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

Do I believe Elmer Keith shot that deer at 600 yards with a 44 Magnum S&W handgun?
Absolutely!
Do I believe Elmer Keith would embellish a story?
AbsoFreakingLutely!
Great story tellers are great embellishers. Elmer Keith was a great story teller. Yeah, I beleve he did about everything he said he did. And I believe the man was bound by an inner force to be as truthful as he could be. He was a moral person. But he was also human and I believe he could put a slant on things (embelish) in a story to make it more entertaining. That’s what story tellers do. Now that .60” Hole through that deer may have actually been only .50 or .45, but in the moment it stuck in his brain as .60. Yeah the whole thing sounds like a stretch or at least parts of it, but it could have been a freak too. Sheit happens.
If all writers wrote things exactly as they happened they'd be pretty dull and they probably wouldn’t be in the business very long.
Sorry if this might have popped a few bubbles but that's life.

Entertaining read..and proves again if most all here can`t do it, and have never done it, it can`t be done. And I`m just talking about shooting with a hand gun that far. Anyone? Amazing..

The doubters are ignorant, a few years back Pierce recreated the the 600 years shot on a target deer using a M-29 a d ammo like Elmer used and hit the feet target multiple times. Definatel doable

Good to read that story again. I was fortunate to talk to Keith on the phone a few times. Never met him though.

It sounds to me like you don't understand the full picture when we're talking about ballistics and penetration. Energy doesn't mean much in this situation; a non-expanding bullet actually requires very little energy to penetrate deeply. The key detail here is that at extended ranges and/or low velocity, bullets generally expand less or not at all, and can penetrate farther although they don't do as much peripheral damage. DD's 22 Short kills are a good example of a low velocity bullet that penetrates well specifically because it's not going fast enough to deform very much. Push that same bullet at 1500 fps instead, and you'll get much less penetration.

FPE is a very poor predictor of penetration. It's a measure of the bullet's potential to do work, but tells nothing about how the bullet will do that work, and is often misused by shooters as you are doing. This forum and many others have endless debates about FPE, with some saying it's arbitrary and meaningless, and others claiming you need xx amount to kill an animal; both sides are full of people who don't understand what FPE is or how it relates to bullets and terminal ballistics. Understanding what a particular bullet will do on target gives a much better idea of what we can expect for penetration, and a very low velocity (at 600 yards) .44 slug is extremely likely to not expand at all, and penetrate deeply. I have no doubt that the shot described could penetrate broadside through a deer.

However, some of your points are valid in that some things just get embellished, and I choose to take them with a grain of salt. I don't doubt that a shot like that can be made or was, but some of the specific details may not be exactly right. I wouldn't be surprised if the claimed 600 yards was something less, and that .60 caliber hole may have been a lot closer to meplat diameter or less through most of the deer. However I do believe the general points in the story could and did happen.

...really....before you posted this did you bother to run the numbers on a ballistic calculator.....do so and you may find that when using a .44 Magnum with a BC of .20 at 1400 fps with a 240 grain bullet the velocity at 600 yards is 817 fps with 356 foot pounds of energy....basically like getting shot with a .44 Special at 25 yards...do you not think that a .44 Special with a hadcast bullet won't sail right through a deer at 25 yards.

EK...got to meet the man one time. In May 1977 he was the guest of honor at at big gig in Dallas that I got to go to. When my wife and I got there the place was full and here was this little old guy wandering around by himself with everyone so in awe of him no one was talking to him... My wife and I approached him and had him for 20 minutes all by ourselves and the crowd slowly gathered around...he then was called to do his presentation... He impressed me as being a very humble person.

Some people believe he "embellished" his stories...I don't think he knew how. He simply told the story of what happened and what he wrote was so over the top to many people who have no clue what is possible, that its sounds like embellishment...

Have read most of what Keith wrote. I have two books that he signed that night, one of which now resides back in Idaho with Mackay Sagebrush. If you read everything one will understand Keith was NOT a handgun hunter, especially big game. Rifles were where it was at for him. Every story I can remember reading about him killing something with a handgun is because it was always with him and he was a NOT hunting at the time. Even shooting the caribou with the first pair of .41 Magnum Model 57s...he was just killing some meat for the locals. Rifle was buried in the plane or strapped to the skids if it was even with them.

Long range shooting...have been doing it since the 1970s but the trip out to shoot with Mackay and Idaho Shooter in 2014 allowed me to shoot out to 780 yards and if I can hit a 3x3' target at that distance then Elmer could do it at 600 as he had FAR more practice than I... The day before that presentation in Dallas, he had been out at the Luna Road Rifle Range demonstrating I believe it was the new Seville single action revolvers...by rolling empty gallon paint cans at 200 yards...in front of lots of witnesses.

He was no god nor would he have ever been wanted to be thought of as one. He often wondered why others had a hard time doing what he did with a gun...

Bob

why are we still dredging something up that happened 50 years ago and calling a dead man a liar ? I read most all his articles he wrote in the gun rags at that time.. he shot hundreds of 44 mag hand loads at 55 gal barrels at 600 and 1000 yards. so if anyone would of killed anything with a 44 mag it would of been him. and he did kill a lot of things with the 44 mag.. so I don't doubt it .. ease up guys..

Entertaining read and comments. I am not a great pistol shot but it was pretty easy to walk in shots on rocks at 300 yards. At twice the distance not so easy but doable. My hits at 600 were about one per cylinder. Keith shot long range from around the age of 12 years old. At Frankfort Arsenal he pretty much shot everyday and no telling how many rounds. I don't doubt him at all.

I was not going to comment on Bob's trip out west, until he broke the issue.

Yes, I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Bob in an area where we could safely shoot out as far as we wished. I would pick out the badger mound and tell Bob the range, and he would shoot it with one of his several 4 inch 41 magnum revolvers.

I had my Ruger hunter and a Smith 657 6 inch. And with a bit of coaching from Bob, I was soon making hits beyond 400 yds.

Perhaps not on the first shot but conditions were dry and dusty, and it was easy to correct hold and sight picture to make hits with the second or third shot.

I will just leave this out there. I saw enough that day to know that I would not want Bob shooting at me from 600, 700, or even 800 yds with any of his revolvers. If Bob says EK was a better shot, I will take his word for that.

Not wanting to kick a sleeping horse but about 50 years ago I shot a cement truck with a 1911 at 300 meters. One shot, one plink, one case of beer. Might have related that already, I forget.

On the other hand, long time back I was the owner of a 3 screw RSB that shot well enough for the occasional stunt shot. I was standing in my size 12's when this was done.


Only point I'd like to make is that it could be a fatal mistake to flip off a pistol shooter just 'cause you think you're far enough away.

Well said Dan! I like the way you roll buddy!

Great shooting.

Here is something for you to read.



Elmer Keith Says
Guns Magazine February 1960
Long-range Deer
The story of how Elmer Keith killed a deer at 600 yards with a revolver has been told, re-told, miss-told, and called the tallest hunter’s lie on record, many times. Not long ago, Keith told the story again in one of the articles we published, but we had to delete it because of space limitations. Here it is for the record:
Paul Kriley had broken the right front leg of an old mule buck that we wanted badly for meat. He shot at over 500 yards with his scope sighted .300 Magnum. The deer got up and ran nearly straight away from usthrough six inches of wet snow and mud. Paul could not connect again, so I entered the picture with the .44 Magnum, shooting prone. The gun was sighted for 100 yards with Remington factory loads, and I had been shooting it a lot at over 500 yards in company with Judge Don Martin. So I held up the same amount of sight I had used in practice, perched the running deer on top of the center of the front sight, and fired. Nothing happened. I then held up nearly all of the front sight, and shot again. Paul said, “I saw that one through the scope, Elmer – “right at his heels!” So I held all of the front sight up over the rear blade and squeezed off my third shot. The buck stopped, almost turned a back somersault, and came back toward us, shaking his head. Paul said, “I saw that one hit just over his head,” and I remarked that I must have hit a horn.
I told Paul to let him come, as long as he was headed our way: but Paul shot at him again at about 500 yards, and again he turned directly away from us and ran. I waited while Paul squeezed off another shot from his rifle, only to hear the striker snap on an empty chamber.

As Paul reloaded, I again held up all of the front sight and, with the deer on top of its center, I started the squeeze. The buck turned up the mountain, following the tracks of others in the band. He was now beyond where I had hit him when I turned him back. I swung the sight picture in front of him, and fired. He went down after an interval, but we did not here the slug strike and I thought he had merely stumbled from his broken leg. But he was out of sight now, and Paul legged it around the mountain, headed him off, and killed him with his second shot at 350 yards.

When we examined him, we found that my third shot had hit the right jaw, broken it, and come out through the roof of the mouth. That was the slup Paul saw throw up mud and snow over his head. My 4th shot had cut squarely through the center of both lungs, cutting off a rib on both sides and leaving a 50 caliber hole through the deer. He was barely hobbling when Paul killed him, would have gone down for keeps within 50 yards.
That was my best long range sixgun shooting in a lifetime of playing with sixguns. Of course, it was an accident, for the deer was over 600 yards away: but one has such accidents if he shoots enough with a fine gun and fine loads.

I have never understood how the achievements of someone else makes so many doubt the size of their manhood.
of course EK hit that deer! many that call LIAR! wouldn't say a thing if it had been a sheet of plywood and he put a cylinder full in the center of it.
my father In law was a contemporary of Elmer Keith and I have seen my fil do some things that a mere mortal would think impossible . like put tape across the hole in a washer and hit it 100 times out of 100 when thrown as high as I could sail it. and I had a arm in the 60's

With what?

For those who think the shot Elmer made was something watch this - 1000 yards with a handgun.


With a 44 mag revolver - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFoxfjORvh8

With a 9mm revolver - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ3XwizTqDw

drover

Don't know if this has been mentioned, but Brian Pearce's reconstruction of this shot was in Handloader #262, October of 2009.

That's pretty danged cool!