My dad and I were trading emails about shooting stuff with cast boolits. I was commenting that I've begun to take my 170gr gas checked hard lead loads for my 30-30 into the woods this year.
I mentioned it a few months back that I was thinking about it and a number of posts both here and comments from other places told me I was irresponsible and not cleanly killing game.
He gave me a run down of the deer he's killed with cast lead (7/8) of them were from a suppressed 44 wildcat. Take it for what it's worth, just something to keep in mind when the discussion of which caliber is best and what bullet is best and what is needed to kill a deer.
The key thing I think he's saying is that you need to have the ability to place a shot, not pull the trigger and hope for the best.
<span style="font-weight: bold">ME:</span>
I think it's funny that people spout off about how you can't kill a 100lb thin skinned deer with anything less than 3500 ft lb of energy bullet going mach 3 when the American Buffalo is all but extinct from barely sonic cast lead bullets.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Dad</span><span style="font-style: italic">If that's the case, you can post a note for discussion for the guys who condemn the use of cast lead bullets for hunting. All eight of my last deer taken on this property after we moved were all killed with hard cast lead.
The first deer I killed here was a doe, taken during fall muzzleloader season. I fired hard cast lead from my flintlock on that doe. Mainly because I didn't have pure lead for casting, so I made it from wheel weights that very afternoon. Dropped a couple of bullets into water, dried them off, and took off into the woods. The bullet was a 50 cal Minie. I recovered the slug from the doe, seriously mangled. It fully engaged the rifling, didn't hit a single bone, and still mashed up very uniformly on the muscle tissue it encountered. Fired with only 60 grains of powder, it still traversed the long ways through the body from left ass cheek to stopping under the fur in the right shoulder. That deer didn't flee more than 10 yards. I was actually astonished to see it go down so quickly.
The day I got that first deer on our new property was a memorable day for me. That day I also received in the mail my approved paperwork for building my first ever silencer. So I decided right then and there that my deer hunting would be my proving ground for evaluating and developing my subsonic loads. All remaining 7 deer taken here were shot with subsonic 44kunz ammo which I was intentionally testing because I wanted to know how my ammo was going to perform on living targets. All 460 grain hard cast lead 44 caliber bullets, all the same round nosed, with gas check base, turned by hand on the lathe, all doing 950 fps +/- about 20 fps at most as I was hand weighing each charge. The lead was made by melting 20 lbs of wheel weights in my LEE pot, and adding 2 Kool Aid scoops of Magnum #4 shot.
OK, the second animal was a shoulder shot. It collapsed where it stood, pretty much dying instantly. The slug broke both shoulders. I didn't recover that bullet. It passed right through the deer. With two broken shoulders it couldn't get away if it wanted to, but I don't think it ever knew what hit it. Blood was just pulsing out of both shoulder wounds from having the apex of the heart shattered, and frothing out of the nose and the mouth. When I cut that one open to field dress it, it was like an anatomy lesson. The heart and lungs looked like a traffic accident.
4 of the next six were head shots, and they simply fell right in their tracks. One animal was grazing and still had greens in its mouth. In all cases the bullet passed clean through the skull. Nothing too notable about the wounds other than the fact that the exit wounds were not much bigger than the entrance wounds, so not a great deal of expansion too place. In fact, last year's buck was a really impressive lesson in penetration. The slug entered below the right eye in the thick bone, exited under the left eye, and all but cut the deer's face off.
One of the remaining two was I'm guessing a liver area shot. The deer took a step just as I fired, and the slug went through the rib area just behind the shoulders. That was the one I never recovered. It hid under a pine tree only 30 feet away and bled out while I was searching for it in vain that evening and again the next day. We had no dog then to help find the carcass as Nelson had just died. Cooper found it in April. That was Cooper's puppy year. We'd let him out to go pee, and he kept going out in the woods and coming right back with pieces of decaying fur/leg/bones until I followed him and found the mostly skeletalized remains. Bullet injuries on both ribs confirmed that slug also went right through. Fact is though, that one died within 30 feet of where it was hit, and I walked within 5 feet of it and didn't see it when I was looking for it.
The last deer was the one where I planned ahead for the shot. On that one I took a shot on the 7pt buck, it had a nice rack, and I wanted the intact skull to hang in the shop. So I calculated a spine shot in the shoulder area so as not to ruin the skull trophy I was planning, and got it. That bullet acted like a cookie cutter and shaped round notch right though the spine and it went down where it stood also.
So my experience over the last five hunting seasons was eight rounds on eight deer and eight virtually instant kills on every one. By contrast, the first deer I ever killed as an adult after college, was taken with my Springfield .30-'06, using Federal factory ammo , 150 grain soft pointed bullets, because that was all they had at Food Lane. I took a shoulder shot on that deer, hit the heart, and it ran out of sight and had to be tracked to recover it. In fact, I worked harder to recover every deer I ever shot with modern ammo a lot harder than deer I killed with my custom 44kunz with hard cast lead bullets.
So if you know how to shoot, and I know at least *you* do, there is no reason to feel worried that your bullets won't perform. High powered rifles with Superman Killer bullets were designed so any moron who doesn't practice can be sure they are going to kill their deer. Real hunters who practice their craft and take only clear shots can still put meat on the table with one shot and melted down wheel weights.
Dad</span>
I mentioned it a few months back that I was thinking about it and a number of posts both here and comments from other places told me I was irresponsible and not cleanly killing game.
He gave me a run down of the deer he's killed with cast lead (7/8) of them were from a suppressed 44 wildcat. Take it for what it's worth, just something to keep in mind when the discussion of which caliber is best and what bullet is best and what is needed to kill a deer.
The key thing I think he's saying is that you need to have the ability to place a shot, not pull the trigger and hope for the best.
<span style="font-weight: bold">ME:</span>
I think it's funny that people spout off about how you can't kill a 100lb thin skinned deer with anything less than 3500 ft lb of energy bullet going mach 3 when the American Buffalo is all but extinct from barely sonic cast lead bullets.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Dad</span><span style="font-style: italic">If that's the case, you can post a note for discussion for the guys who condemn the use of cast lead bullets for hunting. All eight of my last deer taken on this property after we moved were all killed with hard cast lead.
The first deer I killed here was a doe, taken during fall muzzleloader season. I fired hard cast lead from my flintlock on that doe. Mainly because I didn't have pure lead for casting, so I made it from wheel weights that very afternoon. Dropped a couple of bullets into water, dried them off, and took off into the woods. The bullet was a 50 cal Minie. I recovered the slug from the doe, seriously mangled. It fully engaged the rifling, didn't hit a single bone, and still mashed up very uniformly on the muscle tissue it encountered. Fired with only 60 grains of powder, it still traversed the long ways through the body from left ass cheek to stopping under the fur in the right shoulder. That deer didn't flee more than 10 yards. I was actually astonished to see it go down so quickly.
The day I got that first deer on our new property was a memorable day for me. That day I also received in the mail my approved paperwork for building my first ever silencer. So I decided right then and there that my deer hunting would be my proving ground for evaluating and developing my subsonic loads. All remaining 7 deer taken here were shot with subsonic 44kunz ammo which I was intentionally testing because I wanted to know how my ammo was going to perform on living targets. All 460 grain hard cast lead 44 caliber bullets, all the same round nosed, with gas check base, turned by hand on the lathe, all doing 950 fps +/- about 20 fps at most as I was hand weighing each charge. The lead was made by melting 20 lbs of wheel weights in my LEE pot, and adding 2 Kool Aid scoops of Magnum #4 shot.
OK, the second animal was a shoulder shot. It collapsed where it stood, pretty much dying instantly. The slug broke both shoulders. I didn't recover that bullet. It passed right through the deer. With two broken shoulders it couldn't get away if it wanted to, but I don't think it ever knew what hit it. Blood was just pulsing out of both shoulder wounds from having the apex of the heart shattered, and frothing out of the nose and the mouth. When I cut that one open to field dress it, it was like an anatomy lesson. The heart and lungs looked like a traffic accident.
4 of the next six were head shots, and they simply fell right in their tracks. One animal was grazing and still had greens in its mouth. In all cases the bullet passed clean through the skull. Nothing too notable about the wounds other than the fact that the exit wounds were not much bigger than the entrance wounds, so not a great deal of expansion too place. In fact, last year's buck was a really impressive lesson in penetration. The slug entered below the right eye in the thick bone, exited under the left eye, and all but cut the deer's face off.
One of the remaining two was I'm guessing a liver area shot. The deer took a step just as I fired, and the slug went through the rib area just behind the shoulders. That was the one I never recovered. It hid under a pine tree only 30 feet away and bled out while I was searching for it in vain that evening and again the next day. We had no dog then to help find the carcass as Nelson had just died. Cooper found it in April. That was Cooper's puppy year. We'd let him out to go pee, and he kept going out in the woods and coming right back with pieces of decaying fur/leg/bones until I followed him and found the mostly skeletalized remains. Bullet injuries on both ribs confirmed that slug also went right through. Fact is though, that one died within 30 feet of where it was hit, and I walked within 5 feet of it and didn't see it when I was looking for it.
The last deer was the one where I planned ahead for the shot. On that one I took a shot on the 7pt buck, it had a nice rack, and I wanted the intact skull to hang in the shop. So I calculated a spine shot in the shoulder area so as not to ruin the skull trophy I was planning, and got it. That bullet acted like a cookie cutter and shaped round notch right though the spine and it went down where it stood also.
So my experience over the last five hunting seasons was eight rounds on eight deer and eight virtually instant kills on every one. By contrast, the first deer I ever killed as an adult after college, was taken with my Springfield .30-'06, using Federal factory ammo , 150 grain soft pointed bullets, because that was all they had at Food Lane. I took a shoulder shot on that deer, hit the heart, and it ran out of sight and had to be tracked to recover it. In fact, I worked harder to recover every deer I ever shot with modern ammo a lot harder than deer I killed with my custom 44kunz with hard cast lead bullets.
So if you know how to shoot, and I know at least *you* do, there is no reason to feel worried that your bullets won't perform. High powered rifles with Superman Killer bullets were designed so any moron who doesn't practice can be sure they are going to kill their deer. Real hunters who practice their craft and take only clear shots can still put meat on the table with one shot and melted down wheel weights.
Dad</span>
