Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Elmer Keith 600-yard mule deer

Mart, when I was farming, the rod was handy for measuring acres.....an acre is a rod wide by half a mile long. Here in MT, many fields (strips when we did strip farming) were half-mile, so you could estimate acres by how many rods your implement covered in one round.

I don't remember what granddad was measuring back then. I was pretty young. I do know he was talking about field work.

In college one of my physics professors had us convert different units of speed to furlongs per fortnight. My 44 Special with a 429421 and 17 grains of 2400 is going roughly 1,451,520,000 fpf (furlongs per fortnight). Makes the old 44 Special sound a little more special.

Good exercise in unit conversions!

I grew up reading this story and many others by Keith, much on handgun shooting/hunting also by Bob Milek and Skeeter.....Hal Swiggett...

Fascinated with those writings, I got heavy into the shooting the 357, 41 and 44 as well as many chamberings in Contenders.

As to a bullet going thru a deer, I punched a deer with a 1,050 mv load, 240 SWC, punched thru like hot butter, they would sail thru a 10' willow tree near a local river, and hit the river with more punch than you'd want to receive. Momentum matters

Last couple of 44s I owned were a pair of 629 with 4" barrels. Friend set up milk jugs for his rifle at 100 and 150 yds, I asked if I could try a few. I busted on on shot #3, and IIRC, the one at 150 yds on the first shot. He called the next week and asked, what barrel length is your 44, 6 inch? I said no, 4. He replied, you better put up your rifles, you are doing better than many. Lol. That was 200 gr Nosler JHP over either H110 or W296, 4 grains under max. The milk jugs exploded, water filled.

My first shot EVER with a TC Contender, was a guy who was a TC nut, and older gent who was a Chemical Engineer. Contenders was about all he shot, mostly 30-30 and 30 Herrett. I did see him break out a S&W model 46 once, similar to the model 41. He offered me to try his Super 14 30-30 on a pepsi can at the backstop, about 115-130 yds at the local range when I was in college. He grinned when he handed it to me, as I was going to make a go OFFHAND. Having been on the Karate team, I knew it as all about the discipline - Sight pic, and squeeze, but ONLY when the sights were on and I could follow thru. It wore a 2x Leupold.....I held a LONG time, steadied my shakes, finally broke the shot, and that can flew up about 15 feet in the air. I turned to hand the gun back to the owner, he was silent, grinning, and his jaw about hit the ground!

Point is, handguns are FAR underestimated in what they CAN Do, and WILL do, when the driver does their part. I have pulled off some shots that a few witnesses were just dumbfounded, of course that goes with rifles as well. Ironically, I was never a great wingshot. Opposite of my Dad. If you spend the time and burn plenty powder, you can become quite proficient at connecting lead with said target.

Those writers and many others, inspired countless hunters and shooters, and we are grateful for their R&D and sharing their knowledge.

Thanks JB and others who have devoted their lives to educating fellow sportsmen and women.

Good post, 65BR.

I've enjoyed this conversation and will use the FPF velocity reference in the future.

Was raised on a diet of Keith, O'Conner et al, seems like a million years ago and have been aware of the story for a long time. Never had cause to question it for any reason. In fact my own experience supports its veracity. When a person become intimately familiar with a particular firearm it is quite unwise to bet against them. I've pulled off a number of stunt shots in my day and have witnessed others do the same. I've won and lost bets over the years in both directions.

I started reading Keith about 74 & have to admit I had doubts. As my gun savvy progressed, Keith was beginning to become the norm. I think I can sort out the times then to the times now & understand the man & the others, plus, the technology available at the time. Happy that I truly enjoy both.

One thing to add, the buck in question was shot with a .300 H & H and 180 Rem. Core loke... The bullet did NOT bounce off, nor did it blow up.. It hit but did not open up.. Just a pencil hole though the animal.. As I remember the incident, Keith did not realize his shot killed the buck, until his son cut some chops from it a month after killing and brought the base cap from the Remington factory load and told Elmer where he found it.. Then he realize he had made the shot at this very long range..

WyoCoyoteHunter,

Apparently you didn't read my post of Elmer's account of what happened, which is the original post in this thread, which confirms what you recollect.

But that's OK. Most Campfire responses are to the header of the thread, because most members also don't read the original post. Or anything else. Apparently the point is to "vote" as quickly as possible.

gunzo,

Maybe a decade ago I decided to test a bunch of Keith's loads, as closely as I could reproduce them as possible in a variety of handguns and rifles--then published an article about the experiment. Basically, they all worked VERY well, which is one reason I tend to believe what he wrote.

But the other reason I tend to believe what he wrote is I've met a number of people who knew Keith, and said he did not BS. He had his biases, for sure, but we all do.

^^^This^^^

Yep

Hell, I was there! Is one of my favorite books for entertaining reading, you can flip to about anywhere in it and find a good story or two. He lived in a fascinating time and place that will probably never return.
As a side note I recently found another copy of the book in excellent shape at an estate sale, where all the books were $1. The deal was even better than I thought when I got home and opened it to find it was signed by the man himself. Not that I needed two copies but for a dollar I couldn’t pass it up.

TheKid, now that was a find! It's probably worth quite a bit in the gun book market.

Didn't Brian Pearce recreate this 600 yard handgun shot successfully?

I like it ...I voted, been voting the same way since I was a ten year old. Dang the new information. Elmer 'n Jack, your keeping it going.

75 years old now, been reading Keith since I was a kid. Back in the late fifties, early sixties dad, my brother and I used to try out some of the stuff we read about. We had access to an old quarry which had a road running straight down the middle for several hundred yards. We would use the old gallon antifreeze cans and thirty gallon grease drums as targets. I learned early that the hold "lean back against the tire and hold the hands between the knees" was a recipe for disaster on a good pair of Levis. As Keith said, you could learn to "walk the rounds" up on a target by watching for the dust to fly and holding up more and more front sight. We used several guns, including a 7 1/2" New Frontier in 45 Colt, a 5 1/2" SAA 357, and my favorite, a 7 1/2" SAA in 44 special. Hits were far fewer than misses but we learned a lot.
Fast forward to about 1980 and dad is gone but little brother and I got together annually either at his place or mine for a day long set of matches. Two targets each with a series of guns, starting with rimfires, then varmint caliber, deer, and bigbore (him 444, me 44-70) all at 100 yards and the first for group, second for score. At the end of the day, we'd each pull out the two handguns we enjoyed most, his being a six inch 66 and a three screw Super Blackhawk, , mine a stainless 1976 Blackhawk 357 and a newer Super.
We had just finished the last targets and were packing up when another shooter drove in to put up targets. We went down together and he remarked at ours having "really big holes, must be big bore rifles, right?" We told him handguns. He said b.s. We put up a new target each (50 yard slowfire pistol) and he put up his paper plate.
Back to the bench. Brother and I each shot five rounds of 44 (my load, 429421, 20 grains H2400, his 429215 gc and 22 grains of H2400). Other guy shot five with his 7 mag. I still have our targets, both with five shots under 5". Not outstanding but normal and quite jarring to the 7mm guy who missed the plate with one round.
At the end of the day, brother and I would get set up at the kitchen table with the targets, calipers, pencil, beers and a pile of quarters and measure, argue and laugh for hours. He is gone, my eyesight is almost, but the memories last. As does the knowledge that handguns can shoot waaaay better than the average person will believe.
I love showing targets from my Contender and my Tracker 17HMR down at the shop with close to MOA groups.
We used to shoot on Monday nights at Hebard's in Knoxville IL, for a while. Old Gil kndw what a handgun could do.

He did. He used an early 29 and vintage ammo.

Interesting thing about Elmer Keith is he was even in a movie. It was a commercial for some outdoor project and it showed some men rafting down a wild river, then later in a camp. The whole thing was maybe 30 seconds long but I'll bet money the little guy with the tall hat and sixgun was no other than Mr. Keith himself. It looks like the film was when he was doing river runs with captain Guleke.

I have made a few, very few longer range shot with the .44 Magnum but probably the two I remember best was one, we were hunting jackrabbits at night and spotted one about 100 yards out in the headlight. The rabbit wasn't spooked and the near eye was glowing like a diamond in bright sunlight. I used the window sill of the truck as a rest and joked with my buddy saying, I'm gonna put that bullet right in his eye. Damned if I didn't do exactly that. The other was while on an elk hunt up on the Olympic Pennnsula. One of the group was a retired judge who absolutely hated handgun in any way shape or form. He said nobody could hit anything past ten feet. WE were on a hill looking down at the Humptulips River and I said to the judge, "$100 says I can come really close to the limb of the tree that's in the water. The splash of the bullet hitting the water will tell how far off I might be." He said a handgun won't even shoot that far. Long story short, I clipped that branch on the first shot and the asked the judge, "You want to go double or nothing?" He declined but did pay me the $100 for the shot.
Paul B.

I have always been more struck by the fact that they set there and peppered the dang mule deer from 600 yards away and made the thing suffer when they weren't up to the shot. I'm certain Elmer could have made the shot with the rifle but Paul emptied the gun at the thing without putting it out of it's misery and even if Elmer got the "killing" shot at that range it didn't have the power to get it over with very quickly. The humane thing wasn't to sit there and take pot shots at it with his revolver. The humane thing would have been to do what my grandfather did when I lamed a white tail when I was 10 years old and it was streaking for the brush, he grabbed the rifle from me and finished it before it got away. People wonder why some are so opposed to hunting---this story right here is exhibit A. While I typically enjoy Elmer's writing, I have never enjoyed this particular story. Of course I typically have not been a fan of Elmer's fondness for raking shots either, but he did grow up with a completely different reason for hunting.