Review: Charter Arms Coyote .380 ACP Revolver

The .380 ACP cartridge is no stranger to compact pocket pistols. It dates back to the year 1908 and has served as a standard caliber option for many blowback pistols. It’s not, however, typically a caliber that one thinks of when discussing snub-nosed carry revolvers, but that didn’t stop Charter Arms from launching the new Coyote .380 ACP snub-nosed revolver. This snub-nosed option is based on Charter Arms’ classic two-piece frame and clockwise-spinning cylinder, and its mission is to provide gun owners with a lightweight yet mild-recoiling defensive carry revolver.

Charter Arms Coyote .380 Revolver Overview

The Charter Arms Coyote is a fixed-sight snub-nosed double-action revolver that holds five rounds of .380 ACP with the aid of moon clips.

Both pieces that make up the Coyote’s frame are machined from aluminum, which allows Charter Arms to sell these revolvers with different anodized color choices; white (silver), lavender or pink. Stock options either consist of rosewood panels or the more pedestrian rubber boots, like what my specimen is wearing. Coyote .380 revolvers can also be had with traditional exposed spur hammers or in a shrouded hammer. configuration

I’m working with the shrouded hammer model simply because exposed spur hammers can be a snagging hazard on the draw. Also, defensive revolvers are rarely fired in single-action, so forgoing the exposed hammer is not a liability for me. In addition, for defensive guns of this size and payload, pocket carry can be a compelling way to wear the gun, and the smooth rear-end on this Charter Arms Coyote variant is ideal for a snag-free draw.

Charter Arms Frame And Double-Action Mechanism

The Charter Arms frame design is one of the revolver designs that eschews the traditional side plate–the lid over the rear of the frame that exposes a revolver’s inner parts and lockwork. Instead, the two-piece frame and all the Coyote’s internals are held in place by a combination of pins and screws. Unlike the Smith & Wesson or Taurus revolvers I’m used to handling, the Charter Arms design also uses both its L-shaped yoke and ejector rod to help lock and support the cylinder in place. The L-shaped yoke nestles neatly inside the front left part of the frame and when locked, borrows tension from the ejector rod’s spring to lock at the rear and also uses tension from a spring-loaded bushing that puts pressure at the junction where the yoke rests inside the frame. The Charter Arms style yoke screw also sits at the bottom front of the frame just above the trigger guard as opposed to being located on the side of the frame–the traditional spot on most revolvers.

Charter Arms builds each of their double-action revolvers with a unique hammer-block mechanism which requires that the trigger must be fully and decisively depressed to the rear before falling out of the way and exposing the hammer to the firing pin proper. While I’m not a gunsmith and pulling out these specific parts would be futile, during dry-fire I can feel the gun asking for a long and deliberate trigger pull along with an equally long reset. But fear not, after some dedicated live-fire, this smooths out and becomes imperceptible. It took about the better part of 100 rounds to feel it become smoother. In the context of defensive snub revolvers, the trigger is just fine.

Coyote revolvers, like most snub-nosed revolvers, have fixed sights. The rear sight is carved into the topstrap with a channel that lines it up with the front sight, which on this model consists of a wide green fiber-optic unit. All things considered, the Coyote has a generous sight picture, with both the front sight and the rear sight notch being fairly wide and easy to see.

The Coyote’s 2-inch barrel is quite standard for this genre of revolver with only one major exception: two small slit-like ports located at 11 and 2 o’clock. Even though my experience with .380 ACP revolvers isn’t extensive, we do know that it’s a fairly mild cartridge as far as centerfire pistol rounds are concerned and I do have reason to believe the Coyote’s porting does help stifle extra jumpiness considering the empty revolver weighs less than one pound. Likewise, due to the mild nature of the round, there are no concerns about an overly-violent muzzle report.

Shooting The Coyote

Despite this revolver’s lighter overall weight, felt-recoil pushing sub-100-grain, .355-inch bullets was manageable. The recoil is nothing like a Taurus 856, Smith & Wesson Model 640 or even a vintage Chiefs Special pushing a standard 158-grain .38 Special bullet.

For review purposes, our protocol for pistols with sub-3-inch barrels is to group them at 7 yards from rest, which actually becomes more challenging with both a smaller gun and a double-action only trigger. Despite that challenge, I noticed that the Coyote fired more consistently with faster-moving cartridges. While the reported results are all acceptable from the context of a defensive snub-revolver, my intuition tells me that its 7-yard groups could be even tighter had the gun been secured into an expensive ballistics lab grade mechanical rest.

I shot and chronographed three different factory loads, two from newcomers to the space, HOP Munitions and G9 Defense along with classic 95-grain Speer Lawman training rounds. Both defensive cartridges from HOP Munitions and G9 Defense clocked in at velocities faster than 1,000 fps, with an average of 1087.6 and 1109.5 fps respectively, and as such they punched the better mean radii readings. The Lawman load, which moved slower than the other two, with an average muzzle velocity of 882 fps, had clusters that were slightly wider–but still very much acceptable, especially for training ammo.

In addition to shooting for groups, I also shot the Coyote at the distances of 3, 7, 10, 15 and 25 yards both with G9 Defense 70-grain External Hollow Point Load and the standard Speer Lawman. I wanted to explore the relationship between two different types of ammunition, the Coyote’s short barrel and its sights. (I only had enough of the HOP Munitions rounds on hand for the accuracy report).

Relative to the typical .380 ACP round, the Coyote’s front sight sits tall, which pushes impacts lower. At 3 yards, either load printed approximately 1.5 inches low. At seven yards this doubled to 3 inches, and the scale kept increasing as I moved farther back. All these shots were fired at standard IPSC paper target, and from 25 yards, most of my rounds were impacting the very bottom portion of the A-Zone along with that general bottom area of the C-zone which always envelops an IPSC target. While drift from windage did increase, this revolver has fixed sights and from a snub-nosed defensive perspective, I found the windage negligible. In short, the best way to ensure solid A-zone hits with the Charter Arms Coyote .380 ACP revolver is to simply hold the sight picture high, not unlike one would do with an AR-15 at closer distances to manage the height-over-bore issue.

The Takeaway

I already mentioned that the gun’s action and trigger smooths out after some live-fire range time. If there’s one complaint I have with this revolver, it’s that it only shipped with two moon clips, albeit nice ones, from TK. But two moonclips are not enough. Revolvers like the Charter Arms Coyote will not function properly without these clips, and I think anyone who would carry this gun for protection would do well to use brand new moonclips to do so. After firing the 150 or so rounds I did for this review, I had to reload the Coyote 30 times, which meant that I manually loaded and unloaded either clip at least 15 times each. (Charter Arms does sell a tool to help with this), but towards the end of the review, I noticed some rounds didn’t fire until I dropped the hammer a second time. My suspicion is that the bends that developed after handling the same two clips constantly interfered with the proper clearance the firing needed to successfully detonate primers. Again, if carrying this gun, invest in extra moonclips and always use new ones when carrying to avoid this type of issue.

As for the gun itself, it’s a very light weight and easy-recoiling pistol given its mild-mannered chambering. With this revolver weighing less than a pound and its hammerless, it wouldn’t do too bad sitting in a pocket holster.

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