Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Deer hunting with a rabbit gun.

For many years I took my Freedom Arms .454 jack rabbit hunting. It was great sport. Socrates said, "The boys trow rocks at the frogs for sport, but the frogs die for real." Unlike the frog, when you shoot rabbits with a .454 inside of about fifty yards they take off, like an exploding bomb. Great sport!

I decided to take my varmint gun deer hunting. It has proven very effective on thin and thick skinned jack rabbits. Coyotes on the other hand give me the fever so bad I have not been able to hold the cross hair on one. The penetrating ability of the 260 grainer was put to the test in the real world of deer hunting. While returning to the truck after walking clear around the hill, and then over the hill, I was no longer being quiet. I didn�t know exactly where the pickup was, but knew I was getting close. I mean I wasn�t lost. The road was just below me somewhere. I wasn�t road hunting. You probably thought road hunting was driving along the road watching for a deer to cross.

Distracted from returning to the truck by some noise off to the right, I looked. Unintentionally, since I was road hunting and not deer hunting, I disturbed a napping deer. It jumped up about fifteen yards away and trotted across in front of me. �Bet you can�t hit me while I trotting,� it seemed to imply. With three points on one side and a fork on the other, it was obviously legal. Well, really all I saw at the time were horns. To taunt me further, it stopped behind a three foot blown down about ten to twelve yards down hill from me. Its head and neck were almost completely obscured behind the roots. Even with the aid of the 2 �-8X Leupold I couldn�t make out what was deer and what wasn�t? Probably wasn�t focused* correctly.

To my delight, I realized there was about an inch of hair exposed above the log. I mean, how much deer does it take to excite a road hunter, I mean deer hunter? Remembering the impressive penetrating power available, I just aimed about five and a half to six inches down on the log and fired. The hair disappeared at the shot. It went behind the roots from the right to the left. It didn�t come out the left side of the root section, so I concluded the deer dropped at the shot. Was it playing hide and seek? They do that all the time. That�s why it�s called deer hunting, you know.

I ran around the log in case it wasn�t fatally hit. It was. Upon inspection, I discovered the spine above the shoulders was obliterated and there were both bone fragments and wooden splinters throughout the lungs. Total penetration was in the neighborhood of three feet! About twenty-six inches of bark and ten inches of buck. This proves that some varmint guns can be used very effectively for big game hunting.




*E doenst' need to tell me it wasn't focused correctly, I already volunteer that.
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LOL,Good story!

Thanks. Enjoyed the story and the performance. Impressive penetration.

IMO you are REALLY lucky that the bullet kept going straight. Hitting anything before the bullet gets to target is probably the single most unpredictable factor we can add to a shot. I've shot through wood at game several times, always unintentionally either because I missed my aiming point a smidge, didn't see the item in the scope or thought my bullet path would clear it. I've never hit game after hitting significant wood, though like you, others I know have pulled it off.

When I shot through 1 1/2 inches depth of an 8 inch diameter tree (so through about 4 inches of wood and bark) it either missed the elk entirely that was 4 feet on the other side of the tree, or the expanded bullet thumped him without penetration. He sure flinched at the explosion of splinters!

Last year I put a round through the edge of a two inch pole that was about 15 feet from me, and missed a buck entirely that was standing 15 feet past it. Killed him with a subsequent shot.

You got him, and that's what counts. Thanks for posting the story.

Thank you, folks.

Okanagan,
I did some testing prior to that experience. So I was pertty confident it would get there. I discovered big flat meplats tend to go straight.

I'd be interested in your tests, how you did them, etc.

A year or two ago, someone here on the 'Fire tested 30-30 rounds shot at a cardboard box through willow, someone in Alaska (Ugashik Bob?). The results were like Russian roulette: some went through straight, some deflected and some tumbled. Too random to count on hitting what you aimed at.

Years ago Carmichael tested the theory that slow heavy bullets tend to deflect less than fast lighter bullets. He shot all of them through the same pattern of staggered dowels. He surprised himself by discovering that fast, high rotation pointed bullets did better than slow heavy bullets, but all of them were terrible at consistently going straight.

The flat meplat may well help. I'd guess that several other factors have more influence however, such as angle of impact, how much of the flat nose impacts relatively square to the target, how hard the material is, etc. I'd think the larger the flat meplat the better.

No hassle here, just pure interest. I hunt brush a lot, like the close shots, hate the stuff in the way. Our only difference is in our confidence: mine shaken by experience, yours strengthened.

Great story thanks for sharing.