ummmmmmmmm............
I thought I did answer his question. In the 1st post.
here, I'll copey and paste it here.
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Either is good but neither is perfect.
Why?
Because there is no such thing as the "perfect gun" for every situation.
ANY long arm is easier to make hits with once you have your shoulders and feet in the proper position, and ANY handgun is easier to fire from awkward positions, therefore can be faster to get into action.
So...which is "better"?
The issue I'd be looking at is your ammo. The average 30-30 with factory ammos is limited to 170 grain soft points. if you had load, you can use Barnes X bullets and get even better penetration.
A 44 mag can be used with factory Federal Premium ammo with hard cast 300 grain bullets and the very best are the LBT 320 grain gas-check bullets. When I was running cast Performance Company (I am a former CEO of that company) we shot our rounds in comparison to many factory rounds, both in handguns and rifles. I can promise you faithfully that a 44 mag with one of our bullets will out penetrate ANY 30-30 load you can use regardless of price and regardless of what bullet you load in that 30-30.
So I would go out on a limb here and make a statement that a 44 magnum with the correct load is ballisticly superior to the 30-30, but that doesn’t matter is you can’t take advantage of it. A 30-30 with a good hit is way better then a 44 mag with a poor hit.
So….how good are you with the handgun?
If you can hit running rabbits at lest 50% of the time or get 7 out of 25 hits on flying clay birds with your handgun (loaded with the heavy “bear killers”) I would advise you to go with the 44
If however you miss almost every shot with your handgun on running rabbits and shooting clay birds you should have a rifle.
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I am not as good at creative writing as I'd like to be, and I apologize if I didn't answer perfectly, but I did the best I know how.
I stand on the principal that good accuracy with less ballistic effectiveness is better then good ballistic effectiveness with less accuracy. That's why I'd recommend a 30-30 over a 44 handgun in most cases. Meaning in the hands of most shooters.
The 44 with proper ammo, kills better then the 30-30 and thousands of game kills have proven that to me, but it doesn't matter is the shooter can't place a handgun bullet well, and he can place a rifle bullet well. 50% to 75% of ideal penetration and cavitations in the right place is WAY better then 100% penetration and cavitations in the wrong place.
A very good handgunner is a rare man. Those that are good enough to hit running rabbits regularly can impress other shooters and they are the ones that can and do show how well a good handgun can kill.
From the standpoint of a professional ballistician, and being able to do the math and understand the importance of the loss of blood pressure and volume, I can promise you that the heavy handguns bullets of the correct shape are extremely effective. But we need to always compare apples to apples. Ballistic formulas are not hard to come up with, but identical animals at identical angles, in identical condition, in identical “mindset”, in identical terrain is not possible to come up with.
Killing an animal is also not hard to do. Killing them FAST can be hard to do.
Archers kill everything on earth with sharp sticks with small blades on them.
Death is not a measure of effectiveness of a round or a bullet. Heck, cancer kills too, but not very fast.
I could kill an elephant with a 22 lr. It’s been done several times in the past.
That doesn’t transform a Stevens Crackshot into an elephant rifle.
Effectiveness is a function of 2 criteria.
#1 how fast does the animal go down in most cases.
#2 Will you get the same results from difficult angles as you will from ideal angles
After all the gum-flapping and all the prognosticating, it really comes down to those 2 questions.
Fast kills from any reasonable angle is what we want. If you have those 2 things, you are good to go, theories be damned.
Oh,,,,,,one thing more for the sake of edujacating the last poster.
We made 30 cal 308" 3085" and 309" bullets in 180, 190 and 218 grain. I have shot all of them in 30-30s into various balistic media. I no longer have the data for the 30 cals, but I do remember the best penitration I got from the 30-30 in a 20" barrel in saturated news paper and ligh bones was about 20"
The 44 magnum from a 6" barrel with the 320 grain bullet went over 3 feet.
So sorry guy, you could not be more wrong.
the hard cast 30-30 will NOT even come close to a 44 magnum using hard cast bullets.
Again, this is truth, not theroy.