The Gun
I am no stranger to custom handguns. Between my son and I we own several. When I was approached about trying one of Larry’s guns (CEG or Competitive Edge Gunworks) I was intrigued. I had seen pictures of his guns but never handled one. I had spoken to Larry on the phone about the gun and he told me “It isn’t a safe queen so don’t handle it like one. Shoot it and hunt with it.” When I opened it up I was expecting it to be pretty scratched up but I was pleasantly surprised. The gun showed obvious signs of being used but wasn’t beat up. My first observation was that the gun had been finished nicely. The frame is color case hardened and the rest of the gun is finished in a beautiful deep blue.
Out of habit I held it up to the light and saw that the cylinder gap was tight. My son handed me a feeler gauge and it told the story. The cylinder gap was .0015” all the way around and the cylinder was absolutely square. The trigger has zero creep and broke cleanly. The trigger scale said 2.5 lbs. Perfect on a hunting gun. The front sight was ‘melted’ into the barrel instead of soldering it on top of it. When I talked to Larry he relayed that he ran into Steve Herrett years ago and told him about the build. He was having issues with the Ruger grips fitting his hand. He said that Steve made a tracing of his hand on the spot and shortly thereafter the grips arrived and fit his hand perfectly. I enjoyed having the maximum length ejector rod to remove the empty cases as well.
From the shooting bench
I was anxious to see what the gun would do. It literally showed up at the gun shop and I picked it up 20 minutes later. I was in the woods when they called. We were planning on hunting that evening so I rushed home and sighted it in. I tried one factory load. The factory load is an old .44 Magnum standby. The Winchester 240 grain soft point they label for “Deer and Black Bear”. It is rated from the factory at 1180 fps. The handloads consisted of Hornady 240 grain XTPs over 23.0 grains of H110 in Starline brass. I sighted it in at 25 yards then shot a couple of groups. The groups were fired at 25 yards from sandbags. The limiting factor would be my old eyes. After sighting the gun in I put a mix of the Winchester and XTPs all in a cluster of about 1.5”. This was getting it ready to hunt that evening with more shooting planned for the gun. This was good enough to head to the woods.
Putting the accuracy to work
There was about 10 minutes of shooting light left when I spotted a deer moving behind some really thick brush about 25 yards in front of me. It moved slowly from right to left. I had already raised the gun and cocked it anticipating the deer walking through an opening about 15’ from where it stopped. It wasn’t spooked but it turned and headed back in the same direction it came from. I followed it with my sights hoping for a clear shot. There was a small gap between trees and brush no more than a foot wide. It got behind the trees when I had decided it probably wasn’t going to give me a shot. It turned towards the opening. Its head and neck entered the small opening giving me a clear shot at the neck.
That was the best shot I was going to get. I had a solid rest and had shot the gun about 2 hours earlier so I knew that I could make the shot. I aimed at the center of the neck and pressed the trigger. This trigger has zero creep and broke cleanly with the sights right on the neck. The deer dropped in its tracks. The gun did its job well. We didn’t get a great picture of the deer but it certainly shows that the gun worked.
The tale of the chronograph
Since this gun has been Taylor Throated I was very curious to see how it affected the muzzle velocity of some known loads from the same length barrel. It has always been accepted that the jacketed loads would lose around 25 fps. and that many cast loads show little difference. We set up the chronograph and shot the W-W factory 240 grain JSP. through the Larry Crow .44. It averaged 1350 fps. With 20 fps. extreme spread. We then ran the same load through my son’s custom TLA #5 which has very tight chambers and a tight cylinder gap as well. The load averaged 1362 fps. And a 22 fps extreme spread.
Next up the 240 XTP handload. It averaged 1282 fps. With a 17 fps extreme spread. The same load from the TLA #5 averaged 1311 fps. With 11 fps. extreme spread. Of course I had to try the old faithful Skeeter .44 Special load since a lot of these get digested by .44 Magnums. The load consists of a 429-421 Lyman Keith bullet over 7.5 grains of Unique. First up my 1961 Flat Top .44 Magnum. The Skeeter load averaged 1098 fps. with 39 fps. extreme spread. The Larry Crow .44 averaged 1112 fps. With a 40 fps extreme spread.
The take away from this is the super tight cylinder gap more than makes up for the Taylor Throating. The fact that these super tight guns are able to get 150 to 170 fps. more velocity than the factory load is rated at shows what a difference a well fit gun can make. The Skeeter load seemed cold in both of these guns. I have run into that in some .44 Magnums so that was a non issue. Both guns shot it well enough to hunt with it.
Accuracy
With a quick group to its credit and deer season over I wanted to get a feel for what the gun was capable of. We set up targets at 25 yards and used sandbags for the rest.
My first group wasn’t great. I chalked that up to being out of practice. My son shot a group similar to mine. We discussed it for a minute knowing the gun was shooting lights out before I hunted with it. My son brought up that he was having trouble with getting a consistent grip with the large grips. I hadn’t said anything but I was also having issues. He said hang on a minute and came back with a set of Super Blackhawk grips. We both drastically improved our shooting.
Group size shrunk and the gun had no problem shooting sub 2” groups. I started being much more careful on each shot and was able to get a ragged hole with one called pull about 1.5” from the other shots. Given more time to do some load work ups there is no doubt this gun would land in the top 10 most accurate revolvers I have ever shot. As far as the grips go, remember part of being a custom gun means fitting the gun to the shooter. In this case the grips were fit to Larry’s Hands which are much larger than mine. If I had commissioned this gun for me I would have had a grips set up to match my hands.
The conclusion
After giving the gun a good inspection, shooting it and hunting with it, I will have to say this is a fine revolver. It is accurate and well tuned. It is nicely finished and even carries a bit of history with the grips. While a bone stock Super Blackhawk will serve most hunters well, there is something to be said for a custom revolver that has all of its T’s crossed and I’s dotted. I appreciate quality gunsmithing and this gun certainly has it.
Larry offers complete gun smithing services and revolver builds including 5 shot big bore conversions.
For More information contact:
Larry Crow- Competitive Edge Gunworks
660-322-0304
Happy Handgun Hunting-RDY