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Taurus VS Charter Arms
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Do we have any experience or opinions, between the Charter arms .44 special, and the taurus "Tracker" in .44 Mag. This will be a back-up gun when calling Coyotes this winter. We have wayyyyyyyyyy to many Cougar, and Bear that don't sleep all winter. I'm mostly concerned with reliability, and warranty. Neither gun will be high volume. Is the Taurus .44 Mag. on the same frame as the Taurus .357 mag.?
Comments
Neal
"Buy the best quality you can afford; you will never regret it."
Not because there is necessarily anything wrong with the gun, but the caliber.
.44 special ammo can be hard to find, and is generally almost as expensive as .44 magnum. Further .44 special, while not weak, isn't nearly as effective as .44 magnum.
.44 magnum is just a much better choice against large dangerous animals like bear or cougar. Why limit yourself? You can always load a .44 magnum gun with weaker .44 special ammo, if you wanted to. If it were me, stepping up to the bigger .44 magnum would be a no-brainer.
The .44 magnum also has advantages of being better in general for hunting (should you ever choose to do that), plus it would be more easily sold in resale if you ever needed to trade it.
Getting into the you-didn't-ask but I'll-tell-you-anyway category, yeah, Neal is right that the Smiths are better guns. You can sometimes find used Smiths for not much more than new Tauruses, and if you can find one like that in your price range its a better way to go.
Also, since you appear to be looking for a lower cost gun, don't overlook a used Ruger, which really are pricewise comparable to the Taurus guns. While the action on a Ruger isn't going to be quite as slick as the Smith, the Rugers are still American-made guns with high quality control and excellent customer service. Plus, they are built like tanks and if anything are stronger than the Smiths.
I don't understand the prejudice against Taurus revolvers. I have Smith's, Ruger's and Taurus' and they are all fine weapons. Taurus has a much broader line, variations in barrel length, materials, capacity, finishes, etc. I've had one defective Smith in the past 20 years and the warranty service sucked, never fixed the problem and I sold it. I've personally had no trouble with Taurus, bought my first one in 1991 and plan on getting my son a Taurus 1911 for college graduation gift. I have had freinds who had trouble with the Taurus copy of the Colt pump rifle and warranty work was slow, but everybody's Lightning copies seem to be trouble prone.
Go 44 magnum for sure, although I don't see why you don't just plug any incoming varmints with the rifle. The rifle gives you something to poke at the beast and keep it back farther than a handgun. I actually had a doe deer crash my blind once and I held her back with the rifle till she realized I was a human and wasn't torturing fawns and ran away.
Charter's are crap.
I don't understand the prejudice against Taurus revolvers.
With Charter Arms, that company has been under multiple ownerships over the years, with varying levels of quality and quality control.
The earliest ones from the mid 1960s and early '70s are supposed to be quite good, but later quality control dropped off, and there are a number of later guns that are pretty rough.
[EDIT: The issue with the mid-range Charters was quality control. . .as mentioned below, the guns designs were mostly unchanged during the various iterations of the company]
Personally, if I were interested in a gun to defend against bears and such, Charter Arms is not where I would be looking.
As to Taurus, there was a time not-that-long ago when quality control was quite poor, and a lot of the imported wheelguns had problems, including poor fit and finish, non-uniform cylinders, bent cranes, etc.
One of the gunshop owners in MA told me that he stopped carrying Taurus guns about 12 years ago, because he had to return so many defective ones to the factory and dealing with Taurus was a bit PITA (he can't carry them now even if he wanted to, because they aren't MA compliant anymore). That doesn't mean that the company didn't put out good guns, but a lot of bad ones left the factory that really shouldn't have.
Now supposedly Taurus has cleaned up its act to the point where its current production guns are good and quality control is high, but there still are a number of questionable pieces out there on the used market, and I can see being skeptical about them.
I have ONE old Taurus revolver, .38 Special is the caliber, and International Distributors imported it. It is a neat, biggish-sized revolver, and it is actualy pretty well made.
I also had, have had, or handled plenty of Charter revolvers. The one that feels best in my hand is a 37-year-old Police Bulldog, .38 Special, six-shot revolver. So far, I prefer the older Charters over the newer Charters.
Here is a Gunblast.com review of a Charter 2000 Bulldog Pug:
http://www.gunblast.com/Bulldog_Pug.htm
Here is a Gunblast.com review of "feeding" the Bulldog:
http://www.gunblast.com/Cassill_Bulldog.htm
Now, some people like this here Mic McPherson fella. Let us see what he has to say about Charter Arms' .44 Special Bulldogs:
http://www.levergun.com/articles/44_Special_Bulldog.htm
Mic has been a huge fan of the Charter Bulldog for at least 30 years.
As far as the company changing hands goes, they did change hands- sort of...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Arms
http://www.charterfirearms.com/about us/about_Charter_Firearms.html
"For years Doug McClenehan was a gun designer with several prominent American gun companies. Using his strong engineering and inventive background he decided to go out on his own and in 1964 founded Charter Arms. McClenehan and David Ecker were lifelong friends and in 1967 Ecker became a 50/50 partner in Charter Arms.
1972: David Ecker made a buy out offer to Doug and Ecker became the sole owner of Charter Arms.
1984: Nick Ecker, David Ecker's son and the present owner of Charter Arms, joined the company and ultimately ran the manufacturing/production arm of the company.
1988: Through a complicated set of circumstances dealing with a somewhat related real estate deal, Jeff Williams, VP of finance for Charter Arms came into ownership of 100% of the stock of the firearm manufacturing and sales operation and renamed the company Charco. This stock transfer allowed David Ecker to work on the real estate deal. In order to ensure that the firearm portion of the company continued, Jeff Williams offered 20% of company stock to Nick Ecker to continue running production; Nick accepted.
1996: There was a dispute between Nick and Jeff and Nick left the company. Ultimately the production failed due to this loss of expertise and the company closed its doors for a short period in 1998.
1998: Learning of the closing Nick Ecker brought on two partners and bought the company from Jeff Williams.
2000: Nick Ecker's two new partners had the name changed to Charter 2000 to coincide with the change of the millennium. Charter 2000 marked firearms were produced between 1999 and mid-2007.
2002: Due to excellent sales, Nick Ecker was able to buy out his two partners and changed the name back to Charter Arms. In mid-2007 Charter Arms was again stamped on the firearms and this mark continues to be stamped on Charter Arms revolvers to this day. Nick Ecker is now the sole proprietor of Charter Arms.
October 2004 Founder, Doug McClenehan passed away and in March of 2005 David Ecker passed away.
Regardless of the changes and the 1998 financial blip (which most gun companies have experienced sometime in their history), and contrary to incorrect rumors (they usually are incorrect) of the company being sold or whatever, the Ecker's have been part of Charter Arms since 1967.
Gun buyers worldwide have discovered the many unique features and benefits of these innovative, robust, reliable, and affordable high-quality revolvers. Charter Arms has the best warrantee in the industry. Our unique lifetime warrantee covers all Charter Arms firearms, regardless of firearm age or model. Please see your dealer today about Charter Arms if you are interested in a solid, affordable and reliable revolver."
In general, Charter guns use a lot of the same parts, no matter when they were built, or where they were built. For example, I believe that all of their grip frames are identical, from revolver-to-revolver. However, even so, Charter uses a couple of different frame sizes, caliber-to-caliber, and shot-capacity-toshot-capacity.
Please, handle all of the guns that you are thinking about buying. Shoot 'em, if you can, too.
We've had bears walking through our property and a couple of mountain lion attacks close to where I winter and my carry is a 3" S&W 629 because I can clear the holster faster, but if I have a rifle in my hands ready to fire that should be even faster. Click the slide forward and fire.
Or am I over analyzing?