Deer season prep
Last year the Marlin had some issue feeding regular 44 magnum (it feeds leverevolution just fine) and since I intend to do some handloads this season I wanted to make sure I had the problem resolved.
Turns out the cartridge stop on the cartriodge lifter was about .080 too short. I drilled and pinned it, and stoned the pin off to length so that only one cart came out of the magazine at a time. Works fine now, so I can juice up some nice loads- though the 44 mag is useless past 100 yards anyway.
22 comments Og | Uncategorized
Useless? I’m not even pulling up a ballistics program, but it seems to me that a .429 round uncorking the muzzle at around +/- 1,450 for a heavy 275 gr, or +1,600 fps for a 240 gr. round, or even +1,800 fps for a 185 gr. screamer, surely ought to give a good 150 or even 175 yd. worth of terminal energy?
So, is it a lack of accuracy at range, or too radical a trajectory or just good, ethical (if a bit conservative) hunting values?
When I had my Ruger .44mag Deerslayer, I only got one doe with it, (only owned it one season), but she was dead on her feet with one 240 gr. IMI factory JHP to the aorta. Range was about 140 yds or so, 3x Weaver (old ElPaso, fine plex) scope, fired over a rolled up hat over a tree branch.
Didn’t have a doubt of the carbine’s accuracy at that range, and the effects were no different than a .30-30’s.
I’m not challenging your range limitation, just curious about it, in that I try to also lean to the side of ethics in hunting. Maybe there’s something I need to learn here.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
What Jim said. You only need about 500 #/ft energy on a deer to kill it, and Buffalo Bore “Deer Grenade” soft-cast 240’s have 1068 #/ft at 200 yds, with less than 11″ drop.
http://www.buffalobore.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=232
Wash your mouth out with soap!
I’m suddenly reminded of the story of when Elmer Keith hit a buck at 600 yards using a .44 Mag revolver.
Not that I’m gonna try that anytime soon. Hell, to get a 600 yard shot, I’d have to drive halfway to El Paso…
Well if any of you snipers can hit anything 150 yards out with a 30 year old carbine offhand, i bow to your skills. Me, i want to put meat in the freezer, so i’ll stick to what i know i can hit.
I’m with Og on this one. That is why I stick to the meat dept at Costco.
Well, Og, it’s that you said “the 44 mag is useless past 100 yards anyway”, which implied to us that you meant the round, not that your carbine was kinda worn and couldn’t hit minute-of-deer past 100 yards.
If it’s the latter, I’m sure everyone would reject their caveats as irrelevant.
It’s just that it sounded like you meant “.44 isn’t powerful enough to kill a deer humanely past 100 yards” or something to that effect…
“It’s just that it sounded like you meant “.44 isn’t powerful enough to kill a deer humanely past 100 yards†”
Find me someone who can do that. No, really. offhand. With a 30 year old carbine. At that distance, you really need a perfect shot to drop a deer so it’s DRT. I don’t take chances like that while I’m hunting, and I don’t hunt with people who do.
The 44 mag may be able to kill a deer at 100 or even 200 yards, from an impact standpoint, but it’s not going to be a clean kill unless it’s an absolutely perfect shot, and you aren’t going to get MOA accuraccy, which you would certainly NEED, to do that, from a 44. Maybe if it was a micro-groove 32″ octagon heavy barrel, but not from a 20″ lightweight barrel on a levergun. I wouldn’t take anything out to more than 75 yards, with the 44, and if I wanted to shoot anything further away you can bet your ass it’s gonna be a rifle suited to shooting that distance, and a pistol caliber carbine is just not.
At 600 yards you’d need a bipod and vertical elevation adjustment screw to fire a .44 mag like a mortar.
Just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea….
“Just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea….”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Possible has create more misery than anything else.
I use BP myself and have got DRT out to 140 or so with the gun. Course I use sticks, which helps some.
I would not hesitate with the 308 out to 400 yards, but the drop on that is well withing the kill zone on a bambi.
Course I start out with bow, and anything over twenty is a crap shoot with one of those.
A 308 with something like Nosler Partitions is a great choice.
I can shoot out to about 150 with BP but I prefer shots within 50.
I’m not afraid to shoot the bow at 20-30, but I got a hot bow.
And I didn’t see anythng Og, in your original post in reference to shooting offhand, yet, I clearly referenced shooting from a proper, field-expedient rest in my comment.
Seldom….hell, never have I disagreed with you regarding a post, but this time, you left the barn door open in not speaking to any position, support, or the lack thereof. T’wasn’t a factual error on your part, but certainly an oversight in your normal, drum-tight rhetoric.
It is when you came to argue about who can shoot it offhand, after clearly not mentioning either the offhand shot, or even my reference to shooting a supported scoped carbine in my comment.
Had those points been included in your original post, I’d have agreed with you. Having shot the doe over a rest with a scoped carbine, I support my original comment.
My conclusion is that you’re still twenty times the writer I am, and if this is your worst mistake of all time, I’ll still be one of your most ardent fans, reading Neanderpundit on a daily basis.
Oh, and that the .44 mag is a fine 150~200 yd. carbine round.
When shot over a good rest with a scoped rifle or carbine.
Cheers!
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Sigh.
Reading comprehension fail, fail, fail, fail, fail.
Please re read the original post, and see if you can discern the point of the original post. Yes, that’s it, it’s about improving the function of the firearm, and making it more suitable for my purposes.
Had I titled the post “Best cartridge for north American cervids” or “The 44 magnum is worthless in every situiation past 100 yards” then it just might have been reasonable to expect the kind of discussion that arrived here.
Instead, not one person has addressed or even discussed the original point of the post, instead wandering off on a tangent about a single, throwaway sentence at the end. I didn’t make a point of sayiong anything about shooting offhand, because, oddly enough, that was NOT THE FUCKING POINT OF THE POST.
Let’s see: Did I say it was impossible to shoot past 100 yards? No. I said it was worthless, and worthless it remains. Specifically because there are hundreds of rounds that are far, far far far far better at taking down a deer at that distance than a straight walled large caliber pistol cartridge. I have no choice but to hunt with the 44 because it is the only firearm I have which is deer legal in indiana. If I went out to hunt deer at long distances, and I had a tack driving 30-06 custom boltie, a solid 7.62 x 39 boltie, a 270 win boltie, a 30-30 with a long, heavy barrel, a 7.5 swiss that just loves the X ring, it would be the most irresponsible thing on earth to go afield with a light barreled 44 magnum, a rifle so badly suited to long range that one should make the case that a properly constructed muzzleloader could easily outshoot it.
The drop of a 44 mag at 200 yards is 18″ At 250 yards it’s over a yard. Compare that to, say, a 7.5 swiss which has a holdover of less than 9″ at 300 yards.
Now, how far away is that deer? Do you have an accurate enough rangefinder? is it 175 or 210 yards? Think quickly, man, it makes ten inches of difference! You gonna pull the gloves off and take off the scope caps and click in that many clicks? or are you going to guesstimate how much holdover you should have? How about windage? In 200 yards the wind can change direction three times! That fat slow slug is gonna be blown all over the place, and to make a deer DRT, you have a pretty small window to hit. Does your scope even have that much adjustment? you almost have to have a Shotgun Slug gun scope to have that kind of windage and elevation adjustment at those ranges.
A deer 200 yards away can be half a mile away, wounded and dying, before you walk the distance from where you are to where the deer was shot. How good are you at tracking?
I have no choice but to use this to hunt where I hunt, it’s not my first choice of rifles, but it works fine, in reasonable ranges. It is worthless beyond those ranges for the reasons described above, and anyone who works outside those parameters is either a far better shot than I’ll ever be, or is hunting irresponsibly, IMO.
If anyone wants to crawl up my ass and pitch camp and bitch at me about my opinions on firearms and what to use them for, I’d appreciate it if you a: bring your A game, and b: do so in a post about which that is the point, This one was not.
Og, what you stress was the point of the post was interesting, technically informative and engaging in it’s own right.
However, your “throwaway line at the end”, as a summary, dragged your preceding points down the hole along with itself.
Throwaway or not, it was a bold, clear, absolute and definitive statement, without condition as to game law, caliber or firearm type limitations.
In my initial reply and question to you, I provided my variables, and you did not do so until your follow-on comments.
Were we supposed to divine your original intent from your initial post and it’s gravity-well of a throwaway line?
I don’t see a reading comprehension fail. I see a throwaway line being unreasonably defended with after the fact conditions and variables. None of which I actually disagree with on their own merits.
Fact is, given your expansions, I agree with you, which is why I sold my Ruger Deerslayer carbine. It was fun, but it wasn’t sufficiently versatile. Beyond 200 yards, that is.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Regardless of intent, the words in the original post clearly left the impression that the straight-case round was inferior for hunting Bambi.
Except it isn’t. I have a good friend who used a .45 Colt carbine to win a SASS long-range competition in MT a few years back, and to do it, he had to shoot better than 3 MOA at 225 yds. That sort of accuracy is fine for killing Bambi, BTW, or for killing anything else you would off with a carbine.
You take offense too easily, my friend. In blogging, sometimes things don’t come out quite right, and when they don’t, we take our lumps. If you think blogging is tough here, try video blogging on You Tube sometime…
You’ll still wake up tomorrow, Og.
“Except it isn’t. I have a good friend who used a .45 Colt carbine to win a SASS long-range competition in MT a few years back”
Yep, and it’s just simply amazing that he did it in an aging Marlin 336 with a thin barrel. No, wait, that doesn’t exist! In fact, MOST SASS shooters use nice, heavy barrelled rifles. But it’s ok, since you guys can “infer” all kinds of bullshit that I didn’t say based on one sentence that I did, I can infer anything I want from what you said, right?
Long distance shots with large slow bullets are the exception, and not the rule, of course, as is my still true point. SASS shooters use old unsuitable cartridges because more modern ones weren’t available.
I don’t take offense. I am irritated by pedantism when the pedantism is based on the voices in your head, and not what I actually said, which is provably and demonstrably true.
“Were we supposed to divine your original intent from your initial post and it’s gravity-well of a throwaway line?”
Well, asking or even trying would have been preferable to jumping to every other irritatingly wrong conclusion that existed, yes.
Listen, folks: The statement is true, like it or not. The ability for anyone using the very best rifle in existence to make a safe humane kill shot at 200 yards with any 44 mag rifle is minimal, let alone with the aging Marlin I shoot. To say otherwise is foolisness, pure and simple; long distance shots with pistol cartridges are the stuff of legend because they are rare, not because they are not.
Your argument is not with me, but with your own preconceptions, and I cannot be responsible for what you think, only what I say, and if you read, what I say and what I’ve said since then is true. As is evidenced by the fact that people are avoiding the 44 mag in droves, when it comes to long distance shooting.
“But Og! I saw a guy once use a trebuchet to fling a 6 lb rock and hit a 3″ circle drawn on a castle wall!!” That’s as may be. Will always be the exception to the rule, end of question. Godalmighty, folks.
It almost smacks of deconstruction…
Ok, not really, but I was thinking of making a joke comment that the whole post was obviously just a metaphor for man’s futile striving to strike a target forever out of his reach with the meager tool society provides when I remembered how glad I am that Derrida is a maggot riddled corpse now.
grau:
Next time I see you, remind me to buy you a beer. And then pour it down your pants.
When is that gonna be, BTW? it has been FAR too long!!
Glad you got the .44 working.
Some time ask me about the shot my brother took on a doe with a .357 Smith and Wesson revolver.
44mag offhand shot ? As with ALL my rifles , I can take offhand long range shots and accomplish what I want .I can and have taken 200 yrs shots n dropped what I was huntin’ . I know my rifle and with which load where to aim . None have gone more than 30-40yrds after hit , always just behind shoulder . These are standing shots w/iron sights . . . . I kniw my gun and have the confidence in myself and my rifle that I know so well . . .mine in 44mag is Rossi M-92 Brass/oct. 24″ brl and the R-92 20″ rnd brl . . Both very accurate n a blast to shoot . .don’t leave home without it .
So youre bad at math too?