# suppressors for hunting....with handguns?...



## Alan in GA (Aug 12, 2014)

The proposal is to legalize hunting in Georgia with silencers [I call them suppressors]. Also proposed is to make it ILEGAL to use subsonic ammo for hunting[?]. Many pistol rounds are already subsonic with heavy bullet loads.
So handguns with no cylinder gap [Contenders] will be legal to use a suppressor if you can launch super sonic. Not a problem I guess with most rounds.
Thoughts?


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## Offroadtek (Aug 13, 2014)

I'll chime in. On page 16 of the regulations it says "Suppressors: Lawfully possessed suppressors may be used for hunting 
on private property. Permission of the landowner is required." There are no specification as to bullet velocity or this applying to rifles or handguns. 

So as long as the gun is legal to be used on the animal your hunting (rifle or handgun) and you own the property or have owners permission, you can suppress it with no worries.


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## Alan in GA (Aug 13, 2014)

*page 40 has a propossed.....*

item about subsonic ammo being illegal to use for hunting. Don't remember about any handgun proposals.


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## deast1988 (Aug 13, 2014)

A .300AAC contender pistol with a saker 7.62 on it should be the cats meow! Just saying. It would be sick let MGM custom make you something that should run suppressed on a 12in pistol barrel might would be a hearing friendly deer slayer.


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## Offroadtek (Aug 13, 2014)

I can't see a ruling against subsonic ammo ever being made. You can hunt deer with a 25 acp handgun in ga. A subsonic ban would cut out most 22 ammo and some shotshells. Such a broad scope ban would have to overcome a whole lot of logical argument. Not that it couldn't happen, but seems very unlikely.

Do you have a link to the proposal so we can see the actual wording of it?


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## Alan in GA (Aug 13, 2014)

*Look at .....*

page 40:

http://gon.us1.list-manage.com/track/click?u=714b34f4a2fa1db8d0ffca186&id=f3918383f7&e=6d5ddd20f9


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## HandgunHTR (Aug 13, 2014)

HB60 is what allows for hunting with a suppressor on private land.

What you have linked is the Deer Management Plan for the next 10 years.  It is not in effect yet.

Also, it clearly states "big game" in the proposal, so .22LR is exempt as it can't be used for Big Game anyway.

As for heavy bullets in revolvers, I would say that the intent of the law is to prevent sub-sonic with a suppressor, which revolvers aren't really good for anyway.  I have a hard time believing that someone will get a ticket for using heavy .44 Mag bullets in their Redhawk, even if they are sub-sonic.

Kinda like the "expanding bullets" argument when using hard cast bullets.


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## Kanook (Aug 14, 2014)

> As for heavy bullets in revolvers, I would say that the intent of the law is to prevent sub-sonic with a suppressor, which revolvers aren't really good for anyway. I have a hard time believing that someone will get a ticket for using heavy .44 Mag bullets in their Redhawk, even if they are sub-sonic.


But it could affect a person that uses a Thompson Contender with a suppressor for hunting. I have been looking for a 45 LC barrel for my contender but might just grab a 300 blackout instead so I can use a suppressor.


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## Offroadtek (Aug 14, 2014)

Certainly an interesting proposal. It does seem the intent is to limit the use of subsonic ammunition with a suppressed firearm, but a ban as proposed would cover more than that. 
Looks like it would have the effect of the old "500 ft/Lbs at 100 yards" rule, only applying it across the board, not just to handguns.

It would be a big jump from the leniency toward big game gun we have now. And it would be almost impossible to enforce.


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## Alan in GA (Aug 25, 2014)

*obviously....*

obviously the Gov't has not thought this all the way through.....


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## Sargent (Aug 25, 2014)

Alan in GA said:


> obviously the Gov't has not thought this all the way through.....



They never do.

It is a step in the right direction, though.


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## HandgunHTR (Aug 28, 2014)

Kanook said:


> But it could affect a person that uses a Thompson Contender with a suppressor for hunting. I have been looking for a 45 LC barrel for my contender but might just grab a 300 blackout instead so I can use a suppressor.



You are going to have a hard time getting subsonic velocities from any 45 Colt hunting loads in a 10" Contender barrel.  Even light loads will get above 1200fps in a long barrel with no pressure loss at a cylinder gap.

So, it shouldn't be a problem.

Even with a 300 BO, you have to shoot a supersonic load if I read the law correctly, so it doesn't matter.


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## Kanook (Aug 28, 2014)

Currently the loads I'm using right now are around 950-1,000 fps coming out  of a 7 1/2" Ruger. I am getting complete pass thru using a 270grain Keith style at 50yds.

Am I going to go Super Sonic just by using a 10" barrel?


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## The Longhunter (Aug 28, 2014)

Kanook said:


> Currently the loads I'm using right now are around 950-1,000 fps coming out  of a 7 1/2" Ruger. I am getting complete pass thru using a 270grain Keith style at 50yds.
> 
> Am I going to go Super Sonic just by using a 10" barrel?



The problem with outlawing subsonic loads is that temperature and barometric pressure really affect the speed of sound.

So today's subsonic load may well be tomorrow's supersonic load -- and is DNR ever going to have the capacity to check.

The same problem arose when pistol rounds had to have 500 ft. lbs. at 100 yards to be a "legal" deer round.  Who is going to measure?  In .357 the difference between a 4" barrel and a 8" barrel could have been all the difference to make you legal.


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## GunnSmokeer (Aug 29, 2014)

*two points:*

1-- back when Georgia did have a 500 foot-pounds requirement, how did the conservation officers determine the power level of particular loads in certain guns that were marginal?  I assume the game wardens cannot and did not do any weighing of bullets or shooting loads over a chronograph.  Did they even have a reloading manual or some other reference book to consult that lists common calibers, gives options for different bullet weights, and lists velocities?

2-- I agree that if the State DNR bans the use of subsonic ammo for deer hunting, this would primarily affect the folks who want to hunt with silencers / sound suppressors on their guns. I'm one of those, but it won't affect me because I intend to use normal power loads that are nearly 3X the speed of sound.  I've shot them through silencers before (a  really nice can from Liberty Suppressors in NW Georgia on Sand Mountain) and even supersonic they were quiet enough to make me happy. Nothing at all like unsuppressed  shooting.

Aside from the older classic .44 and .45 non-magnum cartridges with heavy bullets fired from handguns with barrels under 8 inches, won't pretty much every decent deer caliber, even handgun calibers, be supersonic at the muzzle?

If you have absolutely got to use your 5" barreled 1911 for deer, you can find some +P bonded hollowpoints in 180 or 185 grain weight, and they'll leave the muzzle at around 1200 f.p.s.  That's above Mach 1.0

Even for the old .44 special, Buffalo Bore has a 190-grain soft lead hollow point SWC bullet loaded to 1,150 f.p.s. from a 5.5" revolver barrel. From a 4" barrel it's still supersonic, but just barely. Enough to be legal, though.

For lovers of the ancient .44-40 Winchester, or ".44 WCF" there are some supersonic options too.  I'm not sure where to find a factory load that reliably exceeds 1050 f.p.s. from normal length handgun barrels (5" to 8"), but certainly handloaders can do it. They can push 200-grain bullets to 1200 or better.


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## HandgunHTR (Aug 31, 2014)

Kanook said:


> Currently the loads I'm using right now are around 950-1,000 fps coming out  of a 7 1/2" Ruger. I am getting complete pass thru using a 270grain Keith style at 50yds.
> 
> Am I going to go Super Sonic just by using a 10" barrel?



It isn't the extra 2.5" of barrel that is going to take you super-sonic, it is the lack of the cylinder gap.  You are going to have ALL of the gas behind the bullet, not lose as much as 33% at the cylinder.

I would bet that that 1000fps load in your Ruger will be somewhere in the 1200-1300fps area in a 10" Contender.

It will probably be pretty brutal in the recoil department as well.  I had a .44 mag load using 300 grain SPs that was great to shoot in my 9" barreled Super Redhawk that was downright punishing in my 10" Contender.


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## GunnSmokeer (Sep 4, 2014)

*proof?*



HandgunHTR said:


> It isn't the extra 2.5" of barrel that is going to take you super-sonic, it is the lack of the cylinder gap.  You are going to have ALL of the gas behind the bullet, not lose as much as 33% at the cylinder.
> 
> I would bet that that 1000 fps load in your Ruger will be somewhere in the 1200-1300 fps area in a 10" Contender.
> 
> ...




Really?  The cylinder gap in a revolver can bleed off 33% of the gas?  So what does that mean for velocity? Will that drop by up to a third, too?

The folks at BALLISTICS BY THE INCH regularly take rifle and handgun barrels and cut them down an inch at a time. They use a break-open single shot T/C Contender (or Encore)  frame for this project, so none of the "by the inch" velocity numbers have any cylinder gap affecting them.

But then they often compare the T/C pistol's velocity to the "real world" velocity from ordinary firearms.  For revolvers, this introduces the issue of cylinder gap pressure loss, as well as the complicating factor of how the barrel is measured (with revolvers, the chamber isn't counted as part of the barrel, but on the break-open T/C firearm, it is counted).

FOR THE .45 Colt: 
T/C (no cylinder gap) and Federal 225 grain SWC bullet:
10" barrel = 1000 f.p.s. ; 
9" = 965; 
8" = 947; 
7" = 925;
6" = 891.

For the .45 Colt fired from a Colt Cimmaron with a 7.5" barrel, it was 872 f.p.s.  
 Since that revolver measurement didn't count the chamber length, that would be similar to the 9" T/C pistol barrel which did have the chamber as part of those nine inches of barrel.

So TC with no cylinder gap and 9" barrel = 965 f.p.s.
but the Colt revolver with 7.5" barrel and 1.75" chamber for a total of about 9.25" gets only 872 f.p.s.

So I'd say this shows the cylinder gap on that Colt cost the shooter of this ammo about 90 f.p.s. or about 10% in performance.


IN ANOTHER SERIES OF TESTS, the folks at BALLISTICS BY THE INCH used just revolvers, but used shims to adjust the cylinder gap. THey tested a particular revolver with no cylinder gap (cylinder pressed firmly against barrel forcing cone), a tiny .001 inch gap, and then a remarkably wide and sloppy .006" gap. 

The results were that the difference between no gap and the big fat .006 gap was around 100 f.p.s., which for the .38 special and .357 magnum calibers represents about 10% to 12%.


So the cylinder gap can have some effect on velocity and might make a round that would just barely be supersonic out of a break-open hunting handgun slip below Mach 1.0 when fired from a revolver, especially one with a large cylinder gap measurement.  But any handgun round that's going to be clearly and easily supersonic from a T/C will still be supersonic from a wheelgun.


http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/gaptests.html


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