S&W 686 6" or 8 3/8" barrel?

[Stomper]

8" is really long.

That's what she said.

 

[OldBroad44]

Correct. A ripoff. Right up until 4-5 years from now when it brings 15-20% more.

My interest in Magnum revolvers has been toward hunting. I killed two deer with a Security Six .357 6", then when I decided to "dedicate" toward a Magnum revolver, I scoped an 8" Colt Trooper (.357), then later scoped an 8" Smith 57 (.41). These guns took Antelope and Mule Deer.

I own only one .44 Magnum revolver, and it is a Dan Wesson Silhouette gun. I scoped it as well, but have taken no big game with it, though it is more accurate than my Ruger Deerstalker at 100 yards (and weighs just about the same!).

For accuracy and performance, the 8" guns really bring some satisfaction. Strapping the scoped 8" Model 57 to the waist belt of my daypack while bowhunting Caribou made it nearly disappear as to any carrying inconvenience, and gave me the capability of a confident 100yd shot if such presented itself.

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Over a period of 6 years I took 6 deer with a 4" Colt .357 magnum. Each on the morning of opening day and in Alsea valley, in the coastal mountains west of Corvallis. Distances ranging from 12' to 60 yards. I couldn't have taken the deer any easier or faster if I had had a fancy scoped rifle. Reason: The valley bottom where I was hunting was foggy in the morning during hunting season until about 10 am. The visibility was normally 50 yards or less. Anything I could see at all was close enough for me to take with a handgun. The deer would be in clearings munching the rich forage, ignoring and tiptoeing around any hunters, confident in their invisibility. But fog is fickle and would sometimes lift transiently displaying a deer in easy handgun range. Before the fog lifted later in the morning the deer would sneak away and bed down somewhere inaccessible till night.

Rifle shooters certainly had more options as to where to hunt. Many of them hunted the clear cuts during the day, where many deer bedded down. However, in the clear cuts not only were many of the possible shots longer distances than I could do with an unscoped 4" revolver, but the clear cuts were rough and I was hunting alone. Even if I imagined shooting a deer in one of those clear cuts I couldn't imagine getting the carcass out of there without carrying it out in pieces. I was a young slender female, athletic but only about 140 lbs. About four trips. And under the guns of multiple hunters with high power rifles scanning for anything that moved in the clearcut, some with their rifle scopes instead of binoculars, some, in my imagination, with their fingers on their triggers. Not my idea of fun.

By the time I owned handguns better for hunting, such as 6" .357's and .44 mags, I lived in or near Corvallis, and wasn't hunting anymore. Preferred to take what time I had for the woods just camping and hiking and shooting in summer, when there was no rain or hunters, or, in my favorite places, nearly no people at all.

 

[Spitpatch]

Over a period of 6 years I took 6 deer with a 4" Colt .357 magnum. Each on the morning of opening day and in Alsea valley, in the coastal mountains west of Corvallis. Distances ranging from 12' to 60 yards. I couldn't have taken the deer any easier or faster if I had had a fancy scoped rifle. Reason: The valley bottom where I was hunting was foggy in the morning during hunting season until about 10 am. The visibility was normally 50 yards or less. Anything I could see at all was close enough for me to take with a handgun. The deer would be in clearings munching the rich forage, ignoring and tiptoeing around any hunters, confident in their invisibility. But fog is fickle and would sometimes lift transiently displaying a deer in easy handgun range. Before the fog lifted later in the morning the deer would sneak away and bed down somewhere inaccessible till night.

Rifle shooters certainly had more options as to where to hunt. Many of them hunted the clear cuts during the day, where many deer bedded down. However, in the clear cuts not only were many of the possible shots longer distances than I could do with an unscoped 4" revolver, but the clear cuts were rough and I was hunting alone. Even if I imagined shooting a deer in one of those clear cuts I couldn't imagine getting the carcass out of there without carrying it out in pieces. I was a young slender female, athletic but only about 140 lbs. About four trips. And under the guns of multiple hunters with high power rifles scanning for anything that moved in the clearcut, some with their rifle scopes instead of binoculars, some, in my imagination, with their fingers on their triggers. Not my idea of fun.

By the time I owned handguns better for hunting, such as 6" .357's and .44 mags, I lived in or near Corvallis, and wasn't hunting anymore. Preferred to take what time I had for the woods just camping and hiking and shooting in summer, when there was no rain or hunters, or, in my favorite places, nearly no people at all.

I stomped around the Alsea area, Mary's Peak, Lobster Creek/5 Rivers area for a few years. Bowhunting deer and chasing Bear with dogs. Old pig farm down in the bottomland of the Alsea all grown over was a Mecca for Blacktail.

 

[OldBroad44]

I stomped around the Alsea area, Mary's Peak, Lobster Creek/5 Rivers area for a few years. Bowhunting deer and chasing Bear with dogs. Old pig farm down in the bottomland of the Alsea all grown over was a Mecca for Blacktail.

Right. And starting off deer hunting in an area like that that was alive with deer, and where I had been camping all summer was a way to get really spoiled. Almost as bad as learning to fish in the Florida gulf on the family's weekend outings in our 17' outboard motorboat when I was five. I learned that every time you dropped your line overboard something always hit it within a couple of minutes. If after five minutes or so it was obvious that we were over a school of a kind of fish that wasn't good size and also prime eating, my mother would lift the anchor and dad would drive the boat a few minutes and we would anchor and try again. Within an hour or so the four of us caught a large ice chest full of good sized prime eating fish, as much as we were up for cleaning . We would have a fish fry for dinner and plenty more for the freezer. And all they could eat of heads and entrails and tails for the neighborhood cats, who always ran to the house of anybody coming home pulling a boat. That meant a feast for the cats. Only in other states did I learn that you could drop a baited line in the ocean or a river, stream, lake, or pond, over and over with nothing happening except little fish nibling the bait away occassionally. Or you caught nothing but fish too small or boney to be worth cleaning.