Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns For those considering deer hunting with a handgun....

Now I know you are 100% full of schit..

Tony Kanaly is one very no nonsense, straight shooter. I just had lunch at the Milt Sparks shop on Tuesday. Tony was not there at the time, but the rest of the crew was. The VP is a close and long time friend of mine, and others who work there are friends too.

I've known Tony for roughly 20 years now, though I don't know him nearly as well as others on the Sparks crew, I can say without hesitation that Tony has never been anything but a class act.

When you are calling out someone like TK as a liar, I know beyond doubt, John Melvin Davis you are everything that everybody has described you as.

Time for you to crawl back under a rock, or back to another prison cell... I'm sure your parole officer would not be amused as to your postings under various aliases here...

How do you shoot deer with a .22? Between the eyes when spot lighting of course. How do you kill a deer with a .380? Must be massive Me.
I shot too many deer in PA archery hunting that had healed in .22 bullets on the rib cage from butt wipes to even consider the stupidity. I have seen too many deer lost with 30 and 7mm mags but some will say a .22 mag is best. Yeah between the eyes with a light. Darn sure a .22 mag will kill a deer but you better see it fell.
Who would I hunt with? Whitworth and JWP for sure even if we have issues. Issues are not important enough to me.
I will never condone toys for deer. I do not condone head shots either. Most of you can't hold 4" at 25 yards yet claim to shoot deer in the brain.
Am I enamored with a guy shooting a deer with a .380, no a fool with 100% luck.

Years ago I fixed a .38 S&W for a guy. I lived in the city so the best place to test was in my old mans car. I stacked 2x4's on the back floor and leaned over the seat to shoot. Every bullet was stuck in the first 2X4 not even half the depth of the bullets. Great deer gun for some of you. Not far from a .380 in power.
Deer are NOT easy to kill. This is a fully expanded .22 bullet in a deer's neck that I shot with a bow. Turning green so it would most likely die from gangrene.
You CAN kill a deer with a .22 or .22 mag but can you find it? Only fools do that stuff. Squirrel hunters that see a deer out of season or with a light at night. I can't count the arrows and .22 bullets I found in deer. Healthy until I used the right gun or bow. Two of three arrows found healed in deer chest cavities.

"Generally speaking, the primary handgun cartridge choices for deer hunting include the .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, the .44 Magnum, .45 Long Colt (marginal), and the .454 Casull."

I would say, ignorantly speaking if this author thinks the 45 Colt is marginal compared to the others he listed. What a dolt.

Probably marginal in the sense of being used in a Colt SAA or any of the Colt clones. Not so in a Ruger or Freedom Arms or any of the specialty revolvers design for hot .45 Colt loads.

That would be my take on his comment.

In about 40 years of handgun hunting, I have made two bad shots on deer with big-bore revolvers. One of them was with a Ruger 45 Colt, loaded with 255 grain SWC's at around 950 fps. The other one was with a 44 Redhawk 44 using 300 grain XTP's at a known 1310 fps.

In both cases the deer goosed as I was triggering the shot, and it landed about 6" behind the shoulder and 4" under the spine. The 44/300/XTP deer bled like a stuck hog and went damn near 200 yards. The 45/255/SWC deer went maybe 50.

Now a fool would look at this and say the 45 SWC is a four times better deer stopper than the 44 JHP.

A rational man would look at this and say the fool on the trigger should have done a better job.

Both loads have flattened deer for me when slammed into the spine at the shoulder. I hate cloud the issue with logic, but shot placement matters more than paper energy.

How dare you, sir!

Holy sheep shcitt batman, how dare you try to use logic against raw emotion, fantasy, lack of experience, and what the internet EXPERTS proclaim to be true.

(P.S. my experience matches yours)

IME, the 45 Colt loaded properly in a Colt Single Action Army is most adequate and not marginal at all.

I've not played with a bunch of different bullets in handguns, but what I've noticed is that it doesn't take a whole heckuva lot of velocity for an LBT to do what it's supposed to.

My experience is that a slightly heavy one, even if it's moving at modest velocity, usually has an in-hole, an out-hole, and a lot of broken parts in between.

Exactly! Vic you speak with the wisdom of experience.

Keep digging.



Travis

Can we get a ruling on marginal 45 Loads?

I'm tempted to load up some FFFg and see what I can do this year.

Always curious why folks think it takes more to kill a 200 or 300 pound non-man than a 200 or 300 pound man?

Well said!

You might try shooting yourself with a 380 to better understand the pathetic power of the 380. My guess is you won't, even though you know they are not lethal. Of course a brain shot would be nearly impossible due to the size of the brain...

Now THAT was well said!!

shrapnel...what load did you use?

Bob

I find this puzzling as well.

+1

I'm sure many thousands of big game animals have been dispatched with aplomb via 45LC and lesser rounds with black powder. Dangerous game not with standing this trend over the last 25-30 years of magnum handguns being "needed" to kill big game is pure marketing. Sure I own a few boomer handguns simply because I can, but I'm not foolish enough to think they are needed.

Only further discussion I can see is that a guy cares about meat loss in hunting and not so much in SD where the object is to stop the threat as quickly as possible with more emphasis on tissue damage.