Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting hunting with 00 buckshot?

I want to say up front that I have never shot at a deer with buckshot. I have never hunted in a state that allowed it. I don't, therefore, want to be mistaken for an expert on this. I also don't want this to seem like I'm knocking buckshot or its use on Whitetails.

What I do know about it is that before the advent of modern seasons, buckshot was very popular for deer. A lot of that popularity came from cultural inertia. Folks had been spraying shot at Whitetail deer since white men set foot on the continent. At moderate ranges it worked, at least by the standards of the time. What were those standards? In general, the mindset of an early 19th Century Whitetail hunter was to put a ball into the deer any way he could and then put the dogs on it. One shot was generally not expected to bring down an animal. Often the finisher was delivered with a knife.

Even with the advent of centerfire rifle, no one really changed their way of looking at things. Teddy Roosevelt writes about putting 13 rounds into a single doe in a long pursuit after putting the first round into her rump while on a meat hunt out West. No, he wasn't using buckshot. However, he was sort of simulating it. Nobody was really planning about dropping a Whitetail on the first shot, or at least they were not expecting it.

That kind of mindset was even in Jack O'Connor's earlier work, and you can see it in the whole "Brush Busting" mindset. Folks were encouraged to shoot at whatever part of the animal was sticking out of cover, or to even shoot through heavy cover to reach it. The idea was still to put a ball in to get a blood trail and then track the animal until you could put in a finisher.

I've got stuff on my shelf from the Thirties and Forties extolling the use of buckshot out to 80 yards. Now, you folks that are experienced with buckshot can tell me: 80 yards with buckshot? What would you expect the outcome to be? I'm not knocking buckshot, mind you. I'm just saying the mindset of these hunters was considerably different from today's "One-shot/One-kill" view of things.

If you look at the responses on this thread, they pretty well match what I've been hearing from folks for the past 40 years. At what most people consider to be bow hunting ranges, buckshot is just as effective as any other round. The results are highly variable, shotgun by shotgun and load by load. Some wouldn't trust buck past 30 yards. Some trust it out past 50. YMMV-- in this case there is an emphasis on the "V." What you find is that the further out you go, folks' expectations change, and their idea of acceptable losses due to wounding goes up.

These ideas all die hard. Did you ever wonder why a quintessential "hunting knife" was so long, when it's so unwieldy up inside a Whitetail? The reason, in part, is that hunters needed a long blade to reach the vitals. In the autobiography of Mishack Browning, he discusses his favorite method of dispatching a buck was to mount the wounded animal and ride it while plunging his knife into the vitals. The idea of slitting a deer's throat? That's only effective if the animal is still alive. I would also warn that early hunting memoirs discussed how wolf packs followed the hunters, living off the leavings and running down the woundings, often in concert with the hunter's own dogs.

Is buckshot effective against a Whitetail? Yes, especially if you expect to be hopping on its back to finish it off. I'm not knocking the practice. I'm just saying know what you're getting yourself into.

I"ve shot a handful with buckshot.. probably around 10... I've never had to finish a single one.

The problem with ANYTHING, know the limits of what you are using, and know YOUR limits. Beyond that the rest can GFY basically.

Of course I grew up listening to a few folks, then realizing not everythign they said was true re hunting. Dad did not deer hutn.. So I learned to listen, but then to verify it all myself before trusting anything.

Like a post on another thread, how do you get your drops for say a 500 yard shot? FLIPPING DUH? Shoot at 500 yards. There is NO other way... if you have any ethics.

I have a lot of experience with buckshot. After quite a bit of experimenting, I have a setup I trust out to 70 yards. My Super Black eagle will put 16 00s into 20" at 60 yards every time.

I only remember one I had to finish killing with a knife. I had shot him high with a .270 breaking his back.

I shoot #2 Remington through a Carlson's Dead Coyote Choke. It's the same one I use for turkey hunting using Federal lead #4 3" 12 GA. I haven't done anything close to 100 yards, but it's flipped a yote at 60.

... I did not take time to shoulder the gun but whirled and fired from the hip....