Ruger Hawkeye & The .256 Win. Mag.

By Wiley Clapp (RSS)

June 01, 2009

Occasionally, the handgun and ammo designers completely miss the mark with a new firearm and/or a new cartridge. They missed on both counts with the Ruger Hawkeye and the .256 Winchester Magnum cartridge.


Introduced in the early 1960s and before the gun was available, the .256 was basically a necked-down .357 Magnum. Marlin made a nice little lever gun for the round, but it was primarily a handgun cartridge. Ruger addressed that role with a unique single shot pistol built on the Blackhawk revolver frame. Called the Hawkeye, the gun used a fixed barrel and a pivoting breechblock.


For some unknown reason, it went over like a chicken-wire canoe. The shooting public just never saw the advantages of this as a varmint gun, although it delivered impressive performance: a 60-gr. roundnosed bullet at well over 2000 f.p.s. Since the Hawkeye was a manual feed gun, there were no cycling problems. It never caught on and both gun and cartridge lasted only briefly.


The Thompson/Center Contender was the raging popular single-shot of the time and the Hawkeye may have been a bit awkward by comparison. However, I can remember a pleasant afternoon busting clay pigeons on the ground beyond the butts at my gun club with a scoped Hawkeye. Ranges were well beyond 120 meters.


 


Tags:  .256 win. mag,  blogs,  ruger hawkeye,  thompson center

Share |

Comments

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Enter your comments below, they will appear within 24 hours


Your Name


Your Email


Your Comment

1 Response to Ruger Hawkeye & The .256 Win. Mag.

Dennis Canode wrote:
February 13, 2013

A friend and I each bought a Hawkeye, both still have them, 3 digit serial numbers. Another friend bought a Remington in .221 Fireball which I think was a better choice only because of the long hammer fall on the Ruger. But I had done a lot of shooting with Ruger single actions so had no problem adapting. Shot Prairie Dogs in SD and Ground Squirrels in CA. Never found too much of them after the shot, the .256 bullet was a blunt nose softpoint, lots of lead showing. Have a 1.5 Bushnell Phantom on the Hawkeye, as does my friend. Price was $87.50, as I recall, but then I didn't make that much money then, either. Might be putting mine on an auction site someday, haven't shot it in years, have lots of new brass and a set of dies, too. The handloads worked fine, used 60 gr. Remingtons, 75 gr. Sierra HP's, 60 gr. Speer. We had problems with the expanding plug being too large and the sizing die was also oversizing. That might be worth looking into by anyone reloading for the cartridge. I've enjoyed shooting the gun, the performance is quite spectacular on Mojave Desert Jacks and good practice when they are running.