Gun Review: Taurus Raging Hunter in .454 Casull

If you were to ask me 20 years ago who would dominate the double action super-magnum market, Taurus would not have been my first guess. But man, here they are and they are killing it.  Starting with large frame of The Judge, Taurus has branched out to a very wide range of double action revolvers in chamberings as small as .44 Magnum to as big as .500 S&W Magnum. Right there in the middle, in terms of both size and power, is what might be the Goldilocks of them all, the Taurus Raging Hunter 5.12″ in .454 Casull. 

Taurus isn’t fooling around too much with the finish on any guns in this line. This Raging Hunter sports a flat black oxide finish throughout. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s even and well done and I’m sure helps keeps the cost down. The full underlug provides a beefy look to the gun, as well as some needed weight toward the muzzle.

Adding to the “working gun” aesthetic are the stock grips. The Raging Hunter in .454 Casull comes with a set of soft, textured over-molded grips. They are a good fit for my size large hands. They could be a bit fuller in the backstrap, but that would likely limit those with smaller mitts. As they are, they are perfectly serviceable and provide a very solid hold.

At 50oz, there are certainly heavier guns in this chambering. At just a tad over 5″ in barrel length and 50oz total, this Raging hunter is about the ideal revolver size for defense against brown bears. It’s light enough to carry on the belt when walking in the mountains, or even in a chest rig when fly fishing in bear country. It’s also about as light as I really want to go if I’m pushing the heaviest, highest pressured .454 Casull rounds down the pipe, especially single-handed.

This 5.12″ gun features the same dual cylinder lockup as Taurus’ other heavy magnums. Especially with the factory muzzle porting, I’d be surprised if the recoil was enough to shake the cylinder open, but the feature is nice to have for peace of mind. Unless you’re going for some kind of world speed record where hundredths of a second count, the dual lockups don’t really add to the reload time. They can be released at the same time with the same general motions of most single release systems.

There are a lot of good things about this Raging Hunter, but the trigger isn’t one of them. The stock Taurus revolvers aren’t really known for exceptional triggers, but they’re usually decent enough. This particular revolver was the exception. My Lyman digital trigger scale stops being accurate after 12 lbs. of pull weight. The double action pull was well over that, and gritty to boot. The single action pull was equally bad.

After a series of hunts with them in South Africa, I’ve become quite a fan of these Raging Hunter models and this trigger is well outside the standards I’ve come to expect from them. Pulling the gun open, there were no major burrs or rough spots in the action. The problem was likely the result of the spring set.

That’s a shame, because otherwise the critical dimensions of the gun are pretty good. Using a minus pin gauge set, the cylinder throats measured .452″ and the minimum bore diameter is .445″. The forcing cone is larger than minimum bore diameter and, using a feeler gauge, the cylinder gap is .004″, good for a big bore hunting gun. There is a bit more end-shake than I’d like to see, .004″, but still within acceptable tolerances. End-shake was measured again at the end of the review and remained the same, and I’m betting I fired more .454 Casull rounds for this review than most will during their ownership of the gun.

Despite the bad trigger, accuracy was excellent. Using the factory irons, 25-yard groups with jacketed commercial ammunition ranged from 1.4″ to 2″ off bags, untimed. Those factory irons are okay, but just okay. The rear sight is fully adjustable and apparently durable, with a simple flat black square notch. The front sight is a blade, also flat black.

With no contrast and no texturing of any kind, they disappear on a dark target. That’s not what you want in a hunting handgun, and really, really not what you want in a gun used for bear defense. Fortunately, painting the front sight is super simple, and the DIY-minded could install a fiber optic rod or brass bead without much work, as the sight blade punches out of the base with a single pin. Oddly enough, I can find no aftermarket options for the front sight blade.

The factory irons are okay, but with a 5-slot Picatinny rail on top of the barrel shroud, there aren’t many good reasons to stick with them. I’ve hunted everything from Steenbok to Cape Eland with a Raging Hunter and a red dot sight, and it is 100% the way to go. Fast shots far away is where red dot optics really shine, and that’s perfect for a heavy magnum revolver. This model was no different.

Mounting an old Trijicon MRO with a 2MOA reticle, 3″ fifty yard five-round groups were standard using Buffalo Bore’s 300gr JFN bullet (Item 7B), which chrono’d at an average of 1,661fps. In this gun, that round is generating about 1,800ft/lbs of energy at the muzzle and 1,000 ft/lbs at 100 yards. If I had a good broadside shot on a bull elk a football field away, I’d have zero issues hammering him with this gun and this round. As much as I like heavier bullets, with the exception of the largest and most dangerous game species in Africa, there’s really no reason to use anything on bigger game but this round in this gun.

Then again, there’s also Buffalo Bore’s 250gr Barnes XTP round leaving this barrel at 1,658fps. Five-round groups shot over four shot strings averaged 3.5″ at 50 yards. That round would likely turn our little Hill Country White-tailed deer inside out, and recoil isn’t challenging at all, although muzzle flash was pretty significant.

With any jacketed bullet I could find, no commercial ammunition printed 50-yard groups larger than 4″ off bags with the MRO (though none smaller than the Buffalo Bore round mentioned above.) That can’t be said for the wide-nosed hard cast rounds I generally prefer for hunting.

The 310gr 22k PSI 45 Colt round I use in my Rugers just didn’t like the Taurus Raging Hunter, printing 5.2″ groups at 50 yards. That’s really not too bad considering the low cost and relatively little recoil, and there is usually some accuracy lost when shooting .45 Colt in a .454 Casull cylinder. No hard cast round shot as well as any jacketed rounds, and that 3″-5.2″ was the full bracket of precision.

The lousy, out-of-the-average trigger was contrary to everything else about this gun. Well built, reliable, and accurate, the trigger ruined what was otherwise a real winner of a wheelgun, so I decided to spend the $15.75 for a set of Galloway reduced power springs for the revolver and see what kind of a difference it made. It made all the difference in the world.

Who would have thought $15.75 and 15 minutes of work would so radically change a gun? The double action pull dropped to 10lbs. 8.8oz and the single action pull to 4lbs 15.9oz. That’s still not light, but it’s far better than the factory springs. It was also so much smoother and more enjoyable to shoot.

With that one simple change the gun went from “Oh well..to OH MY!” I put another 200 rounds of my own 454 Casull hand loads over a week of shooting with zero misfires or issues of any kind.

With the spring set change, the Raging Hunter came alive. Now, fast cylinders full of the most potent rounds were possible, if not entirely enjoyable. There’s still stout recoil at the top loads, although I’m sure the ported barrel helps. Still, getting the muzzle steady throughout the trigger squeeze and the sights back down after the recoil was now just challenging enough to be fun. I didn’t plan on doing Mozambique drills with a .454 Casull revolver, but there I was, sledgehammering my steel at the house range. In a mock fantasy hunting scenario, I shot one supported from the kneel on my 100-yard steel and then stood to empty the other 4 rounds in the cylinder as quickly as possible at the imaginary steel grizzly, 15 yards from the muzzle. It was a ball.

The Taurus Raging Hunter 5.12″ .454 Casull is powerful and portable. It belongs in a chest rig or on the hip, not tucked away in a pack. With the spring set change, this gun has quickly become one of my favorite heavy magnums to shoot, especially mounted with the MRO. This one’s not going back to Taurus, it’s headed back up into the Targhee in Idaho with me for black bears, a place I scouted early this spring and found only browns.  I will not be undergunned.

Anybody got any suggestions for a holster to use with the MRO?

Specifications: Taurus Raging Hunter .454 Casull 5 1/2″

Caliber: 454 Casull
Capacity: 5 Rounds
Front Sight: Fixed
Rear Sight: Adjustable
Action Type: DA/SA
Barrel Length: 5.12 inches
Overall Length: 10.90 inches
Overall Height: 6.50 inches
Overall Width: 1.80 inches
Overall Weight: 50.00 ounces (without optic)
Twist Rate: 1:24 RH twist
MSRP: $1,068.99 (Easily found online for $899.99)