Gun Digest 2011. Dan ShidelerЧитать онлайн книгу.
come to town to drown his thirst any longer; law and order were on tap.
LIGHT CARTRIDGES FOR DEER: A New Shooting Trend — or Impending Disaster?
BY L.P. BREZNY
Author zeroing his .22-250 Savage from a bench rest table. Accuracy is very much required when using .22 centerfires for big game.
It was the third and last deer season in western South Dakota. That meant the air temperature was hovering around eight degrees above zero, and the winds off the Big Horn mountains were gusting to a strong 55 mph, with a constant breeze settling in at about 35 mph. Not the best day for deer hunting, but the only one our group of four hunters had. Tom Hanson, my friend and neighbor on our South Dakota mountain hideout, had been glassing several deer down on a wide flat half-cut winter cornfield about an hour north of home for better than an hour. With the time now approaching 8:00 a.m., Tom knew that very soon those whitetail would bed down about mid-field and at that point it would be time to move down against the stiff wind, walk the corn row edges, then glass between the quarter-mile long rows until a target could be located.
With a pair of hunters blocking the natural exit route downwind on the field, two more took up positions on each side of the field, but at a staggered pattern with a good 150 yards between each of them. This was to establish a safe fire zone and not shoot across that short cornstalk-infested flats and thereby hit the hunter on the opposite side. Now with everyone in position, it was time to glass and comb those rows. Maybe with luck, some winter meat would be brought to the table.
Tom and another friend, Jerome Bressler, had already hunted the corn a week earlier. At that time the same system had netted four plump doe, and on this wind-driven morning, the system would be exactly the same. Now the hunt was about to progress. Jerome and I had drawn long straws, and it was my job to take the position on the back side of the corn field as Jerome walked the two-track roadside a full 200 yard to my rear. Glassing his half of the long clean rows of slightly snowdrifted corn stalks as I did the same on my side, we proceeded down the mile section toward our blocking partners, working as a team.
At about mid-field, a large doe stood up and walked directly across my end of the field. She was at or close to 200 yards and standing in a location that presented a clean, clear shot. I was using a set of Bog Pod shooting sticks, and they were extended to my full shoulder height. Moving back against a fence post so as to steady myself against the gusting wind, I locked down my crosshairs, dropped a half breath from my lungs, and touched off a round, which consisted of a 55-grain Norma ORYX soft nose bullet. At the shot, the .22-250 Remington was sent downrange by the Savage Predator turnbolt rifle. The doe shuddered a bit, then turned away, breaking into a slow trot toward some higher-standing cornstalks.
Knowing the drill that had taken place all to often in my 50-plus years of hunting whitetail, I moved my rifle scope sight immediately to the far side of the thick cornstalk stand and waited for the old girl to emerge. Show up she did. Now the range had been extended another 50 to 75 yards yards, and I was wishing for my tried and true .25-06 pushing a 117-grain Sierra boattail bullet as loaded by Federal Cartridge. This was my go-to load in most cases on the wide-open western South Dakota prairies, but today I was in a test mode, and as such the .22-250 had gotten the call that cold windy morning.
The .223 round is a military lightweight and not a proven big game cartridge at all.
The S&W M&P-15-T performs well as a coyote rifle, and the author also took deer with it.
Pushing the muzzle of the Savage Predator into the slightly angling high wind that was coming from my left, I reset my sights for added windage and touched off round number two. Again the doe seemed to shudder and shift her weight a bit. However, again she turned away and proceeded to move on down the field in the general direction of the blockers waiting at the other end.
With the doe out of sight and nothing going on in the direction of the blockers, Jerome and I both started to converge on the location at which I had made the second hit on the deer. We were lucky that we had fresh snow and short corn to deal with. In effect, if that deer was hit anywhere close to the vitals, we could stay on her track all day if necessary. With about 100 yards of a zig-zagging trail we located the deer. She was down and stone dead, laying directly between two rows of corn stubble. Two bullets had entered her left side vitals, but no exit wound or blood trail was visible. The small .224 bullets had entered the animal, leaving the hide to close over the entry wound, then causing all the blood given off by one bullet to the liver and a second hit to the lung to pool in the lower portion of the chest cavity.
In effect, the 55-grain softnose bullets were not energy-effective against the 155-pound animal. The ratio of bullet mass to body mass just didn’t compute in this very direct and obvious test scenario. Tom had dropped a pair of adult does in the same field by way of his handloaded 55-grain Ballistic Tip .224 bullets that were turning up about 3200 f.p.s. velocity. Shooting his R-15 by Remington topped by Burris 4.5 X14 glass sights, he had elected to take head/neck shots on the two animals and thereby dropped both in their tracks with the light-caliber rifle. Here was the classic example of bullet placement getting the job done.
Jerome, with his DPMS AR Hunter in .243 Winchester and the 95-grain Winchester boattail, still elected to shoot neck shots on the cornfield at under 150 yards. As Jerome says, when in doubt take the best shot possible regardless of the rifle being put to work. Good advice in any big game harvesting situation! Was the data returned by my two partners valuable? Of course it was, as any kill can be a learning curve of sorts. With accuracy being a given – all the local Dakota hunters I have spent time with afield can shoot for sure – the next element to success is body area placement. Light bullets and small calibers require placement in areas of the body that will result in immediate neurological takedown, versus a more prolonged death caused by blood loss.
About two days after the cornfield hunt I was at home working in my office when my wife Colleen indicated that a wounded buck was walking through our back forty. Glassing the deer I could see a full left hind quarter was just about shot away, or eaten away. As we have big cats here in the northern foothills of western South Dakota’s Black Hills, I was not at all surprised. Getting a call into my local game warden I was given the green light to take the animal down. My weapon of choice in this case was the S&W M&P-15-T that was standing in the hallway with a loaded five-round magazine in the receiver well. (Out here in the wild west it is common practice to keep a rifle in the kitchen.)
The .223 can take deer humanely, given perfect shot placement, but there are better choices for the task.
Heading outside and reaching a large tree trunk, I steadied myself and then touched off a round with the Gem Tech-suppressed quiet gun, and the 36-grain Black Hills brand Barnes Varmint Grenade did the rest of the job. At 170 yards, and with bullet placement at the base of the head/neck, the hurting old buck never knew what hit him. That VG bullet made of dusted or sintered copper coring and a solid copper jacket just turned to a gas inside his head and upper spine area. With a muzzle exit velocity of almost 3700 f.p.s., this little fast mover did the job with both velocity and accuracy.
This fancy dressed AR is a big part of the reason some have lobbied for light rifles in the field. However, at what price in wounded game?
With my partner’s kills and the example I just related to you, am I saying that the .224 or any light bullet is appropriate for taking big game animals the size of deer or even antelope cleanly?