Having just completed the most physically punishing range test of my career, I believe after shooting the .45-70 Government-caliber Bond Arms Cyclops derringer, it can be crowned King of Pocket Hand Cannons. Aside from the obvious awesomeness/machismo factor, this pistol has a serious practical application for backcountry personal defense against large predators. In the absence of a powerful rifle, the .44 Magnum revolver has long been the leading choice in that role. However, though smaller than a rifle, a .44 Magnum is still a very big and bulky revolver to pack. My S&W 629 with a 4-inch barrel weighs 46 ounces loaded with 240-grain bullets, and just over 50 ounces holstered.

Shooting the Bond Arms Cyclops in .45-70

By contrast, the Bond Arms Cyclops is a lot lighter, smaller and easier to carry. When you’re going to wild places where you’ll be relying on your physical strength alone to bear the weight of everything you need to survive, the combined mass and bulk of those items becomes a critical factor. The 6.75-inch-long Bond Arms Cyclops derringer weighs 27.8 ounces empty. Load it with a single 405-grain bullet, .45-70 Government cartridge, and you get 29.2 ounces. Put that in their practical, molded, leather belt holster and you get 32 ounces. That’s 18 ounces (1 pound 2 ounces) less than the aforementioned .44 Magnum with vastly less bulk. If that means something to you, read on.

Testing and inspection showed the Bond Arms Cyclops extremely ruggedly made and impressively accurate at 25 yards. Like other Bond Arms derringers, the action closes line a bank vault, easily opening and closing one-handed by flipping the barrels up and down. No sensible revolver owner would ever flip a cylinder open and closed, but the Bond Arms guns seem nigh indestructible. They also feature a simple to operate, push button, hammer-block manual safety and a unique rebounding hammer. The system mechanically prevents it from touching the frame-mounted firing pin without pulling the trigger.

Handling Recoil

To handle the recoil of the .45-70 Govt round, which cracked their standard wood stocks, the Cyclops uses a specially formulated B6 resin material with deeply molded oversize checkering to improve your grip. That being said, with mild loads their small size results in punishing recoil at best; and absolutely spasmodic, stinging shock with full-power loads. The Cyclops can take these heavy hitters safely, but Bond Arms doesn’t recommend shooting the full-power rifle loads because their intense recoil is too much for most shooters.

With Black Hills Ammunition’s mild mannered 405-grain lead bullet loads, the Cyclops is a challenging, but not painful, gun to shoot. They are somewhat downloaded to be safe in antique rifles, like the military Trapdoor Springfield, and averaged 636 feet per second measured 15 feet from the muzzle on a Competition Electronics Pro Chrono digital chronograph. With a tight grip, and with this pistol there is no other, the recoil impulse rammed hard into my palm and the muzzle flipped up through about 80 degrees of arch.

Cyclops Accuracy

Impressively, the Cyclops clustered five rounds in a 3.4-inch group at 25 yards from the bench. That’s good for any centerfire handgun. During testing, it became apparent that the fixed sights aren’t regulated for that range, as my group’s point of impact (POI) was 11 inches above, and 4 inches to the left of my point of aim (POA). At 7 yards, POI was only 1.8 inches high and 0.6 inches left. This Black Hills Ammunition load is well suited to practice, but I’d want something with all the power I could handle if I encountered a hostile bear.

For bruin busting, I selected full power Remington Core-Lokt, 405-grain, jacketed soft point loads. I have never felt pistol recoil as intensely as I did with that load. Muzzle flip exceeded 90 degrees. The stinging shock delivered to my palm actually caused me to instinctively stand up and put the gun down to shake out the pain from my instantly rubbery and useless shooting hand. It took about a minute to subside before I could shoot again. If it hurt me this much, I wondered what it would do to the beast on the receiving end of that huge, flat-nosed, expanding bullet.

Average velocity for this full-power load was 903 feet-per-second. It also grouped impressively at 25 yards. Five shots covered 4 inches, measured center to center. As you would expect, it shot a little higher than the slower Black Hills load. POI was 15.25 inches above and 2.5 inches to the left of POA at 25 yards and 2.25 inches above and 1.2 inches left of POA at 7 yards. 

Downrange Performance

Significantly, this Remington Core-Lokt load was 236 feet-per-second faster than the Black Hills load and had over twice the calculated bullet energy at 15 feet (733 foot/pounds versus 364 foot/pounds). For reference, Remington’s 240-grain SJHP .44 Magnum load, which has only 59 percent of the .45-70’s bullet weight, has a comparable energy. In fairness, you can find .44 Magnum loads much hotter with energies over 1,100 foot/pounds, but their bullet weight seems to top off at around 330 grains and they aren’t suitable for most revolvers. The advantage I see in the 405-grain .45-70 loads is they offer big, heavy, comparatively slow moving, flat-nosed bullets that tend to deposit a lot of their energy into the target, Bond Arms also makes a .44 Magnum Cyclops. You can buy the barrel alone for $250 and install it for reduced recoil, and expense, range practice.

When dealing with massive handgun recoil, it’s not uncommon to wear shooting gloves. However, the downward pivoting motion of the Bond Arms derringer trigger calls for an exposed trigger finger. When depressed, the bottom of the trigger actually moves closer to the triggerguard as it completes its arch. A gloved finger could potentially get some leather or fabric pinched between trigger and triggerguard and prevent the trigger from getting the full range of motion needed to release the sear.

Final Thoughts

For my testing, I blackened the rear sight and front sight with a permanent marker, which greatly improved my sight picture and cured a vertical stringing problem I was having initially. This expedient works great on sunny days, stays on better than I expected, and cleans off without solvent in the field with a determined effort if need be. Bond Arms, along with their holsters, makes all of its guns entirely in the United States.

Check out the Cyclops at BondArms.com.

–This story is dedicated to my Caldwell Pistolero shooting rest, which, after years of faithful service, succumbed to the awesome destructive power of the Bond Arms Cyclops .45-70 derringer. 

Specifications: Performance: Bond Arms Cyclops 

• Caliber: .45-70 Govt. (.44 Magnum also available)
• Operation: break-open, single action
• Capacity: one
• Barrel: 4.25 inch (2 inches of rifling)
• Frame & Barrel: stainless steel
• Finish: matte w/ light polish on sides of barrel
• Safety: hammer block manual safety, rebounding hammer 
• Overall Height: 4.37 inches
• Overall Length: 6.75 inches
• Width: 0.96 inches across widest part of frame, 1.29 inches across grip
• Weight: 27.8 ounces empty
• Grip: B6 resin
• Trigger: 7.5 pound pull weight
• Sights: fixed 
• MSRP: $699

Performance: Bond Arms Cyclops .45-70 Govt.