77/44 Accuracy

[croesus]

I wish I could tell you why it works, haven't figured it out yet myself. But it does work. My buddy with the 77/44 just used it to harvest a nice 8pt buck, a neck shot from a tree stand. The bullet held up fine. It was a close (>50yd shot) and he had some concerns about the relatively light bullet, but it did the job without a problem.

It may be that some of the 77/44s just prefer the light for caliber bullets, or it could be a velocity thing... not sure, I haven't had the chance to spend much time with any of the above. I'm glad the load worked for you. It might be interesting to attempt a handload with similar ballistics to see what happens.

Glad to hear the Hornady rounds worked for you.

 

[jr72]

Thanks croesus. Is your buddy's 77/44 the recent model or the one from earlier?

 

[Limitby9]

My 99/44 loves Magtech 240 gr HPs. Good Luck!

 

[nhlever]

The trigger housing group hooks over two hooks on the receiver. If you attach those parts with the rifle out of the stock, you will quickly see what I am describing. Sometimes there is a little twist in the receiver casting, or in the trigger housing assembly, and one of those hooks will pull a lot harder on the receiver than the other. The springiness you describe could be a symptom of this problem. Look at your assembled rifle, and see if the pads ahead of the trigger guard seem to bear evenly on the stock. To counter that the receiver could be shimmed so the pressure is even, or I've seen folks relieve one of the hooks enough that it doesn't exert undue force on the receiver. If you look, and see that this is the case, perhaps it would be best to have Ruger tinker with the hooks under warranty so you don't void anything. The plastic stocks aren't all that strong, so other than free floating the barrel, I wouldn't bother with doing much shimming. (The stock is flexible enough to move away from the shims anyway) I've found with these stocks that the easiest way to try free floating is to just put a soda can shim, or two under the front receiver bedding area. Good luck, and welcome!

 

[croesus]

It's one of the earlier 77/44s bought used at a fair price. My guess is the previous owner couldn't get it to shoot either. Glad to hear that all worked out well...

 

[croesus]

nhlever,

I'm going to forward this to my buddy and see if what you describe is present in his rifle. Would be nice if there were another remedy besides the ammo work around.