New member, soon to be CHL, new S&W 442 with questions

casingpoint · #16

Those 125 grain .38 Golden Sabers showed nice expansion in my "ballistic testing", but they had about half the penetration into wet dirt medium as the 135 grain Gold Dots, which was around 10-11 inches. You can readily see the difference in impact force between the two. Now, don't get me wrong, that same GS fired from a four inch barrel, however is bad to the bone.

Photoman · #17

CorBon DPX, Winchester "white box" 125jhp and Speer 135 Gold Dot short barrel all tested well at stoppingpower.net. I would feel comfortable with any of them. You will need to test in your gun for point-of-aim/point-of-impact and recoil issues for best results.

I carry DPX in my 642.

Indy5000 · #18

You can find just about anything you need to know about the 442 and its brother the 642 at the 642 Club on The High Road Forums here: http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=138658

There is close to 5000 posts inn the thread. It would take awhile to read but you can use the search funtion to find what you need. There has been a lot of discussion on ammo, holsters, shooting techniques, etc.

Hope this helps.

Indy5000 · #19

I forgot to mention. I shoot reload 158 grain wadcutters for practice and carry and shoot a little of my Speer Gold Dot 138 grain for self defense.

tytl · #20

OK, finally had snubby out to the range today. To be honest, the recoil was not as bad as I imagined it to be. Shot about 50 rounds of generic 158 GR ball ammo that I bought at the range. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I care to go to the range and shoot 50 rounds every week in that gun, but it is manageable, and I was a little more accurate than I thought I would be with it. It was actually quite fun having never shot a revolver before.

Thanks for all the good input on this thread.
tytl