Maxi-Hunter performance on game?

[pab1]

Who has used T/C Maxi-Hunters on game, and how did they perform? I am looking for an expanding .54 connical for elk. I know T/C recommends the 435 gr for deer size game, but I would like to know about anyone's experience with them. What kind of penetration/expansion did you get? Once it warms up I will break out the milk jugs for testing, but that looks to be a ways off. Any other expanding connical you would recommend for elk size game?

 

[roundball]

Don't know about the .54s...but I've shot a few deer with the .45cal/255grn Maxi-Hunter and they were very accurate and devastating on deer.

From that experience I'd conclude the whole line of Maxi-Hunters would be good...all built to the same proportions, designed for good expansion, etc...and with their full caliber size out of the muzzle, they really don't need to expand if they're put through the heart/lung area.
(haven't heard anything good about Maxi-BALLs)

 

[Stumpkiller]

The .50 side is excellent on 180# deer at upper moderate loads. Much better than the Maxi-ball (which just blows through and keeps going).

Before I converted entirely to round balls I used Maxi-Hunters in my .50 New Englander during the regular season. It was a perfect choice for the local whitetails and conditions; which are 20 to 40 yard shots in brushy cover.

I think (but I've never hunted elk so this is a WAG) that the .54 would do well on elk. You probably want 95 to 100 gt FFg at least if you're going out to 80 plus yards. I did not notice any "explosive" tendency in the hollow point. I never recovered a .50, but the exit hole and wound channel indicated it held together and expended a lot of energy inside.

The only other conicals I ever used were Maxi-balls on woodchucks ( :grin: ) and .50 R.E.A.L.s, which I never got to shoot to my satisfaction.

 

[Kentuckywindage]

435 grain bullet for deer size game? Thats the biggest bunch of BS ive ever heard! I'd love to hear TC's excuse on why you need to throw a buick at a deer. I've shot most of my deer with 245 grain powerbelts and dropped them in their tracks.

435 grain bullet for deer, :rotf:
For elk i'd use either the 350 grain maxi hunter or the 385 grain great plains bullet.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Please, in addition to shooting a few into jugs of water, to see if the slugs expand, do some penetration testing. You don't need that heavy a slug to kill an Elk, no matter how big. Any bullet over 250 grains in weight is a mini-freight car moving through the air, and flesh and bone. It just keeps going. You don't need a heavy powder charge, or a lot of weight to get it to penetrate completely an Elk. Stay with lighter bullets, lighter powder charges, and work on your shooting skills. Accurate placement of that slug on an Elk will be far more important that any extra weight, or velocity. A 350 graio slug in .54 caliber is going to push through a lot of muscles and tissue, and will smash bones. Based on my own experience doing penetration tests with pine boards, I would expect it to penetrate 10 or more inches in wood, and a lot further in flesh. I shot a factory loaded .45-70 405 grain soft point bullet into a penetration box of 1 inch pine boards spaced 1 inch apart, and the clug traveled through 12 of the boards, and the intervening spaces. That bullet and mild load would easily penetrate an Elk broadside, and travel the lenth of the Elk if shot in the front of the chest. You .54 will do the same with much less weight, and a 300 - 320 grain bullet should be more than enough. The penetration testing will prove that I am correct.

 

[MercerLake]

At muzzle-loader velocity I don't think that expansion is needed or wanted on elk. In my experience you want penetration through and through the vital area. With conicals a large flat meplat will set up a shock wave and penetrate muscle and break bones. Just like real estate "location,location", bullet placement is everything. I use a .62 PRB and have never recovered one from any of several elk that I have shot. Big hole in, big hole out. :thumbsup:

 

[Mr Hawken]

just curious what are you using for a weapon? i know my .50 hawken prefers maxi-balls over the hunters for groups. my opinion on elk they are big tough critters and you can never have too much penetration and a dead elk is better than a wounded elk

 

[Plains99]

Don't forget about the Maxi-ball as well. It has excellent penetration qualities. Either would be good, I'd think. The 435-grain conical is a GREAT deer round because it uses momentum over velocity to take down deer. It holds together well, has excellent expansion qualities, penetrates bone very well, can be used with moderate powder charges and is accurate. I'd always choose it over a Powerbelt so there you go. We all have opinions.

 

[pab1]

Thanks for all the information guys. I know a lot of people say expansion is not necessary in a half inch plus diameter bullet. I prefer heart lung shots on game as I hate to ruin meat with shoulder shots. I took a 300+ 6X6 bull a few years back with a .50, 444 gr Powerbelt bullet. I had not tested the bullet for expansion and did not realize how hard it was. It zipped through the bulls lungs leaving a .50 caliber hole and exited the far shoulder blade with no expansion. The bull took off down the slope showing no sign of being hit. Luckily I was above timberline at around 11,500 feet elevation and I was able to keep him in sight as I reloaded. At around 200 yards he went down. Both sides of this mountain are extremely steep and covered in thick timber, so if the shot had not taken place where it did, tracking and recovery would have been very difficult. Sorry for the long post, but that is why I am looking for an expanding bullet that will cause more tissue damage on heart lung shots.

Stumpkiller, that was my biggest concern, that the bullet may be too soft, come apart and lose it's momentum. It sounds like they will work.

paulvallandigham, I usually line up five or six milk jugs with 1/2" partical board between the first two and the last two to represent bone. This isn't the best test medium, but it gives me some idea of how a bullet will perform. I know lighter bullets will do the job, but I really enjoy shooting heavy bullets. My elk load in my .45-70 Contender handgun is a 300 gr Nosler PP at around 1900 fps. Those penetrate very well.

Mr. Hawken, I will be using my Renegade unless I can somehow convince my GPR to like heavy connicals.

 

[captaincaveman]

for $133.07 your GPR will like conicals[url] http://www.midsouthshooterssupply.com/item.asp?sku=000156030267[/url]

Josh

 

[paulvallandigham]

I have shot my share of water bottles. Its fun, but they don't provide a consistent medium for comparing various bullets for penetration. Penetration boxes are more difficult to build, and a pain to maintain, but they do give you more info. A friend of mine just uses sand bags, as he has tested various slugs in all kind of mediums, and knows what a slug fired into sand bags will do by comparison to using other penetration mediums, including pine boards. He has boxes of spent bullets and slugs he has recovered and labeled so there are very few bullets you can come up with that he can give a pretty good estimation on what it will do at various velocities in flesh. I have taken more than one slug to him so we could compare it to some of his own.

You didn't say how high your hit was on that Elk that walked another 200 yds. With any animal, and any gun, its going to be bullet placement, not velocity, or bullet weight, that is going to put it down. And then, different animals are going to react differently when shot.

It may depend on as little a thing as whether they just took a breath before they were hit through the lungs. If they have just oxygenated their blood they can go on walking even as their lungs collapse. A huge bullet, at shoulder- breaking speed, hitting the right place is just not going to guarantee that the animal will drop in its tracks. Only a central nervous system hit( brain, or spinal cord) will do that, and hunters who make those shot will generally admit they were not aiming to hit the spine or brain when they squeezed off the shot.

My recommendation is to go for accuracy, and not velocity( recoil) or large weight. Your 300 grain pistol bullet proved that it is of sufficient weight to complete penetrate the elk. If you can pick your shot so that it breaks a fore leg going into the lung and heart, or after it penetrates the lungs and hear, the Elk is less likely to be able to go anywhere.

As for tracking elk in timber, these are huge animals. Wounded, they rarely stay on a game trail, so you don't have to deal with other elk tracks that might confuse someone. Elk will break off branches in the pines leaving visible signs of the fresh breaks to see. There will be blood spurting from both sides, leaving blood on anything from the ground up to the height of the wound. Those tracks will be at least 4 inches long, and often up to 6 inches on a really large bull. Weight is going to be 400-600 lbs. and sometimes even more with the old bulls. That much weight is going to crush and disturb, and move a lot of pine needles.

Spend some time in pre-season scouting trips just reading elk tracks, and following one. The more you do this, the better you will get. Use the blood as confirmation that you are following the right Elk, but follow his tracks. A wounded Elk is also likely to show his injury in his tracks, by dragging a foot, or by his stagger as he slowly loses blood pressure. Its not hard to distinguish the tracks of a wounded animal from those of animals that are not hurt. The other animals will flee the scene, taking running strides. The wounded animal is going to conserve energy as he tries to find someplace cool to reduce the fever he is sensing because of the rush of adrenalin in his blood as it tries to stop the bleeding, while keeping the blood pressure high enough to send oxygen to his brain.

Good Hunting

 

[lonedave]

pab1

I've taken 2 large mulie bucks with the .45 maxi hunter (home cast) and 70 gr of Goex 2F and in both cases on quartering chest shots I retrieved the bullet just under the skin on the far side. They both expanded pretty well and retained about 99% of their weight. I neck shot (pass through)a medium sized mulie buck with the 360 gr .54 maxi-hunter (factory) and 100 gr of Goex 2F from about 30 feet and he fell dead. This year I took a nice roosevelt cow with a .54 maxi-ball (home cast) and 90 gr of Goex 2F. The shot was about 35 yards quartering toward me and the bullet went in just in front of the shoulder, centered a rib, went through the heart and liver, stomach and ended up back in the intestines. She turned, trotted about 30 yards and fell over dead. I didn't look for the bullet, but I think that was pretty good penetration. The home cast maxi's were from T/C molds and I use lead flashing that seems fairly soft. The neck shot isn't too great an example, but the others are.

Dave

 

[Slamfire]

The purer the lead, the more likely expansion, as opposed to shatterin', is. A little tin don't hurt much but antimony will make your projectile brittle. I wouldn't want more'n 2% tin in the mix to maximize expansion. 40 to 1 alloy has a BHN of 8.3, which is more'n double that of just plain lead.

 

[pab1]

Congratulations on the cow! I have always wanted to hunt roosevelts. It sounds like you're getting plenty of penetration. My Renegade is very accurate with Maxi-Hunters and 90 grains of powder, so it sounds like I won't have to change a thing. Thanks for the info!

 

[pab1]

I have thought about picking up a "Hunter" barrel. My Renegade is shooting the Maxi-Hunters very well so it will probably get the nod. It's also lighter which is a huge consideraton. I usually bivy hunt in wilderness area's for 5-9 day stints, so every ounce matters.

 

[Napper]

I doin't know I have shot two elk with a .50 370 maxie and have never had one go through and out thats why I went to a 58 and 560 maxie oh the loads were 85 3f for the 50 and 115 2f for the 58 between 5 of us most using 54 and 90 t0 100 grains of 2f we never had the maxies go through and out shouts between 25 to 100 yards. I'm not saying that they doin't its just that I have never seen it. I never did get to shoot one with the 58.

 

[LarryB]

pab1
I saw my son shoot a fork buck this year with a tc maxie. He hit it in the shoulder through bone and was under the hide on the far side. He was loaded with 100 gr of 2f and shooting 50 feet or less. The slug when retreved was 1/4 in thick and the same size in diameter as a quarter. I layed a quarter on it to see.I have never seen anything expand that much. I also never seen anything shot that close befor either. The same boy killed a cow Elk 2 years ago with the same bullet and it dropped on the spot and we did not find that bullet. I think they do a fine job but I am a round ball nut my self and they fall dead for me to.

 

[MercerLake]

:grin: My wife uses the .54 Maxi-Hunter in her Renegade with 70grains of FFg. She dropped her first elk a Rosevelt yesterday afternoon after hunting for several years, finally got the shot she wanted and was successful. The Maxi passed through on a quartering away shot at about 60 yards striking just behind the last rib going through the liver and both lungs, exiting just behind the offside shoulder. No real sign of expansion,the exit hole was thumb sized. The lungs were pretty tore-up, the elk went about 25 yards and dropped within seconds of being hit. I'd say she got her moneys worth. She is sold on Muzzle-loading for sure. Live weight on this 3 year old cow was about 400lbs. We had a short pack to the truck racing sundown. The work is over, now we come to the really good part,eating. :thumbsup:

 

[pab1]

Congratulations! It sounds like you got plenty of penetration. I am surprised at the size of the exit hole after reading the other posts.

Here is a photo of the bull from my previous post. The picture really flattens out the terrain. This is at 11,500 feet elevation and steeper than it looks. I was lucky he didn't make it to the drop off he was headed for. That area is very hard to get into, let alone pack an elk out of.

 

[roundball]

Nice Bull...congratulations!

(a helicopter would be nice)