Ive been useing heavy caliber handguns for deer and hogs for years, Ive lost count years ago, but you do tend to see a pattern, in results, and one or two shots means little, results vary a good deal.your average revolver in the hands of a good shot is best used at under about 120 yards,for a number of reasons, so start thinking of that as a reasonable max range.
one point that was not brought out here is that handgun bullets rarely expand like rifle bullets and you WANT BOTH a wide melplat to increase the dammaged area along ther bullets path and AN EXIT WOUND that lets in air and BLOOD out, both tend to limit the distance the game travels if it doesn,t drop almost instantly.
Ive used the 200 grain hollow points in a 44 mag at high velocities and the 300 hard cast bullets,and the 240 hollow points, THEY all work reasonably well on deer if the shot placements decent,NONE of them gives instant DRT kills all the time, but the 300 grains are the most consistant, in that they tend to be very predictable and exit, the 200 & 240 grain hollow points can give spectacular kills at times, but Ive also had long trailing jobs on occasion on deer and occasionally on HOGs useing those bullets, while the 300 hard cast might not give the same dramatic DRT stops it tends to be very effective and consistant and give better average performance in my opinion.
your better off thinking like an ARCHER in that hits, even good hits don,t always result in instant kills and having projectiles do complete pass thrus and having good blood trails is a big plus. EXPECT deer to run! youll seldom see deer INSTANTLY drop with lung/heart shots but you seldom see them go very far either.
BTW the classic shot to the base of the neck/ low/mid center chest, if they are facing you works very effectively with a hard cast bullet
Last edited by 340mag; 07/17/08.
