place, some woods up the top of the hill, and flank with it, and still going out to Al Hollow Range and shooting out there, fair amount. And then I would, well then, moved out here from there, more or less, and some of the first shots I took were, of course, right here in 86 with it. 86, shot it a lot from this hill and enjoyed it. I did shoot it in silhouette shooting, international handgun metallic silhouette shooting, IHMSA. And we did that at Al Hollow Gun Club mostly. I shot a couple of matches elsewhere, but mostly out there. And let's see, that's special. I wasn't going to shoot special yet, but I could. Let's shoot another map, an extreme penetrator from Underwood. And I had fun with it and all that, those endeavors. It did pretty well. I just shot standing mostly. They have a class called, I think it was production standing, and I tried a couple times lying down with it, resting on your leg and that kind of thing. But I just enjoyed, you know, out to 200 meters and whatever. Just seeing what I could hit, you know, standing. I've always, as you know, been a standing shooter. And whether I hit or don't, it's just fun to me. Oh, these are extreme penetrators, so get ready for some extreme penetration. And all the while I was casting some of my own bullets. I'd collect wheel weights, and I casted a lot of those. And just shooting all along, right here. Did a lot of shooting with it and enjoyed it, and still do. Because I've been here almost, coming, it's like 38 years. So a lot of history this baby. We don't have, well, do we want to waste one of these on the target? Of course, anything you shoot paper with a .44 Magnum, it's kind of overkill, right? Let's do some pin shooting with this thing. Let's penetrate those pins. How about this one? As far as that container there, I'm not sure what would blow it the biggest. I don't think this would. Let's shoot that two liter. I don't know that a penetrator is going to blow it bigger than another round. I might shoot up one of those Fiocchis. All right, penetrated that. Let's see if we can penetrate the gong with one of these. Gong. Is that it? Yeah, extreme penetrators, underwood. Nice. Yeah, I got to shoot that. I got to shoot some of these things that are going to blow up a little bit, okay? Really celebrate. So yeah, through all the various places I've lived, in jobs, no matter what was going on since 74, and I've had a lot of job changes, moves and different things, couple of wives, you know, just this gun has stayed with me and I've enjoyed it all those years. And unlike, I guess some guns you might have, you probably have some guns you've had for a long time, but they've kind of fallen out of favor with you perhaps. And you just don't really get them out, you know, or, you know, they're just, they're just in the safe and you just haven't gotten around to trading them or selling them yet, maybe. Well, this is a little different. That's one of the things that makes it more special than some other firearms I've had for a period of time, or maybe you too, is no matter what was hot at the time when Glocks came out, or when I got into semi-automatic, I got a Browning Hi-Power in whatever the 80s or late 70s, or, you know, any other guns that I thought were really cool and had fun with them and got into a different kind of competition, because I shot IHMSA, as I said, cowboy action shooting for about 10 years, USPSA, IDPA, what else am I leaving out? I've done a lot of different competitions. You know how it is when you get into that, there's certain guns you kind of get involved with and it becomes your favorite for a while, and you're prone to trading something else off that you're not shooting maybe regularly or whatever it is, but this thing has been with me the whole time. I've never even thought about trading it, and I have always shot it pretty much regularly, you know, so that's one of the things that makes it special. It's just always been a fun gun to shoot, and there's a lot of flexibility too. You put specials in this thing, which we'll do. It's getting warm for some reason, and with that eight and three-eighths inch barrel, not a lot of kick to it. And of course, need I say, I think I mentioned Clint Eastwood, but Dirty Harry made these things so popular, and as you know, y'all, they're a little bit older. Back in the 70s, there were a lot of these that were, you could find them, well, they weren't easy to find, but they would show up used with just having been shot six times. Why is that? People didn't count on the recoil they were getting from these, and that's another reason I was able to enjoy it for so long, because I hand-loaded, because if you were relying strictly on factory ammo, the factory ammo, I think, was even hotter back then, but even if it wasn't, you know, people weren't shooting .44 Magnum. It was kind of a newer thing for the general shooting, and they bought one of these things that, whoa, not ready for that kind of recoil, you know, and so they'd trade it off. All right, got some warm ammo. Let's shut up and hit this kitty litter pan or container, see if it will go through it. All right, and let's go ahead and kill that watermelon. Yeah, why not? Nice. Not the cowboy. And Mr. Gong needs another one. Nope, I don't. All right, pretty nice, pretty nice. Anything else I was going to tell you about, lie about it? Gosh, paid $385 for it, $385, and you know, paperwork, history, they're really, really hard to find. They're a blast to shoot, and I think another reason I wasn't, I don't know, dissuaded or it didn't ever get boring to me was the fact that that 8.38 inch barrel has always made it fun to shoot. I'll shoot some specials because it really dampens recoil, and it's just a little more fun to shoot with hot rounds especially. It dampens it. It's not as punishing, not as punishing, and yeah, I'll never forget living in that apartment and being so excited to find one and have it, and I remember showing it to my neighbor, and he said, oh, that's cool. He didn't get excited, and I realized my first realization that, okay, everybody's not into guns like I am, are they? He didn't have a clue what a .44 Magnum was and that they were even hard to come by. He shot me down, man. I was ready for him to get excited for me. Okay, Buffalo, how about a special round like Clint Eastwood shot, and how about a red plate over there? Let's see if we can hit that with a special. That's neat. It takes a little longer to get there, so you can hear it hit. How about that turkey up on the top row with a special round, special turkey round? Oh, nice, nice. How about the gong with one of these? I think that was it, right? Yeah. I told John before the video, it's such a special gun, I'll probably be able to hit anything with it, or maybe I ought to do that on purpose. Just shoot for 20 minutes and not hit anything. I fire my supposedly put around 80,000 rounds through, and I can't hit with it, but it's pretty nice. You know the fact you've shot a gun 80,000 times or whatever, it doesn't mean you should just never miss with it, does it? Some of you that have shot a great deal with whatever the firearm, especially a handgun, they're hard to shoot. How many times has LeBron James, Michael Jordan, name whoever you want, Steve Kerr, shot a basketball or a three-pointer, and you still miss? It's physics, and it's not necessarily automatic that you're going to hit every time just because you have shot X number of shots. Now, you ought to shoot better than if you didn't shoot very much, right? What else was I going to tell you about this? You all have seen it if you've been around. You can tell it's got a lot of shots to it, right? The recoil shield and everything, and in the darkness of that wood, it didn't start out that darkness. There's some oil from my hands and dirt and grit, ballast all, whatever. It's just a little bit darker, and of course, this gun with me will hold out more to me than a brand new one, just like it, right? Scratches and everything, any of the imperfections are just character flaws or character scratches. I'm sure this, yeah, I was trying to loosen that one, okay? It's got the target hammer, target trigger, so 50 years, and I really feel privileged as someone who has enjoyed shooting all that time to really have a kind of an heirloom of my own that I bought brand new. A lot of people, as I've said before, don't even live 50 years. I've been fortunate that I bought this as an adult brand new, and I've been able to shoot it for 50 more years after that, so that's pretty cool. Needles to say, it'll be passed down. The gun will probably melt it down or hack the barrel off with a hacksaw or something. Of course, I have the shorter barrel guns, and all through my shooting of this in the early years and later years, I've had 4-inch 29s, 6-inch 29s, I've got a 6.5 now, I've got 3-inch 629s, and they're all fun as well, but this one will always be special. Let me shoot it six more times. Oh, no, we've shot everybody's ammo. You know, I've got some of these old school Winchester Silver Tips, I think these are. I found some a while back. Look at that. Man, Silver Tips, you familiar with those? Those were one of the premier hollow points from back in the day, and I found a few boxes of those. I don't shoot them much. It'd be a good carry around, right? Shouldn't even shoot them, but I'm going to. Yeah, I'm not going to spare any expense for this baby today. I think at the 40th anniversary, we baked a cake or made a cake or something. We should have done something like that, I guess, but oh well. I didn't want to bore you too much. But I think most of you that are really into firearms, now if you're just tuning in because you're bored today and you ran across this video, you probably don't get it, but those of you who are into shooting, you really enjoy shooting, and you understand, you appreciate the mechanics of firearms, the machinery of them, and you have a deep appreciation for that. You have some guns that you really, really enjoy, and you'd be very disappointed if you lost them somehow, that kind of thing. You can understand, think into the future of one of your favorite firearms. 50 years later, you're still shooting it. That's pretty cool to think about, isn't it? All right, so specials. Let's just shoot the, I don't know, whatever I decide to shoot. Yeah, some things I ain't shot yet. That red plate right there. Let's try to put him on the gong. I think that's a good way to wrap up a round on the gong. A really special round on the gong from a special firearm, okay? So anyway, this old bird's been with me a long time, and I hope he'll be around a lot longer, and I'll be able to sling lead with him for a number of years into the future, because I plan to do it. Pretty versatile. Yep, really a lot of fun. Hard to beat, hard to beat. So again, it's a really cool thing, doubly cool, because it's a firearm I like so much. I've always liked it. There's never been a period of time where it, I don't know, it got boring, or I almost traded it or anything like that. I've continuously fired it, reloaded for it, fired it through the whole 50 years, and I'm still shooting it. You see, I bring it out on Sundays sometimes, and I even brought it out today for this video. You believe that? So my model 29, I didn't say it, but it's a model 29-2, and it made early 70s, and then I bought it in the early 70s. Bought it new. So, congratulations old 44 mag. It's been fun. Glad y'all came around to help me enjoy it. Life is good. Oh yeah, that's better. This is a great gun for defense. Oh hey, didn't see you guys there. While I've got you here, I want to remind you of our friends over at Talon Grips and Ballistol. Talon Grips makes grips, can you believe it, for all different types of firearms. You can get rough texture or more of a rubberized texture. It just sticks right on there. Really affordable, really cool option to improve the grip for your handguns or rifles. So please check them out at TalonGunGrips.com. You'll be glad you did. And also, Ballistol. Dad has been using Ballistol for many years. It's a cleaner and a lubricant, and it's non-toxic. It works really great, and we're happy to have them on board since it's been a part of our shooting endeavor for a very long time. So go to Ballistol.com, TalonGunGrips.com. And also, while you're out there, I'm juggling all these things here. Also, while you're on the internet, please do check out our other social media like Hickok45 on Facebook. There's also Hickok45 on Twitter, TheRealHickok45 on Instagram. There's a John underscore Hickok45 on Instagram where I do some things. There's Hickok45.com. You can find us also on GunStreamer. So check out all that stuff, and then watch more videos.