When it comes to the 6-inch-barreled stainless steel gun covered here, I find the name Super Hawg not only typographically incorrect but also misleading. While big and heavy, this gun is no pig in the hand. The Super Hawg is one of the biggest, longest and heaviest M1911s made today, and that’s a good thing. Spend some time on the range with one, and you’ll agree.

The Super Hawg weighs in at a beefy 44 ounces unloaded and is built on Para’s 14-round-capacity, widebody stainless steel frame, which measures 5 3/4 inches in circumference around the grip frame. The gun is 9 3/4 inches long, 1.43 inches across its extended ambidextrous safety levers and 5 1/4 inches high.

Instead of cut and joined pieces, the slide is one piece of solid machined stainless with high-polish side flats and brushed matte surfaces everywhere else. There are semi-circular grasping grooves at both the front and the rear. While aesthetically pleasing, I prefer such grooves cut a bit deeper with more pronounced edges, but that’s me. Measuring 8.47 inches in length, the slide’s increased length and weight over a 5-inch Government Model reduces muzzle flip considerably, although it does add slightly to the time requisite for the pistol to cycle. It might mess up the timing of the likes of Todd Jarrett, but for me, I was actually faster back on target with the Super Hawg than with a standard gun.

The six-groove match-grade stainless barrel measures 6.06 inches in length, and it has an integral feed ramp. Again, there are two lugs on the barrel top, and it is built on the Browning pivoting-link system. The barrel is retained by a standard bushing. There are two recoil springs of differing lengths, one is 6 1/2 inches long and another measures 1 1/4 inches uncompressed. Slide fit was extremely tight with no wobble, and the barrel hood was very well fitted. The internal Power Extractor and a conventional frame-mounted blade ejector are also standard.

The square-notch, target-style rear sight, made by Para, is dovetailed into the slide and is both windage and elevation adjustable via screws on the right side and top. Its rear face is grooved horizontally to reduce glare. The front, too, is dovetailed in and is drift adjustable for windage. A red fiber-optic rod in the front is a departure, and I found it faster to acquire—especially in low light—than straight Bo Mars, while still being able to precisely aim at both reactive and Bullseye targets.

Ergonomic touches included a skeletonized match trigger adjustable for overtravel via a trigger stop screw, a well-fitted stainless beavertail grip safety and an ambidextrous extended thumb safety. The black stocks are of checkered hard polymer and are retained by stainless hex screws. The flat mainspring housing is checkered at 25 lines per inch, while the frontstrap has fine, negative 30 line-per-inch checkering cut into the frame. The latter is non-abrading, yet provides a firm grip, and Para is to be commended for it. Single-stack longslides will also be available from Para.

The frame circumference of the doublewide .45 ACP Super Hawg is 5 3/4 inches as compared to 5 1/16 inches for the 9 mm Luger PDA. As can be seen in the accompanying table, accuracy was quite good, with the .45 ACP Super Hawg at 25 yards from a Caldwell HAMMR machine rest. There were five failures to feed the top round from the magazine with Federal Gold Medal Match FMJ SWC loads early in the testing. After 425 additional rounds had been fired, the broken-in gun chambered them without difficulty. With a 230-grain JHP load, we found the extra inch of barrel delivered about 10 foot pounds more muzzle energy than a conventional 5 inch. It might not seem like much, but it certainly doesn’t hurt anything, either. The Super Hawg was so much fun on the range that it made me rethink why I haven’t paid more attention to longslides. I fired several hundred more rounds than I typically do on such an evaluation with the gun simply because the gun was so much fun to shoot. Thanks to its accuracy and excellent handling, the Super Hawg is waiting for my next hog hunt and has me checking the Internet for local bowling pin matches.

I was impressed by these two guns, and the thought and appreciation for Browning’s grand design behind them. The M1911 will no doubt continue as our most popular center-fire semi-automatic pistol platform, and it will continue to expand in versatility and configuration … especially if the guys at Para USA have anything to say about it.