Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns 454 Casull vs bigger calibers question

I think the obvious solution is to trade the Casull for a 460 Smith and go 200 FTX's or 240 XTP's. More speed should fix the issues.....

I am talking about the head not the base.

In the revolvers and especially high pressure calibers Hawk is correct. 3 Year ago a friend shot a deer with a 7 Rem Mag and a NP bullet the bullet entered the left side of the neck and exited the right shoulder breaking it. The deer ran and was not recovered that day. the next day 3 of us went to look for the wounded deer. We found the deer still alive and Chuck finished him. The bullet miraculously hit nothing vital. Hard to believe but true. Shot placement looked good from the entrance and exit, but was not. Not much can be learn about bullet performance unless the wound channel can be observed IME

+1. obviously, velocity is king. 45 colt bullets just bounce off game. You can only cleanly kill game with 3000+ fps projectiles. Its amazing that all the deer I shot with my old 30-30 would fall right there. The 300's I've used didnt kill them any better even though they had 1000+ fps more. I wonder how all you handgun hunters have been killing game with those crazy hadrcast loads. Must be pure luck!

DAMN! I must have had a 45 year long lucky steak!
If I had not read thru this thread, Id never have known......
who knew all those hard cast 44 caliber 270-300 grain,slugs, that were only traveling about 1400fps were just freak accidents, that were supposed to bounce off, rather than punch a hole in one side and go whistling out the other leaving a big old hole, in a very dead deer or hog or elk!!
I guess Ive just been extremely lucky, I should buy a lotto ticket!

gunchamp, 340mag, exactly +1.....

I'm talking about the whole bullet, because a bullet designed to go splat easier is designed to do so at a lower velocity.

Barnes XPB, Nosler Partition and Swift A-Frames are about the only exceptions, yet even some of them have an expansion windows.
I know the Partition isn't the best at the low end...

Those 'are' pretty hot loads for a .44 magnum. Not disputing anything you said, but a 300 at 1400 is pretty stout.

The topic of hand gun projectiles is very much like the 45/70 for dangerous game topic.

There is an almost religious cult trance state for many people. In reading and participating in this thread now I cannot find any reference to condescending posts, no ridicule, no sarcasm nothing like its "my way or the highway "from a single person that is here simply sharing or asking.

Except for posts that are connected in some way to the hardcast bullets which are the answer to all the projectile problems of the world.

I find it a shame that on an open forum where conversations and civil opinions should be shared that so many visitors are put off by this. They don't get involved because they feel uncomfortable about the next guy ripping them with sarcasm and actually just plain rude disrespectful comments.

Lets face it the revolvers 44 mag and bigger will kill a white tail with anything that will fit thru the barrel. I promise you my 44 mag will kill a deer with a .429 piece of wood.

Think about how many of the people who enjoy this place are meant to feel with the condescending posts. I don't really give a rip what people shoot. I'm visiting to share what I have seen personally. Clearly others with various levels of experience have seen this the same, or even completely the opposite. There is no monopoly on what works. It's only a discussion on the options.

I did orchard control in Ohio with unlimited tags. Yes, I killed a lot of deer with everything that can be shot.
Yes, I would take the 800 fps WFN over the faster boolit.
The velocity issue with the WLN and WFN has been recent once I bought revolvers that shot them too fast. I found problems right away because I thought faster was better, my mistake.
When I moved where rifles can be used, I seen more lost deer in the woods and some use rifles way too powerful for deer. The 30-30 is ideal here. 7mm mags and .300 mags lose a lot of deer shot too close. Had a friend that only used the Nosler Ballistic Tip. Half the deer was scrap.
I killed tons of deer with .45 flntlocks, .50 and .54 muzzle loaders and they kill best as does the .44 mag at around 1300 to 1350 fps with a heavy boolit.
The .45 Colt is amazing. It has never failed me.
What you fail to see that it is not the velocity, it is the bullet/boolit choice and the distance you hunt at. With cast you change the alloy and with bullets you use the right one.
But you misquote me too. I never lost a deer shot with the hollow point or light XTP. I seen them go down without any blood trail. I would have lost them in thick brush. Bullets did not exit. I lost deer with a WFN too fast, never when slowed down.
It is 100% wrong to think a bullet that does not exit kills best.
The other side of the coin is to blow a deer to mush and lose all the meat. Just why would you do that?
Here is what a revolver can do.

Yeah, no sarcasm.

I tried to explain what I have had good results with; not that my answers are stone and the next guys is crap.

When greeted with the response of basically "WTF" by a fellow who has basically left several deer to rot, who is asking questions, pardon me if the "correct" answer is he needs more speed and the gun he obviously isn't shooting well kicks even more.

I don't start my posts with how many bears I've shot at close range, so I'm just a guesser.

I don't think the gent is having trouble with the bullets he's currently using, I think he needs to tone it down and shoot more....maybe now I can achieve sainthood.

I lost the photobucket picture again. This site keeps loading forever too. The circle is still spinning.
Nothing is working.

I should have been a bit clearer in that post I use a 10" barrel revolver, so I get a bit better velocity, and 1400 fps is usually the 270 grain bullets but 1300fps is easy with the 300 grain, and if you seat the bullets uot to just short of the cylinder its possible in a 10" barrel 44 mag revolver with cast bullets, without a problem, I can,t remember ever having a slug not exit deer shot thru the chest from my 44 mag revolver, and only remember one huge hog that I shot in the chest that didn,t exit

http://www.handloads.com/loaddata/default.asp?Caliber=44%20Magnum&Weight=All&type=Handgun

Spot on again.......

I have killed and continue to kill game very effectively and cleanly with hard cast bullets to the point that I prefer them over jacketed. The meplat and nose is critical to performance IMHO and E

Well, this has been interesting so far. There seem to be some who have had great success with the slow and heavy and lots of penetration school of thought, and others equally successful with the practice of fast and explosive, no need for two holes.
Funny part is, I have had success with both methods with a variety of firearms.
Sad part is, it becomes less an exchange of good information and experience, and more a head-butting contest.

My primary species is elk. Where I live they come into the yard in winter, and I can drive less than an hour from my house and be in elk country in the middle of the summer.
As JJHack said "I promise you my 44 mag will kill a deer with a .429 piece of wood." With dense wood and close archery type of range, I don't doubt he is correct.
I don't care about deer. I would feel comfortable shooting the does that are standing in my driveway right now, with my .45 acp. I am talking BIG game, and started this thread out of curiosity about relative recoil in other big guns.
I think we would all agree that ya gotta hit 'em first... and as the story of the 7 mag neck shot illustrates, we have to hit them where it counts.
So far the .44 mag with 325 gr hardcast bullets is the biggest handgun I have been able to shoot well. My single experience with a 500+ lb black bear seemed to confirm the type of performance I expected; massive, end-to-end penetration resulting in a long and deadly wound channel. It worked very well. I suspect had I been using the 454 with a 260 gr hollow point at high speed, the end result would have been the same for the bear. I'm just not sure if I will be able to shoot the 454 at those high speeds to produce those explosive results, as well as I can shoot a heavier, slower bullet. More shooting will be required to see.
I am currently shooting 30 gr. H110 with 260 gr. hardcast, and recoil seems to be getting close to what I recall it being with the .44 load I mentioned.
According to the manual, I'm still 6 gr. short of a max load!
As someone else said, the .44 seems to be about the ideal combination of enough power for anything I'm going to shoot, and manageable recoil. Starting loads for the Casull, with the 335 gr. hard cast, are identical to the max loads in the .44 mag with 325 gr hard cast. This is a load I have complete confidence in for elk.

Yep.

The discussion about bullet construction for deer hunting often is an exercise in trivia. With adequate ballistics and good shot placement, it's much harder not to kill a deer than it is to kill one.

+1

+2......

bought one of these in 460SW on sunday