.54 PRB or .50 Maxi-Hunter for Deer?

[Stumpkiller]

placing your self in an area where you know you will have a short shot is fine but once you get out in the open land of colorado and have millions of acres of public land, that just aint going to happen. They make it look easy on tv but when you step in to it your self, its an whole new world.

I remember the very first elk hunt i went on we spotted the elk running down in a valley and i had to run over a 1/4 mile through a foot of fresh snow and then up the side of a mountain to get a shot. No telling where game will be unless you have a friend or live in that certain area your self.

Game,Set,Match

Does make you wonder how anybody kept their belly full before scopes and conicals, don't it? :wink: How did the natives even know elk was edible? Waited for one to die of natural causes? :haha:

 

[roundball]

Game, set, match ???????????

:shake:

 

[slowpokebr549]

Im with Roundball here, those look like they hit a bank vault at fifty yards instead of a deer at 175. I have used Maxi's in my .54 and had good results with em but I would have had to search the next county to find them, they always shot clean through. That was back when I believed what I read in hunting magazines.When I switched to roundballs in my .54 I found out that it was a killer indeed.I guess if I HAD to shoot at deer 175 yards away, I would pick the maxi in a fifty, but then again I would of taken my .58 with a roundball over both of them.

 

[tg]

"That sounds completely believeable...but I'm from the "show me" state of Missouri on that kind of expansion at 175yds after being driven by a mere 100grns pyrodex...but maybe it's just my inexperience with muzzleloaders "

Maybe the Deer were running backwards and the added momentum increased the energy transfer?

I am pretty lacking in knowledge about hunting with MLs alsoso this is just a guess..


"Game, set, match ???????????'

There will always be those who will not/cannot embrace the concept of using the ball and getting close,but if you cannot get within 100 yds you may have chosen the wrong game, which is fine, as long as they do not try and suggest that one NEEDS the modern bullets at typical open sighted ML ranges. This is one of the things that need be addressed in a newcommer section should it become a reality, sending someone of on the wrong foot must be avoided.

"BTW. I also have found deer I tracked that had stuff mud and moss into the wounds they could reach to stop the bleeding"

Common, I really want to here more about deer giving self first aid...

 

[roundball]

I am always amazed at some of the things that get posted here...and I'm one who pretty much never says never...but I can't figure this one out. Maybe it was a case of actually only being 40 yards away from the deer...sitting on the side of one hill top shooting straight across to an adjacant hill top...and when pacing from where the shot was taken, down one hill to the valley, across the valley, then back up the other hill side to where the deer was, turned out to be 175 yards...dunno. :shocked2:

 

[tg]

Or it could have been that the wind was blowing from the north and the sun coming over the hills in the east, and if you put three toads, a lock of dog hair and an Owl feather in a stump full of standing water, on the eve of the last quarter moon......

 

[PreglerD]

Hello from Germany,

here the most Ml available are .45 cal. To get a bigger cal. like the common .50 or .54 we have to order in the USA, what I do in most cases. But the other german hunters who use ML take mostly .45 and then use maxiballs in it with great success. even wild boars were harvested with the 240 grs maxis and a stout load bp. I think the smaller the call the better a conical to use. One of my friends got a roe fawn with his Pedersoli scout carbine and a 240 maxi yesterday. The piece went 25 m and was dead.

Regards

Kirrmeister

 

[Idaho Ron]

While I said I would not reply again I believe that some of you are saying I lied about how far away those bullets were shot. This is the buck that was shot by those bullets, and as you can see I had witness and my son was the one telling me the yardage since he had the range finder. The fact that those bullets hit their mark proved to him and I that the distance was correct. This buck was shot on top of the canyon we were in. After the shot the buck went down into the canyon to escape. That is were I got the chance at the long range shots. The area on top of the canyon looks like the second picture below.

I can tell you that I am NOT lying about the shots or the bullets. What do I have to gain by not telling the truth? Those bullets were NOT shot into a dirt bank at 50 yards what would be the point of that? The fact is that load out of a 28 inch barrel is right at 1500 Feet per second. That load has 2048 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle. At 150 yards it is still moving out at 1179 feet per second AND it still has 1265 foot pounds of energy. Those of you with ballistic software can run the numbers. 410 gr bullet, .205 BC, speed 1500 FPS.
I have shot this load enough to prove at least to my self and MANY others that these figures of velocity are correct. The foot pounds of energy are a calculation that has been used for many years, and I hold them to be correct as do many other shooters. I have shot enough deer with this load to say that the only way a guy is going to find a bullet is if the deer is shot length wise which I did, and I have posted those pictures.

Here in Idaho we don’t always have the benefit of having a bunch of cover to be able to get close to deer. In this picture while it does not look like it since I blew up the photo, this deer is still over 100 yards away but there would have been no chance to get closer. So do you shoot?

Many of you have never hunted desert mule deer bucks. Many of you don’t understand mule deer hunting. They don’t have home areas like whitetails. If you blow a chance at a buck you most likely won’t get another chance ever. With the terrain and many other factors a guy sometimes has to shoot farther than 75 or 100 yards. In fact if a guy wants to come out west to hunt mule deer in the desert on heavily hunted public land, you had better be able to shoot 150 yards, and hope to be able to get closer. Also you have to remember that the buck in the picture is going to weigh over 250 pounds or more, and this is not a huge buck. This buck is larger than most whitetails especially doe's. To kill big bucks a hunter needs powerful loads and good shot placement, and that is just my opinion.

Now you guys can believe me or not I don’t care. You believe a guy that claims a deer administered first aid to it’s self, but you don’t believe a Hornady bullet will open up at 175 yards, fine.
I could let my son come on here for a witness but I doubt you would believe him either. The fact is I have provided factual information about the expansion of a 410 gr Hornady conical on this deer. This is the truth so help me God, and by saying that I don't take that lightly, it is the truth.
Ron

 

[slowpokebr549]

Actually I thought the moss in the wound thing was a joke....I am just shocked that those conicals expanded that much at that range. Having hunted in Idaho as a youth I am not suprised at the range you were shooting,just the expansion. One of the reasons that I went to a .58 is the range at which my hunting occurs. One of our farms presents a 100 yard shot all the time. My fifty at that range is really pretty piddly ballistically, UNLESS I use a conical. They beat the hell out of me in my light weight fifty and it doesnt group em well. My fifty four has a short barrel and it drops both balls and conicals like a rock at long range. I have a zouave in .58 now that bucks the wind and loaded with 80 grains will put a round ball about 2 inches low at 100 with a 50 yard sight in.It works for my usual fifty to seventy five yard shots and gives me confidence at longer ranges. I really do believe that a roundball is a better killer, you just have to move up in bore size as range and game size increases.

 

[tg]

I was not doubting the fact that the deer was hit just the taking of a shot at that range, I know some folks who hunt in the high desert and get 100yds and less shots all the time, they do pass on a lot of deer but so do I if the deer are 70 yds away, it just seems like a strange journy to take a gun of a style from the 1850's that was made for sub 100 ydd shooting and have to modernize the sights and bullets to make it shoot like a 45/70 or 50 /110 and call it traditional ML hunting, it is taking a traditional sidelock and converting it into a modern ML, Ifdaho as a state says this is cool, so there are no leagal issues, but as I look at this whole picture(nothing about you personaly) it seems like using a ML is really not what this hunting season is all about, something is missing big time, and let's not go back in time to try and find the many small indirect connections that are so often used to try and make the sidelock gun with modern sights, modern bullets that shoots out to CF ranges the "same" as a sidelock with iron sights and PRB or a period bullet.

". You believe a guy that claims a deer administered first aid to it’s self,'

Actually I believed that about as much as I believ anything that particular individsual posts.... :snore:

 

[Kentuckywindage]

Seeing how a lot of production styled traditional rifles are considered to be late 1850s early 1860's a conical should not be out of place for those rifles.


Okay, lets hear the story.....

 

[BrownBear]

At 150 yards it is still moving out at 1179 feet per second AND it still has 1265 foot pounds of energy. Those of you with ballistic software can run the numbers. 410 gr bullet, .205 BC, speed 1500 FPS.

Here in Idaho we don’t always have the benefit of having a bunch of cover to be able to get close to deer. In this picture while it does not look like it since I blew up the photo, this deer is still over 100 yards away but there would have been no chance to get closer. So do you shoot?

Many of you have never hunted desert mule deer bucks. Many of you don’t understand mule deer hunting. They don’t have home areas like whitetails. If you blow a chance at a buck you most likely won’t get another chance ever. With the terrain and many other factors a guy sometimes has to shoot farther than 75 or 100 yards. In fact if a guy wants to come out west to hunt mule deer in the desert on heavily hunted public land, you had better be able to shoot 150 yards, and hope to be able to get closer. Also you have to remember that the buck in the picture is going to weigh over 250 pounds or more, and this is not a huge buck. This buck is larger than most whitetails especially doe's. To kill big bucks a hunter needs powerful loads and good shot placement, and that is just my opinion.

Hey Ron,

I have whacked a whole bunch of deer with cartridge handguns launching their "conicals" at enough velocity to land on target with similar speed to yours. Most were gaschecked #2 Lyman alloy rather than hardcast, as I wanted to assure a little expansion on our smaller deer. Though mine were alloyed and never expanded quite as much as yours, the photos you provide demonstrate EXACTLY what I would expect of pure lead bullets at around 1100 fps velocity. I did try pure lead bullets in those handguns and went to #2 specifically because they expanded too much for my situation. Since most of mine were only 250 grain and slightly smaller caliber (.429) I simply wanted to assure a little more penetration along with the expansion. It's not rocket science, and similar strategies have been used by cast bullet cartridge shooters for something like a century or however Lyman has been around and published their #2 alloy. Hard cast bullets have only come along in very recent years, and a whole lot of hunters like me took a whole lot of game successfully with softer bullets in the decades before.

As for the extra range out west compared to the shorter ranges of whitetails in the east, I guess that kind of oversight just goes with this roundball/whitetail focused site. Whitetail thinking is kind of hard to get around if you only know whitetails.

As I said in my original post 8 pages back, my choice between 50 maxi and 54 RB (the original question) would depend on range. Hunting for smaller Sitka blacktails in the Alaska brush is more akin to the ranges of whitetail hunting back East, and I would use either load confidently on our deer and at our typical ranges.

But if I hunt the mule deer on our place down in Colorado, the 54 RB would stay home and I'd be packing either a 50 or a 54 maxi. Truth be known it would probably be homecast Lyman plains bullet, the cousin of the Hornady, but that's another discussion. That's because mule deer tags are really hard to come by in our area and the ranges are long. Sure I could hold out for shots at roundball ranges. But with only a 7-day season and odds of being drawn only one in 5, I might only get to use the RB on deer every five years at best. That's a sure test of your principals and devotion to hunting with RB, but surely a poor way to put venison in the freezer.

 

[roundball]

"...a guy that claims a deer administered first aid to it’s self..."

What??
:shocked2:

 

[jtmattison]

"...a guy that claims a deer administered first aid to it’s self..."

What??
:shocked2:

I missed that one too.

HD

 

[paulvallandigham]

I have twice seen or heard of deer stuffing leaves or moss into their wounds. The first time was in 1968 when I was a deer checker in Monroe County, Illinois, when a man came into the station with a deer he shot. When we took it off the back of his pickup truck to put on the scale, and rolled it over on the other side, there, sticking out of his side, and what we later determined was a gunshot wound, was some leaves. It was my turn to age the deer by checking its teeth, so my partner for the weekend pulled the leaf out, while I was lifting up the lips of the deer to look at its tooth growth. I notices something green stuck in the deer's front teeth- the ones they use to cut off grasses, etc. I pulled it out just as my partner began talking about finding his leaf stuffed in the wound. He asked the shooter if he had put it there, and the man assured him that he didn't, and didn't even see it until we put the deer on the scales. My partner brought the leaf over to me when I interrupted and said I had some green "stuff " stuck in the deer's teeth. I fished out the " stuff", and it turned out to be part of a leaf. When we put the piece I had next to the leaf removed from the wound, and rotated the leaf a bit, it became clear that they were parts of the same leaf.

Since I( also) had never heard of deer tending to their wounds, I dismissed it and thought nothing more about it.

Then, in the mid 1980s, by best friend and tracking buddy was called out by an Archer who had shot a deer on the adjoining property to the property my buddy was managing for the owner. The Archer claimed the deer he shot crossed over onto Don's farm. Don went down, with the archer, and tracked the deer from the impact point, unto a game trail that crossed his farm. He found the deer dead, laying on the banks of the river, next to a deadfall log. There was NO BLOOD spots on the trail for more than 100 yards from the point of impact Then, Don only found some pinhead sized droplets on the trail. He had been following bruises to the hard pack mud on the main trail the deer was following.

Stuck in the wound was some moss, and, once again, when he checked the deer's mouth, there was more moss. He called me about it, as it was HIS first time every seeing such a thing. The deer was hit broadside high in the lung, with the exit wound lower on the opposite side. The deer had stuffed the moss into the exit wound. He asked me if I had ever seen such a thing, or heard of such a thing, and at first I said," NO ", but then I remembered that incident back at Valmyer, Illinois when I was a deer checker there, so I corrected myself and told him that story as I have told you here.

These are the only two incidents that I have personal knowledge about. I have occasionally read a similar comment by other hunters who have recovered a wounded deer after some hours spent tracking the animal.

I am by no means suggesting that deer " administer first aid " to themselves, or anything else. Nor am I suggesting this happens frequently.

I frankly don't give a hoot whether TG or Roundball believe me or not. I have not found much that either of them says here worth the time reading. I suspect that other hunters have seen this kind of thing. Its only a matter of asking them to share their observations, and maybe they might risk the ridicule they will receive here and respond.

My point in commenting on this phenomena was to give another reason for why blood trails stop, or never seem to get started, particularly with high hits. I have gutted several deer that had entrance wounds that did not bleed much at all, both archery kills, and kills with either shotgun slugs or PRB, but they did not have an exit wound. When I opened up the chest cavity, it has always been full of blood. The deer obviously hemorrhaged to death, but bled internally. That is why I advocate learning how to follow tracks, rather than depending on blood trails to find your game.

Best wishes to you this fall. You certainly live in God's paradise for big game hunters. :hatsoff:

 

[Kentuckywindage]

See, You need to use a nice big bullet to put it down so they dont have time to stuff leaves into the wound! Darn deer are getting tricky it seems.

Next thing you know, they'll have their own med kits.

 

[paulvallandigham]

I am glad you see some humor in all this. I was trying to be serious, but apparently that is beyond the members today. Enjoy the laugh. :thumbsup:

 

[longcruise]

Okay, lets hear the story

KW, I'm not all that qualified as an historian on these matters, but I'll take a shot at it.

It seems that while the minie or conical came into common usage around 1860 (or earlier, help me historians!) it was largely a military thing. We can speculate a whole lot on how much hunting was done with the military guns designed to shoot them, but for the most part probably not all that many, IMO.

Guns weren't simply discarded in favor of something new at the time. Most users of firearms had a rifle that shot balls and were not about to dispose of them to acqure, at some expense, a new technology when their current technology worked just fine.

Then came popular acceptance by the military of the suppository guns such as the allen conversion 50-70 and later the the 45-70 Springfield rifle. At the same time, civilian cartridge rifles were being marketed for the target shooter and sportsman. For a short period there was a concurrent use of non-military muzzleloading slug guns but they were mainly tools of the well heeled who had the time and money to participate in the popular shooting matches of the day. The cartridge rifle soon replaced them. Not that they did not remain in use just as all those round ball guns had, but they were not in widespread use.

So, the use of conical bullets in muzzleloading rifles never became popular among the majority of rifleman both because their use was limited to military applications and a relatively few target shooters and because the cartridge rifle so quickly overtook them and became the dominent new technology.

The men who continued to build and sell ml rifles to the general public and the indian trade throughout the last half of the 19th century continued to build round ball rifles.

So, two big innovations in ml firearms of the 19th century, the percussion cap and the conical bullet, were rather short lived in terms of technological dominance. The percussion cap certainly gained popularity among the ml shooters of the 19th century and continues to be popular today, but the resurgence of the conical ml bullet seems to have come about in the early 1970's

That's my take on it.

 

[longcruise]

placing your self in an area where you know you will have a short shot is fine but once you get out in the open land of colorado and have millions of acres of public land, that just aint going to happen. They make it look easy on tv but when you step in to it your self, its an whole new world.

I remember the very first elk hunt i went on we spotted the elk running down in a valley and i had to run over a 1/4 mile through a foot of fresh snow and then up the side of a mountain to get a shot. No telling where game will be unless you have a friend or live in that certain area your self.

Game,Set,Match

I hunt those same millions of acres and have killed antelope, deer and elk with my ml guns with all but one being under 100 yards and only a few between 50 and 100.

If you are hunting elk in such a way that you are spotting them at long distance in far off valleys, etc., you may be using a high power rifle hunting mindset. The ability to shoot longer shots tends to promote positioning oneself to see more country and therefore have more opportunities to shoot.

The only one of the three i named that pretty much must be hunted in open country is the antelope. There are antelope in flat open short grass country that makes ml and bow hunting really tough but there are many more areas (at least in CO) that are not that type of country and offer rough terrain and sage that provides pretty good stalking opportunities. I have killed 14 antelope with modern cartridge rifles and only three of them were more than 100 yard shots! One elk killed with ml was over 100 yards but all others with modern as well as ml guns were under 50 yards.

You have to pick your hunt conditions so as to allow you to get the shots you are looking for. In CO we are fortunate to have our ml elk season land in the middle of the elk rut which makes getting close much easier. Get to know some dedicated bow hunters in your area and learn how to call. Then your main problem will be that the elk is so close that you aren't able to move your rifle into shooting position!

 

[Stumpkiller]

I have shot deer that piled up and had all kinds of moss and mast jambed into the opening from "the crash". And I have had cases where fat or tissue plugged the hole allowing for no blood trail at all (it's amazing that a 12 ga rifled slug can do a complete pass through , making a 3/4" cookie-cutter enterance and 1" plus exit that doesn bleed!) But it does happen.

I watch a deer turn and bite at an arrow that was buried up to the fletching and then hop and trot off like he was reacting to a bee-sting. Made it about 15 feet and snapped the exposed tip-end with the broadhead off on a sapling, I'm sure not on purpose, turned to look at what that might have been on his other side and then tipped over.

But I have never seen evidence of self-aid. I can believe they might lick at it. I do believe that moss or leaves might stick to the coagulating & sticky blood if it bedded and tag along if I got back up.