After lots of planning, waiting, plotting, calculating, etc., the wait ended last Tuesday when my newest girl came in. I was out of town and didn't get to pick it up until Wednesday, then didn't get to shoot it at all until this evening after work. Here's how she looks:



 I'd had a Uberti 20" Short Rifle in .44 Special, but I wanted the .44 Magnum carbine that would handle the heavy-ish .44 Special loads I use for deer hunting. I doubt it'll see many .44 Magnum loads. It feels quite a bit lighter than the 20" rifle with its octagon barrel. Anyhow, tonight I mainly chronographed it to compare velocities against those out of my .44 Special revolvers. As predicted, loads run about 200 fps above the same loads in my 4 3/4" SA. My latest hunting load for the revolvers consists of 8.2 grs. of AL Power Pistol under a 258 gr. SWC from an RCBS 44-250KT mould. After chronographing I decided to give it a quick sight in. The target I used is designed for use with a scope and is really difficult to see, especially in the evening. But much to my amazement, with some really careful shooting this little rifle shot VERY well:

 

I hope to get to work on load development this Sunday focusing on slower burning powders such as 2400 and H-110/W-296.

After the shooting session I retired to the work bench and proceeded to disassemble it for some minor polishing. Tonight I focused on the lever, trigger and hammer. I ground down the safety spring, trigger return spring, and the main spring, polished surfaces and worked on the sear. When I was finished, the rifle operated much more smoothly and I'd estimate the trigger to be breaking around 3 - 3 1/2 lbs.

 Stay tuned!

nice gun

I've owned two Uberti 1873 rifles, one an early 1980's Navy Arms and the other a standard rifle sold direct by Uberti in the early 1990's.
I have a very high opinion of the Uberti rifles.

My only complaint about the new carbines is that Uberti has started mounting the front sight on the barrel band.
The original Winchester and older Uberti carbines front sight was mounted directly on the barrel.
The barrel band mount was correct for the 1866 Winchester, but not the 1873.

This leads me to wonder if the barrel band will shift around and affect accuracy, and I'm pretty sure if the band is removed or loosened you'd have to resight it.
Mostly this incorrect sight mounting method just bugs me.

Excellent, I've been waiting to see a real world review on one of these.  Is yours a Stoeger import?  I saw one about a year ago, before I had even heard they were making an 1873 in 44 mag.

My 54 year old eyes don't do well with iron sights on targets like those. I always have some of those 3 inch target stickers in my range bag and have found that I like iron sights on those against a white background. I just turn the target backward and put a sticker in the center of the white target. Works for me, YMMV.

Yes it is a Stoeger import. My 51 year old eyes didn't like the target either, but I was in a rush and didn't take time to print off any of the targets with 6" bulls. I will say that I find the rear sight notch too narrow as was the case with my other Uberti lever. I'll take a file to it remedy that problem though.

Hopefully next week I'll have time to shoot it some more.