I remember the first time I fired a .45 Colt. The handgun was a Ruger Vaquero with a 4.75-inch barrel. The gun belonged to an old cowboy friend of the family, Mr. Tony Lewis. I guess some of you may not have known Tony, and sadly you’ve missed your chance. But he was something else.

Tony, like so many of my childhood mentors, was eager to help me cultivate my budding fascination with the shooting sports. Having fired several other handguns up to that point, two endearing features I found readily enamoring about the .45 Colt was that its report wasn’t nearly as ear-piercing as a .357 and the recoil felt about half that of a standard .44 Magnum load with similar bullet weights.

When the .45 Colt was released in 1873, it was a huge hit for several reasons. Its cartridges contained 40 grains of black powder and propelled a 255 grain bullet to approximately 1,000 fps. This made it the second most powerful handgun available on the frontier; second only to the Walker Colt.

Reloading your revolver was much faster with the self-contained brass case cartridges making the need to carry more than one pistol nearly obsolete. Although the U.S. Cavalry did adopt the Smith and Wesson Schofield top break revolver in limited numbers, troopers quickly realized the vast superiority of the longer Colt cartridge over the shorter .45 Schofield. This nickname “.45 Long Colt” was likely formed thereabouts and erroneously continues today.

The Colt Single Action Army came to be known as “The Peacemaker” in the civilian market due to the old adage: “God created all men, Sam Colt made them equal.”

The .45 Colt was adopted in 1873 and continued in full or partial service until 1892, when it was officially replaced with the considerably less powerful .38 Long Colt. Those in uniform with any connections, however, continued to use the .45 as their service revolver until the adoption of the Colt 1911 .45 Automatic.

A young Lt. George S. Patton was a lifelong believer in the .45 Colt revolver. In Mexico he enjoyed more than one fracas involving Villistas and was preserved alive thanks to his Single Action Army revolver. So impressed was he that even as a general in World War II he famously carried a Colt Peacemaker in .45 caliber.

While I’m no Western lawman or war hero, I appreciate the .45 Colt for its many modern and enduring virtues. In any regular handgun, original factory ballistics of a 250-255 grain bullet — cast lead or jacketed — traveling 1,000 fps can be easily achieved. In a stouter model such as the Ruger Blackhawk, Freedom Arms or T/C Contender, the .45 becomes the full equal of the .44 Magnum with Buffalo Bore factory plus-P or handloaded ammunition. It should still be considered tops as an all-around self-defense and close-range hunting load.

With increasingly more regular encounters with wild, often predatory and dangerous animals, a .45 sixgun will still make the peace wherever you are. If you’re looking for a classic cartridge that hits big league, the .45 Colt certainly checks all of the right boxes.

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