The Heritage Rough Rider vs: the Taurus 942 M
By MARJ LAW
My grandmother was born in the late 1800s. She remembered the day the first Ford Model T roared into their placid small town. What a convenience! No more horse and buggy! And what wouldn’t we give today to own that beautiful Model T?
Unless, of course, we have to go to Publix for a gallon of milk. Imagine travelling north on 319 on a Sunday morning in that Model T. Other cars would whiz around us, honking angrily at our slow pace. Yet others would slow down and gawk to see the historic automobile of days gone by.
So, no. That lovely old car would not be much of a convenience today. And that’s true of handguns as well. Take, for instance the Heritage Rough Rider: a reproduction similar to the old Single Action Army revolver of the late 1800s versus the Taurus 942 M of today. Both can shoot .22 magnum rounds. But what a difference time makes!
Is there a place today for a .22 revolver that shoots magnum rounds?
Last Wednesday, Joe and I brought the Heritage and the Taurus to the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office range. How did we think we could compare them? The Heritage has a 6.5” barrel, and the Taurus only has a 3” barrel. Doesn’t that longer barrel give the Heritage a huge advantage? Normally, we’d expect that the Heritage’s much longer barrel would allow the gases more space to expand and thus give the bullet more impetus. We’d expect the rifling in the barrel would twist the bullet like a quarterback’s flick of the wrist as he tosses a football. We’d expect it would provide more accuracy as well.
Won’t barrel length and twist give the Heritage a huge advantage over the Taurus?
We load each revolver. The Heritage holds 6 rounds and the Taurus holds… 8 rounds! Wow. An extra 2 rounds in the Taurus!
Picking up the Heritage, I open the gate on the right-hand side. Half-cocking the hammer, I feed one round into the exposed chamber. To load the other 5 rounds, I leave the hammer at the half-cock position and rotate the cylinder to expose the next empty chamber. After filling that chamber, I rotate the cylinder again and load the next round. This continues until all 6 chambers are filled.
Loading the Heritage takes some time!
The new Taurus is much faster and easier to load.
First, my right thumb pushes the cylinder release button. With my left middle finger, I push the cylinder out to the left of the gun. Now, all 8 chambers are revealed. I’m able to load each chamber quickly, then snap the cylinder back into the gun. All loaded, and it’s ever so much easier than loading the Heritage.
We plan to shoot in single action only because the Heritage can be shot single action only, while the Taurus can be shot in either single or double action.
When we’re ready to shoot each revolver, all we have to do is make sure the range is ‘hot,’ point the muzzle downrange, aim at the target, pull the hammer back with our thumb and then squeeze the trigger. Blam!
Shooting each revolver, trigger pull and trigger travel is light. Recoil is light as well.
But what about the targets?
Joe shoots 5 rounds with the Heritage on the right-hand target and 5 rounds with the Taurus on the left. All 5 rounds score nicely with the Heritage, but what happened with the Taurus? Only 2 rounds have hit well, and another round barely clips the target.
I pick up each revolver, shooting 5 rounds at each target. Again, all my 5 rounds from the Heritage hit the target, yet I only get 1 hit on the Taurus target. Darn!
Perhaps that much longer barrel of the Heritage did make that much of a difference. Perhaps the Taurus was a newer revolver and hadn’t been broken in. Perhaps the sights on the Taurus needed adjustment.
We decide to check the Taurus’s sights. Joe takes my range bag and places it on the shooting bench. He’s using it as a rest to keep the gun steady as he shoots. He aims carefully. He shoots. Blam!
Right on the target. Was it a one-time piece of luck? Blam! He shoots again. On the target.
The Heritage, a copy of a much older gun, shoots better today than the more modern (and shorter barreled) Taurus.
Then we have to unload the guns.
To unload the Heritage, we open the gate, half-cock the hammer and then push the ejector to eject the empty casing. Then we roll the cylinder to the next chamber to eject the next spent casing. We repeat these actions until all empty casings are expelled.
To unload the Taurus, all we have to do is press the cylinder release button and push the cylinder away from the gun. Then we push the extractor rod and presto! All the casings fly out.
Clearly, loading and unloading the Taurus is far easier and faster than loading and unloading the Heritage. And, so far, we are shooting the Heritage more accurately than the Taurus, although we could see holes where we hit just off the 8” target with the Taurus.
There isn’t a huge difference in accuracy, but there is some. Is it because the Taurus isn’t broken in yet? Is it because it’s difficult to see the front sight, which is just an uncolored ramp? We decide to paint the ramp with a bright nail polish when we return home.
But, what good is a .22 revolver anyway?
I’ve heard many guys say that a .22 is about as useful as a pea shooter.
“It has no take-down power,” they say in disgust.
Well, the .22 has its place.
I like the philosophy I saw recently when surfing the ‘net on the Sniper Country site. What makes the .22 such a great gun?
First, it’s small and portable to have on hand whether you’re hiking, paddling a small boat, or fishing.
Next, the .22 is a great plinker. You can visit the Sheriff’s range on a nice day, meet up with your friends, and enjoy a pleasant afternoon improving your hand/eye coordination.
Third, you can get rid of small nuisances like snakes with a .22.
A .22 is a great teaching tool for someone who has never shot a gun before. It doesn’t make a loud noise and doesn’t have a lot of recoil. Trying to learn on higher caliber handguns can result in habits like flinching, which can take your aim off your target.
And last, a .22 can be useful for self-defense. This caliber may be all a person can handle. If so, a .22 is probably a lot better than throwing a rock. Tell that to David when he sees Goliath on the ground.
The .22 revolver has been around for over a century and a half. Just as new cars have conveniences the first cars didn’t have, the .22 of today is much easier to handle than the .22s of the 1800s.
And with a little practice, we may learn to shoot it just as well!
Marj Law is the former director of Keep Wakulla County Beautiful who has become an avid shooter in retirement.