Lever Action Rifles: .30-30 vs .44 Magnum

[Music] hi we're out on the race today as police bear with gunfire you hear in the background and today we're talking about lever-action rifles specifically 30 30 and 44 Magnum the rifles I brought with me are this Marlin model 336 in caliber 3030 and this Marlin 1894 s in caliber 44 Magnum now these are both lever-action they're both Marlin but they are quite a bit different rifles however the most important thing for today's comparison is they both have 20-inch barrels rifles like this are not generally the first choice someone makes from benchrest target rifle and because both 3030 and 44 magnum ammunition can carry a fairly hefty price tag and both of these can be loud and produce it is recoil they're not usually someone's first choice for plinking popkins rifles like this are made primarily for hunting medium sized game like deer and they can be in often have been a viable choice for home defense or personal protection titan purposes but the real question is which calibre is better 30 30 or 44 Magnum well I've got both guns and I have a few different types of ammunition let's shoot them side-by-side and see if we can answer that but I want to start with showing you a close-up of the ammunition now from your left to right are nine point three by seven to our 7.62 by 54r third yot six 762 nato 3030 44 Magnum 357 Magnum 45 acp and 9 by 19 so in our lever action rifle even though the 3030 in the 44 Magnum are meant to fill similar niches they're quite different cartridges we're going to start with a comparison of power which in this case can be kind of tricky if I were comparing the power of a 3030 and a 30.6 well those two cartridges have the same projectile diameter and ammunition is readily available where they have the same projectile weight that's not so easy comparing 30 32 44 Magnum so what I'm going to do is go with the a munitions that I would consider to be the most common projectile ways with four 3030 will be a 150 or 170 and for 44 magnum 240 grain projectiles although I'm also going to shoot this Hornady lever revolution ammo which has a 225 grain FTX projectile so let's go to the coronagraph and see what kind of numbers we get normally when I do chronograph testing and make you sit through the tedious process of watching me shoot it as I call numbers off well today we've got a couple of guns and several different types of ammunition so I'm going to do all the coronagraph stuff off-camera well we chronograph their ammunition and crunch the numbers and there they are now when you're comparing power there's two things you go by velocity and energy foot-pounds energy foot-pounds being the real bottom line and remember more power does not necessarily equate into more effectiveness but with our velocities with a 44 mag and we got 1722 1727 1831 which seems like a lot more but remember this is a 225 grain projectile comparative 240 s but with our 3030 with 150 s we've got two thousand three hundred and forty eight two thousand three hundred and eighty four and with 170 grain bullets 2181 that's a lot more when you compare these to the 3030 has a velocity of six hundred and twenty one feet per second more than the 44 Magnum that's a lot more however it achieves that with a hundred and fifty grain bullet instead of a two hundred and forty 90 grains less that's a lot less but when you compute the energy foot-pounds when it comes out to is 1836 versus 1589 that's still two hundred and forty seven pounds more which is again a lot more but remember these are just numbers on a page how do they really translate into performance on various types of targets well let's shoot these two rifles side-by-side and see what we can learn about that so how will those differences in velocity affect drop at distance well I'm gonna start with a 3030 and I'll shoot the upper target from 50 yards and then the lower target from a hundred yards and we'll see how much drop have and the ammunition I'm going to use is the federal 150 grade then I'll repeat this process with the 44 and see if it has a greater amount of drop than the 30 30 did [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] now this is me shooting from the kneeling at 50 yards and this is me shooting from a bench at a hundred and you notice that a couple of these are off to the left whether or not that's a big gust of wind or just me I don't know but the real point is from fifty to a hundred yards we see no significant drop now I'll paste up these shot holes and do the same drill from fifty and a hundred yards with the 44 Magnum and see how they compare and for 44 Magnum I'm going to use the Winchester white box 240 grains I'm a jacketed soft point [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so how'd we do well these targets tell us a few things one being that I can't shoot the 1894 s as well as I can shoot the 336 but as far as drop goes the upper target is me a shooting from the kneeling at 50 yards and the center of the group is about here now the lower target you see that I shot five shots instead of four and it took me a long time to shoot it well that's me again shooting from the kneeling but this time in a hundred yards and with the gusts of wind and the hail that was falling it caused me some delays I also had a couple of Flyers but the center of the group is right here and you can see that that's only slightly lower than our 50-yard group so although the 44 Magnum slower velocity might cause significant drop at 200 yards at a hundred the difference is negligible so let's try 200 yards I'll shoot the target on your left with a 30-30 the target on your right with the 44 Magnum and let's see what happens [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] for those who are having a little trouble seeing the impacts I've now covered them with orange pasties and you might think that somehow the 30 30 miraculously didn't have any drop well actually the aiming point was right here so there is a little bit of drop with the 44 Magnum the same story the aiming point is right here and we see only one round hit the paper at the very bottom so depending on what kind of ammunition you're using your 3030 may have a velocity of give or take 600 feet per second more than the 44 Magnum which didn't seem to help much at a hundred but at 200 makes a lot of difference the 30 30 s greater velocity made either a little difference for a lot of difference depending on how far I was trying to shoot but how much difference will its greater velocity and energy foot-pounds make when shooting hard barriers like these $2 concrete blocks I'll go back 25 yards and I'll shoot the block on your left for 30 30 150 grain projectile and then the block on your right with a 44 magnum 240 grain projectile and we'll compare the results well from my point of view it looked like the 44 Magnum despite being significantly less powerful seem to be more effective let's set this up again and see if we can confirm those results [Applause] well if there was a difference in effectiveness it wasn't much shooting cinderblocks and all that is fun but now it's time for the moment of truth shooting the meet target most of you are familiar with this it's leather jacket skin followed by pork chop pectorals followed by oranges to simulate lung tissue more pork ribs on the back and then behind that as always the new and improved high-tech fleece bullet stop however we're doing a slight variation on this today this is a deer meat target which means it has two layers of leather jackets simulate skinned deer have a fairly thick hide and there's no pork chop pectoral most likely you're going to shoot a deer through the side where there isn't that much muscle and to simulate shooting through both lungs we have a large number of oranges to simulate lung tissue also in typical deer fashion he's going to be naked there's not going to be any clothing over it now I'll go back 35 yards and I'm going to shoot this without federal 30 30 150 grain semi jack and flat nose let's see how we do well we've got our target torn apart both rounds went through the ribs on the front shattered them no surprise there absolutely pulverized our orange lung tissue and made substantial exit wounds through the ribs on the back now if you've seen very many of our presentations you know that rounds like 9 by 1940 Smith & Wesson 45 ACP 357 Magnum are very typically stopped by the first to the fifth layer of fleece well both of those 3030 bullets went through the entire police bullet stop they're gone so we'll put out a new meat target try this again with the 44 Magnum see how that compares for the 44 Magnum will begin shoot for 35 yards and then use the Winchester white box 240 grains someone jacketed Platanos soft link and I'm also going to shoot this corner to you lever revolution animal bear with my pronunciation of that which is a 225 grain FTX projectile like a ballistic tip well you notice that I fired five shots instead of two I was using different types of ammunition I didn't want to shoot just one shot of each and I saw that one of those rounds just skimmed the edge so I shot in an additional shot to make sure it was a good center hit and taking that into consideration we still see a lot of damage there's big holes in the ribs on the front which stands to reason in 1330 is 30 calibers where the 44 Magnum is 42 caliber and yes it's 42 caliber I'll explain that in a minute but looking at the damage we have here we see that it just obliterated on its lung tissue and there's some very impressive exit holes in the ribs on the back the soft point projectiles both went completely through the fleece bullet stop as far as the FTX projectiles one went through and one was stopped by the police bullet stop and I'll show you a close-up of that one in a minute now comparing the damage to this target as opposed to one was shot with the 3030 even taking into consideration it was shot four times it really appears like there's more damage done to this and here's the one FTX projectile we recovered you can see some really good expansion and there's the red tip of it so what's the takeaway from all of this well based on the chronograph results we can say that the 3030 is clearly more powerful by a significant margin and that much greater velocity although it didn't make much difference in terms of drop at a hundred yards made a profound difference at 200 yards and a lot of people would say that you wouldn't really make a 200 yards shot with a rifle like this and they may have a point but if you were called upon to do so with a 3030 that's a viable option with a 44 Magnum if you wanted to make a 200 yard shot you're gonna have to really know your rifle and either have a rangefinder or be pretty good at estimating distance but even though the 3030 was more powerful when it came to shooting the cinder blocks in the meet target I didn't see much difference in the results oh and you heard you mentioned that the 44 is real 842 caliber when you buy 44 magnum ammunition it's very commonly loaded with a 49 a for 300 or for 3 1 diameter projectile which is compressed down to a 42 as it goes through the barrel but still 42 is a lot bigger diameter than 30 and it looked like the 44 may have done more damage to the meet target but in terms of which of these calibers is really better in your lever-action rifle there's some other things to take into consideration one is cost of ammunition and prices may vary in different areas but I paid $18 for this box of 20 rounds of 3030 ammo if I translate that into cost per 50 rounds that's $45 as we're both of these boxes of 50 rounds a 44 magnum ammunition cost me about 38 dollars apiece so 44 Magnum can be less expensive there's also the advantage of because 44 Magnum is typically a handgun cartridge for those who want a handgun and a rifle of the same caliber there's a lot of different options out there as far as 44 Magnum handguns there are some 30 30 caliber handguns but many people would consider something like a Thompson Center contender or a Magnum Research bfr not be quite as practical as something like this model 29 now a lot of what we did today had to do with shooting long distance and we used the deer meat target we're talking a little bit about hunting but lever-action rifles can and often have been put into service for home defense or personal protection purposes and in that case I can tell you that a 44 Magnum or a 3030 will be plenty of power and as far as concerns about over penetration both will have great concerns in that area the one significant difference is that this 3030 has a capacity of six plus one winchester version has a capacity of seven plus one pointed out in 20 inch barrel this 44 Magnum although it's virtually identical zuv the 3030 in terms of overall length and both of these rifles do have 20 inch barrels it has a capacity of 10 plus one not seven plus one which many people would consider a significant advantage in a role like that but the bottom line of which one of these is better has to do with your personal preference what you're planning on doing and the conditions under which you're planning on doing and which is right for you only you can decide so as always don't try this at home own what you call a professional and thanks for watching the 30 30 versus 44 Magnum video [Music]

Channel: Paul Harrell

Views: 966,910

Rating: 4.9404464 out of 5

Keywords: paul harrell, 30-30 winchester, 30-30 lever action, 44 magnum, 44 magnum lever action, 44 magnum lever action rifle, marlin 30-30 lever action, marlin 44 magnum lever action, marlin 44 magnum

Id: PNiDwprzoo4

Length: 19min 36sec (1176 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 26 2018