cloverleaf
Handloader
- Sep 10, 2006
- 4,459
- 1,200
FOTIS":21w77scc said:
or 3-4 cows end to end....
CL.500 S&W handgun / water hole ????
- Thread starter Guy Miner
- Start date
or 3-4 cows end to end....
CL
longrangehunter
Handloader
- Jun 19, 2011
- 1,544
- 153
Thanks Scotty. It carries easily and is more then enough as a hand gun and still shoot well. Although I never carry it with a round in the chamber that the hammer is down on, but since I've never had to pull it, except on a nasty Dog, four rounds is still enough.
Back around 1975, give or take a year Nevada finally allowed handguns for deer hunting. I took a deer opening day with a Ruger Super Blackhawk and a Remington 250 gr. hollow point. Bullet hit the shoulder blade and the deer went down. Range? Maybe 40 yards. Went we got the skin off the jacket was imbedded in the shoulder blade but the lead core went on in and finished the job.
The next year I was hunting in the same area with the .44 only this time I was using my home cast bullets that were reasonably hard but not at the level of those commercial hard cast bullets. I got a shot at a deer at roughly 40, maybe 45 yards and hit it in the same general area as the first deer. The bullet punched through the shoulder blade, took out one lung, nicked the other lung and exited. Neither deer traveled more than 30 or 40 yards before dropping. Both deer were taken off a private ranch that allowed little or no hunting except by invitation. The next year a group of California lawyers bought the ranch and NO HUNTING signs sprung up all over the fence line. :x Did I mention I hate lawyers. That's the third ranch they've shot out from under me including two when I lived in California. :x :x
Anyway, based on the results from those two deer, I've never shot a jacketed bullet from any of my .44 Magnums since then. Only my home cast bullets.
Interesting fact, but IIRC, Elmer Keith used an alloy of 16/1 lead and tin for his .44 Mag. That has to be a pretty soft bullet. A while back I was given some what was purported to be cleaned wheel weight metal, a 100 pound sheet of pure lead and three buckets of raw wheel weights from on of my students in a Hunter Ed class. His wife didn't like the stink when rendering the raw weights into clean metal and was freaking out because e was working with (GASP!) lead. I ran a batch of 158 gr. gas check bullets for .38 Spl. and .357 Mag. and they checked out at 8BHN on my hardness checker. My normal load for the .357 Mag. is 14.0 gr. and when I shot some, accuracy was fine and they didn't lead a bit. One of the demonstrations in HE class is I shoot into a jug full of damp sand and another fellow shoots an arrow into the jug to show the difference on how a bullet and arrow kill. When I recovered the bullet is was one of the nicest mushrooms I'd ever gotten from a .357. Definitely some decent energy transfer there. Maybe Elmer had something with his 16/1 alloy that has been long forgotten. Ya think?
Paul B.
The next year I was hunting in the same area with the .44 only this time I was using my home cast bullets that were reasonably hard but not at the level of those commercial hard cast bullets. I got a shot at a deer at roughly 40, maybe 45 yards and hit it in the same general area as the first deer. The bullet punched through the shoulder blade, took out one lung, nicked the other lung and exited. Neither deer traveled more than 30 or 40 yards before dropping. Both deer were taken off a private ranch that allowed little or no hunting except by invitation. The next year a group of California lawyers bought the ranch and NO HUNTING signs sprung up all over the fence line. :x Did I mention I hate lawyers. That's the third ranch they've shot out from under me including two when I lived in California. :x :x
Anyway, based on the results from those two deer, I've never shot a jacketed bullet from any of my .44 Magnums since then. Only my home cast bullets.
Interesting fact, but IIRC, Elmer Keith used an alloy of 16/1 lead and tin for his .44 Mag. That has to be a pretty soft bullet. A while back I was given some what was purported to be cleaned wheel weight metal, a 100 pound sheet of pure lead and three buckets of raw wheel weights from on of my students in a Hunter Ed class. His wife didn't like the stink when rendering the raw weights into clean metal and was freaking out because e was working with (GASP!) lead. I ran a batch of 158 gr. gas check bullets for .38 Spl. and .357 Mag. and they checked out at 8BHN on my hardness checker. My normal load for the .357 Mag. is 14.0 gr. and when I shot some, accuracy was fine and they didn't lead a bit. One of the demonstrations in HE class is I shoot into a jug full of damp sand and another fellow shoots an arrow into the jug to show the difference on how a bullet and arrow kill. When I recovered the bullet is was one of the nicest mushrooms I'd ever gotten from a .357. Definitely some decent energy transfer there. Maybe Elmer had something with his 16/1 alloy that has been long forgotten. Ya think?
Paul B.
