# 22 Hornet WILL kill a deer.



## Flaustin1

Let me start by saying that the .22 Hornet has been heavily debated on here.  After todays experience I can say its been for good reason.  

This evening I shot a small buck. (bout 120lbs)  The first shot was text book perfect using a 45 gr Barnes TSX bullet.  It entered just behind the shoulder at mid level and exited just behind the shoulder about a 1/3 of the way up.  It centered the onside lung and went through the offside lung pretty low.

This is where things got interesting.  At the shot, I was expecting the deer to jump, kick and run to its death as normal.  It didn't happen.  It jumped, trotted about 20 yards and stopped.  It stood perfectly still for 6 minutes behind some brush where I couldn't shoot again.  I could hear the deer breathing heavily, almost coughing.  It finally started walking almost directly away from me.  Slightly quartering to the left.  

I put another round in him at this point.  It was a 45gr PPU Softpoint.  It went in midway between the ham and the last rib.  It did not exit.  The deer walked another 15 to 20 yds and fell.

I breathed a sigh of relief.  Afterwards I climbed down and headed his way.  When I got to within 20yds the deer tried to get.  I put another soft point just under his eye coming out just under the skull on the other side.

When skinning the deer I found that the first shot was definitely fatal but I didn't get the trauma I expected from the TSX.  It left a dime size hole entering and exiting.  It basically just put a hole through the lungs with a little bruising around it.

The second shot left a lot of trauma in the guts and liver but didn't make it much further than that.  I didn't even check on the last shot.

I think im going to try a bullet with a little bit lighter construction before I make a decision on whether the hornet is suitable for deer or not.  

I don't think 2800fps is fast enough for the barnes to shine.  I think im going for a lung/heart shot with the Softpoints next time.  

Stay tuned, pics to come.


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## GunnSmokeer

*not good*

the deer died, but that story sounds like what the Tom Hanks character said to the outraged warden in that scene from The Green Mile:

Warden:  "How in the name of God can you call THAT a "successful" execution???"

Paul:   "Edward Delacroix IS dead."


I'd say that the .22 Hornet is a varmint round and a poor choice for deer, even though with the right shot from the right angle from a moderate distance and excellent bullet placement, it will work most of the time.


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## bowbuck

Congrats on the deer.  If you had waited thirty minutes before going after him, do you think he would be dead?


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## dtala

try a bigger gun, jeeze fella. I'lll never understand the thought process that makes folks try to use sub marginal rounds to kill stuff with....


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## Flaustin1

Ive heard that before and thats exact reason im even trying the hornet.  I will do it again.  The result will be a dead deer.  Hopefully one shot next time though.  I think with a bullet more suited expansion rate will perform better.  Folks that don't like it don't have to follow the thread.


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## Flaustin1

bowbuck said:


> Congrats on the deer.  If you had waited thirty minutes before going after him, do you think he would be dead?



I have no doubt, that have I waited the deer would've been done for fairly close to where I shot him.  I put a hole through both lungs.  The blood trail was as good as ive ever seen. I just got nervous about the small round and put another in him.


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## HandgunHTR

The first shot killed him.  You just didn't give him the time to die.

A quarter sized hole through the lungs = dead deer.


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## huntingonthefly

My nephew's 5 yr old son took his first deer Sat. with a 22 hornet, a doe at 75 yds.


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## Fuller

HandgunHTR said:


> The first shot killed him.  You just didn't give him the time to die.
> 
> A quarter sized hole through the lungs = dead deer.



But that same shot from a larger caliber rifle would have meant a lot less suffering for the deer. They are living creatures. Not target practice. I'm not trying to start the argument. Just expressing my view.  Carry a gun that will kill the animal quickly. Just my opinion.


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## GTHunter007

I feel it my duty to dispatch my target as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Anything short of that I have failed on my end.  I simply don't know what to say about a .22 Hornet shot to the lungs.  Head/neck maybe.  No doubt the animal will die, but how quickly and how far can he travel.  6 minutes shot through both lungs is NOT efficient.


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## Gaducker

Head shot.


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## burkehunter

Don't they make ballistic gel or something for this reason?  I'm sorry but wow.


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## NCummins

Congrats on torturing a deer for 6 minutes.


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## Klondike

Good to know this debate will never end.  I get made fun of when I shoot my 338 win mag at whitetails on the other end.


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## Jed

I use a 7mm.  Shot a 200lb 8 pointer friday night.  Heart shot.  Buck dropped on the spot.  No exit wound.  Why risk a lingering death or non fatal wound with a small round that doesnt dissipate energy in the animal?


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## NCummins

I could see if you had a hornet and nothing else, but to use it just because just seems wrong. I'm sure when Flaustin gets the right bullet with the right speed it will work out just as good as a .223 and similar bullets, but why? It's legal though so have fun man. What I think doesn't matter what so ever, enjoy yourself. Everybody gets so bent out of shape about what some stranger thinks but in the end, if you are not breaking the law and I don't personally have to watch a deer die a slow and agonizing death then I don't really care. I believe it is wrong, but if you where a friend of mine telling me this, I wouldn't try to talk you out of it, you're a grown man, capable of making you're own decisions, I just don't understand the logic behind it really.


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## wiggywigg71

I have a friend who uses a slower round(1800 fps) but same size bullet. He hits them in the neck and drops every one of them in their tracks. He has even shot one at over a hundred yards through the heart and it only ran 20 or so yards and piled up. The right shot placement can and will put one down in it's tracks.


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## tree cutter 08

All you guys doggin about the caliber I want to know if you bow hunt? Ain't a dang bit of difference. Way more deer have been lost and suffered to a bow than any 22 caliber centerfire have. Ive had good results with the soft points.

I'm gona start asking why on all these post to the guys that shoot magnum calibers. Its legal to use a 300 mag on these little ga deer but why make a mess and waste so much meat????


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## whitetaildoe85

tree cutter 08 said:


> All you guys doggin about the caliber I want to know if you bow hunt? Ain't a dang bit of difference. Way more deer have been lost and suffered to a bow than any 22 caliber centerfire have. Ive had good results with the soft points.
> 
> I'm gona start asking why on all these post to the guys that shoot magnum calibers. Its legal to use a 300 mag on these little ga deer but why make a mess and waste so  much meat????



Average broadhead cuts 1.5 inch or more. But yes I am sure more deer are lost due to marginal archery shots than shots made with a .22 .....mostly because most people have more sense than to gamble with such a small caliber . I agree 300 is overkill somewhat. But i dont trust anything less than 30 cal. 308 30-30 30.06 ect.


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## Bone Collector

You can kill a deer with a pellet rifle too! I just don't see the point other than trying to prove a point. If you've got a larger caliber rifle, then that's what you should be using. This is not quite like someone trying to catch a 1,000 lb marlin on 4 lb test line. If a marlin breaks the line, it will surely live without debilitation. If the deer survives after the shot it will likely suffer a while. It's sounds like an experiment to satisfy curiosity. The experiment results indicate the round will kill a deer, but is very suboptimal. The .22 Hornet is intended for varmints, small game, and predators.

BC


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## austanj

WHY? Why use that small of a round? It's not ethical. You want to put that deer out as soon as possible. If it's your only gun and are depended on meet that's  different, but if you have a larger caliber rifle use it.


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## hylander

tree cutter 08 said:


> All you guys doggin about the caliber I want to know if you bow hunt? Ain't a dang bit of difference. Way more deer have been lost and suffered to a bow than any 22 caliber centerfire have. Ive had good results with the soft points.
> 
> I'm gona start asking why on all these post to the guys that shoot magnum calibers. Its legal to use a 300 mag on these little ga deer but why make a mess and waste so much meat????



Tree cutter, have you seen what a mechanical tri-blade can do to a deer and the hole it makes?


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## Chase4556

Hylander, have you seen a deer shot with a bow run for more than 6 minutes? I have. So, the point of the deer "suffering for 6 minutes" is no different than sticking one with an arrow. Still hits both lungs, so the deer will die, and both usually take a little longer. Granted, some bow shots will drop a deer in a few seconds, but plenty of shots take a little longer.

Y'all seriously need to stop getting so bent out of shape. Its like a bunch of children. The deer is dead, nothing was wasted, and the animal suffered no more than if would have had an arrow gone through it. And he broke no laws. If you don't like it, move along. No one really cares to hear your moral high ground preaching. Save that junk for when someone is breaking the law.


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## Nascar Nutt

NCummins said:


> Congrats on torturing a deer for 6 minutes.



It's stupid comments like this that just kill me!


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## hunter rich

Chase4556 said:


> Hylander, have you seen a deer shot with a bow run for more than 6 minutes? I have. So, the point of the deer "suffering for 6 minutes" is no different than sticking one with an arrow. Still hits both lungs, so the deer will die, and both usually take a little longer. Granted, some bow shots will drop a deer in a few seconds, but plenty of shots take a little longer.
> 
> Y'all seriously need to stop getting so bent out of shape. Its like a bunch of children. The deer is dead, nothing was wasted, and the animal suffered no more than if would have had an arrow gone through it. And he broke no laws. If you don't like it, move along. No one really cares to hear your moral high ground preaching. Save that junk for when someone is breaking the law.



Hear, Hear!!!

I was thinking the same thing, what about the folks who shoot a deer and track it for an hour then leave saying they are going to come back in the morning and pick up the trail?  Oh, it's okay because you shot him with your 30-30 ?  Haters gonna hate....


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## nickel back

....I'm sorry man but why?


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## meherg

high shoulder shot that is all you need to do


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## miles58

I have questions.

I can't remember seeing a 2800 FPS bullet go through lungs reasonably centered that didn't shred them.  What you describe doesn't match what I expect out of that speed.  I have seen 30-30s, 32 Specials, 35 Remingtons and a fair number of examples of heavy slow bullets do that sort of damage with lead core bullets that did not kill deer any faster and did not produce any more internal damage.

How do you know you had 2800 FPS?

Was it 2800 FPS at the muzzle?  

How far was the deer?

Is there any possibility you hit a small piece of brush or a grass/weed stem on the way to the deer?

Speed Kills.  PERIOD!  You run a properly expanded bullet through lungs at that speed, you get shredded lungs.  Big bullet, little bullet makes no difference.  That's a function of the turbulence created by the pressure change as the bullet passes through at speed.  Lung tissue is comparatively very fragile.

Barnes bullets have shown me that after hitting something as insignificant as a target on a plastic political sign that they can tumble and then because of the drag created by the partially open petals restabilize traveling backwards.  They only rarely go close to where they were originally pointed when that happens, but I have a big enough collection of them that hit butt first behind targets that I have no doubt at all it happens.

Barnes bullets also have been reported to not expand properly.  That's something that my experience with almost seventy deer killed with them has yet to replicate and  don't know as I believe it at face value, but in this case I would have to consider it a possibility.

Before I got to peeing down my leg at someone for using too small a gun and insulting him by questioning his ethics and worse, I be thinking about the fact that he ran a bullet ALL THE WAY THROUGH the right part of a deer and got what is a pretty acceptable result by anyone's standards, and certainly a far superior result to the many threads posted by people who lost deer they shot for whatever reason.

SPEED KILLS!  In my experience it's not possible to run a bullet through lung tissue at that kind of speed without creating a lot more damage.  UNLESS SOMETHING ELSE WENT SIDEWAYS.  What he described is .22 LR performance but for the fact it went all the way through.  I am pretty certain a .22LR would penetrate all the way through and perform just about like what he described were it loaded with copper bullets.  There's a world of difference between a .22LR at about 1200 FPS and a properly loaded Hornet at 2800 FPS

Find out what happened here.  Put Flaustin1 on the dime and get all of the information he has.  If he did the experiment without gathering all the data it produced jump on him for that, he deserves it in that case.  If he abandons a well considered rifle and load based on a single example he's no better than any of the people willing to dump on him that have never put together a well considered test and carried it out.


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## mature buck

yotes love for people to shoot deer with small cal. maybe if u shoot fawns they would not go as far.


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## dubblebubble

*magnum*



tree cutter 08 said:


> All you guys doggin about the caliber I want to know if you bow hunt? Ain't a dang bit of difference. Way more deer have been lost and suffered to a bow than any 22 caliber centerfire have. Ive had good results with the soft points.
> 
> I'm gona start asking why on all these post to the guys that shoot magnum calibers. Its legal to use a 300 mag on these little ga deer but why make a mess and waste so much meat????



I shoot a 7mm mag, everybody says its too much gun, I've killed 40+ deer with it and don't waste anymore meat then my buddy does with his .308 or my son with his .243 and I normally don't have to track them.


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## rnelson5

All the peoole whining about him killing the deer sound like PETA members for crying out loud!!! If you kill a deer then it has suffered no matter what. I had to chase down a deer that someone had shot with a 30-06 last weekend and put another bullet in her......... The day before i shot one with my AR-15 and it dropped in its tracks........ My point is not that i am a great shot but that you can not rule out human error. If you have never made a "bad" shot then you haven't been hunting very long. A well placed shot with any legal caliber will result in a dead deer and a poor placed shot with any caliber could result in a lost deer. It is part of hunting.


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## JohnK

I hope this is a joke....and some responses, PETA really? I do believe I'm done with the deer forum much like the political forum. This is getting like Jerry Springer


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## mose

NCummins said:


> Congrats on torturing a deer for 6 minutes.



^^^


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## gilream

A 22 LR will kill a deer as well...but as a sportsman, that's no reason to use it.  The 22 Hornet was designed 90 years ago  as an inexpensive varmint cartridge for use at short to moderate ranges. If you must use it to feed your family why not shoot the deer in the head or the neck for a quick, clean kill?  I like to see a deer go down quickly and you can not realize that result with a lung shot from a 22 Hornet at 2500 feet per second.  How's this for a nightmare?...encounter the buck of a lifetime with only a 22 Hornet in your hands.


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## duckhunter2.0

This forum has almost become completely unbearable....


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## NCHillbilly

Bigger caliber doesn't mean DRT necessarily, either. I shot a buck last Saturday with a .300 Winmag and a 180 grain Barnes TTSX at a little over a hundred yards. It was a perfect double-lung shot with no bone contact. There was a chunk of lung the size of my thumb laying there at the shot site. The deer went probably 150 yards or more, with only tiny specks of blood widely scattered for the first hundred. The entrance wound was almost invisible, and the exit wound was no more than dime-sized with very little internal trauma. Don't tell me I ain't getting enough speed from the .300.  There just wasn't anything but soft-tissue contact, and the bullet never expanded. I actually see much better results on lung shots with slow, heavy muzzleloader bullets or .30-30 type rounds than with the superfast magnum projectiles judging from thirty-some years of shooting deer with all kinds of weapons. 

I shot a deer that morning with the same combo that hit scapula, and the deer dropped like a sack of taters and was missing nearly half its offside shoulder. I preferred the shot on the one that ran, because I didn't lose meat. 

Would I deer hunt with a .22 Hornet if I had a better option on hand? Probably not. Could I kill deer with one if I needed to? Sure. But I would be picky with the shots I took.


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## Jeff Raines

NCHillbilly said:


> Bigger caliber doesn't mean DRT necessarily, either. I shot a buck last Saturday with a .300 Winmag and a 180 grain Barnes TTSX at a little over a hundred yards. It was a perfect double-lung shot with no bone contact. There was a chunk of lung the size of my thumb laying there at the shot site. The deer went probably 150 yards or more, with only tiny specks of blood widely scattered for the first hundred. The entrance wound was almost invisible, and the exit wound was no more than dime-sized with very little internal trauma. Don't tell me I ain't getting enough speed from the .300.  There just wasn't anything but soft-tissue contact, and the bullet never expanded. I actually see much better results on lung shots with slow, heavy muzzleloader bullets or .30-30 type rounds than with the superfast magnum projectiles judging from thirty-some years of shooting deer with all kinds of weapons.


I seen the same thing happen with my dad and his 7 mag.Bullet never touched a bone thru both lungs.We did not find that deer until a few days later.
My brother in law shot a deer broad side at 30 yards with a .243Bullet hit a rib and deflected back thru the guts never coming out.Got lucky and found that deer by smell.


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## GunnSmokeer

*6 minutes of suffering*

I think 6 minutes of suffering is too much if it was well within your power to prevent it.

On the other hand, if you use enough gun and the correct ammo and your rifle was recently confirmed to be accurate when you checked the zero and you took a shot that should have been well-within your capabilities...

... but for some reason you flinched or the breeze blew too strong at that moment or the deer took a step just as you squeezed the trigger...

and you gut-shot that animal, and it suffered for 30 minutes before you caught up with it and gave it a second shot...

that deer's suffering was not "too much." It was within the range of what is common and acceptable in the hunting community.  BUT THAT ACCEPTANCE of a beautiful, noble, inoffensive animal suffering, whether it's for 6 minutes or 60, is BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION that you were not negligent in your gear, your methods, or your choice to pull that trigger when presented with that shot.

EXAMPLE:  Imagine I normally can keep a 6" group at 200 yards and a 12" group at 300 yards.   I see a deer at 400 yards.  I aim the correct distance over his back and take the shot, knowing that my shot will land somewhere within 24" of my aiming point, and HOPING that it will hit the right spot in the vitals.

If I hit the right spot, my boldness is praised.  I've got bragging rights. Lady Luck favored me.

If I hit a foot low and to one side and pop a hole through the deer's guts, and it runs fast and far and escapes, only to die a slow lingering death a few days later, I've been negligent and should be condemned as an unethical hunter. I rolled the dice with an innocent animal's suffering on the line and I LOST. Luck was not on my side. Luck did not save me from the consequences of my recklessness.

YET, I maintain that if I took the shot at only 200 yards, where I could reasonably expect to hit the vitals with no problem, and I just happened to break the shot at the wrong moment when I thought I was just taking up the slack on the trigger...  that's an accident. Not blameworthy. Because my plans and best intentions were to do all I could.


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## LittleDrummerBoy

If you must use a 22 Hornet, then a jacketed lead bullet with moderate expansion and good penetration would be a much better choice than the TSX.  I would recommend the 55 grain Hornady Spire Point.


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## billy62green

Bottom line is its hunting and its not a perfect science. Its not on a perfectly open range with exact 50 and 100 yard markings on a 72 degree cloudless day. Animals move, finch, etc., there are unexpected gusts of wind, a twig you just didn't see, having to twist into strange turns of the body to make the shot, and an untold host of other things that make hunting what it is. I've made a near perfect chest shot on a deer with a 3006 180 gr and find the deer down 20 minutes later, but still alive. If its been deemed a legal round and someone wants to use it, so be it. I like to take my .223 out a few times during deer season. Why? Because its legal and I just like that rifle is good enough for me. Making yourself proficient with your rifle is something everyone should do regardless of caliber.


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## Hornet22

Love it.


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## GunnSmokeer

*legal*

at one point in the past, I might have thought that any gun and ammo combination that was "legal" under state law must be at least "okay" to use.  Because the legislature, or the DNR, studied this issue and took testimony from experts and evaluated everything when coming up with a list of what calibers are OK and which are not OK for what kind of animals, right?

WRONG.  
Georgia's minimum caliber law is hardly any better than having no law at all, except that so many people have .22 rimfires that I suppose it's useful to tell people not to hunt deer with those.

For example, while the .22 magnum is banned for deer hunting, a nearly identical centerfire round 5.7 x 28mm is perfectly legal.  Same bullet diameter, same weight, and nearly the same velocity (both push 30 grain bullets at around 2400 f.p.s.).

Actually, in Georgia you can hunt deer with a pistol, with no caliber restriction other than centerfire at least .22 caliber.  So a .25 acp "Baby Browning" could be your deer gun. It's legal to use, so it must be moral and ethical to use, too?

Maybe I should put my Kel-Tec -32 for deer. It would be a good challenge.  3" barrel and double-action trigger pull and all that. No sights.  But if I hit the deer in the right spot from 25 yards or less, it should be fatal, after some period of waiting.


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## NCHillbilly

GunnSmokeer said:


> at one point in the past, I might have thought that any gun and ammo combination that was "legal" under state law must be at least "okay" to use.  Because the legislature, or the DNR, studied this issue and took testimony from experts and evaluated everything when coming up with a list of what calibers are OK and which are not OK for what kind of animals, right?
> 
> WRONG.
> Georgia's minimum caliber law is hardly any better than having no law at all, except that so many people have .22 rimfires that I suppose it's useful to tell people not to hunt deer with those.
> 
> For example, while the .22 magnum is banned for deer hunting, a nearly identical centerfire round 5.7 x 28mm is perfectly legal.  Same bullet diameter, same weight, and nearly the same velocity (both push 30 grain bullets at around 2400 f.p.s.).
> 
> Actually, in Georgia you can hunt deer with a pistol, with no caliber restriction other than centerfire at least .22 caliber.  So a .25 acp "Baby Browning" could be your deer gun. It's legal to use, so it must be moral and ethical to use, too?
> 
> Maybe I should put my Kel-Tec -32 for deer. It would be a good challenge.  3" barrel and double-action trigger pull and all that. No sights.  But if I hit the deer in the right spot from 25 yards or less, it should be fatal, after some period of waiting.



You can legally hunt deer with a .22 LR in NC as far as I can tell. I don't know anybody who does, though. But I've seen a deer killed with one many years ago by somebody who was squirrel hunting and the deer walked out and he shot it in the head. It was very dead.


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## Flaustin1

miles58 said:


> I have questions.
> 
> I can't remember seeing a 2800 FPS bullet go through lungs reasonably centered that didn't shred them.  What you describe doesn't match what I expect out of that speed.  I have seen 30-30s, 32 Specials, 35 Remingtons and a fair number of examples of heavy slow bullets do that sort of damage with lead core bullets that did not kill deer any faster and did not produce any more internal damage.
> 
> How do you know you had 2800 FPS?
> 
> Was it 2800 FPS at the muzzle?
> 
> How far was the deer?
> 
> Is there any possibility you hit a small piece of brush or a grass/weed stem on the way to the deer?
> 
> Speed Kills.  PERIOD!  You run a properly expanded bullet through lungs at that speed, you get shredded lungs.  Big bullet, little bullet makes no difference.  That's a function of the turbulence created by the pressure change as the bullet passes through at speed.  Lung tissue is comparatively very fragile.
> 
> Barnes bullets have shown me that after hitting something as insignificant as a target on a plastic political sign that they can tumble and then because of the drag created by the partially open petals restabilize traveling backwards.  They only rarely go close to where they were originally pointed when that happens, but I have a big enough collection of them that hit butt first behind targets that I have no doubt at all it happens.
> 
> Barnes bullets also have been reported to not expand properly.  That's something that my experience with almost seventy deer killed with them has yet to replicate and  don't know as I believe it at face value, but in this case I would have to consider it a possibility.
> 
> Before I got to peeing down my leg at someone for using too small a gun and insulting him by questioning his ethics and worse, I be thinking about the fact that he ran a bullet ALL THE WAY THROUGH the right part of a deer and got what is a pretty acceptable result by anyone's standards, and certainly a far superior result to the many threads posted by people who lost deer they shot for whatever reason.
> 
> SPEED KILLS!  In my experience it's not possible to run a bullet through lung tissue at that kind of speed without creating a lot more damage.  UNLESS SOMETHING ELSE WENT SIDEWAYS.  What he described is .22 LR performance but for the fact it went all the way through.  I am pretty certain a .22LR would penetrate all the way through and perform just about like what he described were it loaded with copper bullets.  There's a world of difference between a .22LR at about 1200 FPS and a properly loaded Hornet at 2800 FPS
> 
> Find out what happened here.  Put Flaustin1 on the dime and get all of the information he has.  If he did the experiment without gathering all the data it produced jump on him for that, he deserves it in that case.  If he abandons a well considered rifle and load based on a single example he's no better than any of the people willing to dump on him that have never put together a well considered test and carried it out.



Miles, i was hoping you would chime in.  I know that im running them at 2800 because i shot ten rounds through a chrono, ten feet in front of the muzzle.  I seriously expected to see more damage from the barnes.

The shot was taken at 60yds, perfectly broadside, at a pretty steep downward angle.  The lungs didnt jelly or shred as i expected.  There was about a 3" diameter circle of bruising around the hole on the onside lung and about the same on the exit side.  It was only smaller because it exited low in  the lung and there was no tissue there to bruise.

Another observation is that the bullet entered and exited without ever hitting any bone.  Just skin, light muscle tissue, lung and so on out the other side.  Had i hit a rib, things may have turned out a little different.  

Seeing the penetration that i got,  im seriously thinking of taking a high shoulder shot on the next deer i kill with it.  I think that will help the bullet expand more.  I have no doubt that the bullet expanded to some degree,  but i think putting a little bone on the recieving end of the bullet will help alot.

After alot of thought last night and today, ive decided to not give up on the barnes bullets.  Im just gonna change my shot placement and see what kind of results i get.


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## JBranch

Flaustin1, 
Congrats on a fine deer kill. I applaud you for posting the story on here and enjoyed reading it. I think that your bullet selection may have been the cause of what you were seeing. Barnes X bullets are excellent penetrators, however you get minimal expansion at best.  I think that the soft points might be the way to go also. If you want to see the bullet debate between Barnes and Berger, who are on opposite sides of bullet expansion, search for it on the Long Range Hunting Forum

As for the caliber selection debate, it is a legal caliber to hunt with, not my personal choice, but neither is the 30-30. I personally see nothing wrong with anything you did. 

Change bullets and go out and kill another!!!!


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## Flaustin1

For the folks that keep asking why why why, well heres the reason.  Alot of people have children, girls, small framed and not very strong.  Alot of them would like to hunt but are to recoil/blast sensitive to become proficient with a larger caliber.

Im testing the hornet to help some of these people out.  Im also doing it to either prove or disprove a lot of the reasoning behind people believing it is sub par.

Regardless of whether you want to call this unethical or whatever choice of words you wanna use.  Im going to keep doing it untill i prove to myself and a few others, that it either is or isnt an appropriate round.

Bottom line is this, Im legal,  the deer never made it out of sight,  the blood trail from shot to recovery was good, and the deer got a truck ride.

Regardless of what happens while im in the field with the hornet, i will post it and post the truth whether its good or bad.  

Hopefully, I can gather some more results wednesday.


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## hunter rich

Congrats on the deer, and thanks for posting on here.  I like the idea of you showing/telling us what happened and trying to figure out why it didn't happen like you expected.  Don't sweat the idgits posting negatively, these are the same ones who preach about not killing basket 8s or spikes. bunch of "holier than thou" folks that want to feel superior.

This is supposed to be a brotherhood of hunters, we can't keep attacking each other on things like this. If its legal then there is no reason for anyone to be attacked about it. Figure out what happend and go get another one. 

Looking forward to the pics.


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## Jeff Phillips

Flaustin1 said:


> Im testing the hornet to help some of these people out.  Im also doing it to either prove or disprove a lot of the reasoning behind people believing it is sub par.



Now that your experiment proved the round is sub par, 1 through the lungs, 1 in the guts, and a head shot is sub par performance, experiment with a deer appropriate round!


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## miles58

Flaustin1 said:


> Miles, i was hoping you would chime in.  I know that im running them at 2800 because i shot ten rounds through a chrono, ten feet in front of the muzzle.  I seriously expected to see more damage from the barnes.
> 
> The shot was taken at 60yds, perfectly broadside, at a pretty steep downward angle.  The lungs didnt jelly or shred as i expected.  There was about a 3" diameter circle of bruising around the hole on the onside lung and about the same on the exit side.  It was only smaller because it exited low in  the lung and there was no tissue there to bruise.
> 
> Another observation is that the bullet entered and exited without ever hitting any bone.  Just skin, light muscle tissue, lung and so on out the other side.  Had i hit a rib, things may have turned out a little different.
> 
> Seeing the penetration that i got,  im seriously thinking of taking a high shoulder shot on the next deer i kill with it.  I think that will help the bullet expand more.  I have no doubt that the bullet expanded to some degree,  but i think putting a little bone on the recieving end of the bullet will help alot.
> 
> After alot of thought last night and today, ive decided to not give up on the barnes bullets.  Im just gonna change my shot placement and see what kind of results i get.



First off, Barnes bullets are not impressed with bone.  You might get some bone fragments that do a little secondary damage, but it won't make any difference in the expansion and consequent cavitation of the bullet.  That's just life in the copper bullet world.  If they hit wet tissue like hide they start to and usually expand well, if the don't they do not tend to.  They can expand quite poorly when hitting dry dirt or wood.

Second, when I have seen that kind of wound channel in the past, it has been associated with under 2400 FPS impacts.  Not the case here.  The TSX 45 grain is a flat base bullet and when expanded both the front and the back end of the bullet should be creating good cavitation at >2500 FPS.  The size of the hole in the hide is meaningless with copper bullets.  I have seen really massive internal damage with small or even caliber size holes in the hide.

I don't see a high shoulder shot telling you (and us) much useful.  It will undoubtedly drop Bambi on the spot.  The wound damage may not mean much that's useful.

I've seen a lot of deer shot and sustain wound channels like you describe.  At that speed, the one thing I'd like to see by way of comparison would be what does a 45 grain TSX do at the same speed out of a 9 twist barrel.  I have my suspicions that a 9 twist barrel instead of the 14 twist barrel common to most Hornets might make a lot of difference.  I have a 22-250 that I think is 14 twist, and a couple of .223s that are 9 twist.  I might just load them to the same velocity and shoot a few water jugs.  If I am right, a person might well be able to see the difference with the water.

Like I said earlier...  That's not at all unusual performance for a 30-30 class rifle.  Nor is it all that unusual a response from the deer.  Sometimes they run and aggravate the bleeding a lot.  I have seen more deer than I care to have seen shot with 30-30s and heavy bullets out of .308s, 300 Savage, 30-06 and the like that make it a few hundred yards on a little bit of lung capacity.  It's the same reason why bow hunters lose so many.  They just don't have the ability to do such a good job of dropping blood pressure to zero instantly.  Blow out the lungs and great vessels and Bambi literally just cannot make it much more than fifty yards.  In every case where what looked like a "good" hit allowed the deer to go more than a hundred yards, I have found that there was lung and heart capacity still present to some degree.  I have never found a deer to make it past 100 yards with the lungs turned wholly into red soup.  Adrenaline or no, they cannot run far with no oxygen to supply the brain and muscles.

If my suspicions are correct, it's not the caliber, but rather the twist combined with the velocity that's the problem.  Crank the velocity up to 22-250 speed and you get a lot more RPMs than you can out of a Hornet.  I know I have been so thoroughly disappointed with what I can do with a 12 or 14 twist .223 that I spent the money to buy a new barrel and have it screwed on.   In particular, a copper bullet might be much more sensitive in terms of performance on game to the RPMs it's turning than the FPS it's traveling.  That would go some ways to explaining why I see so little difference in deer shot at 25 feet with copper and deer shot at 200 yards with copper, as well as the similarity in wounds between big calibers and tiny ones.


----------



## godogs57

dtala said:


> try a bigger gun, jeeze fella. I'lll never understand the thought process that makes folks try to use sub marginal rounds to kill stuff with....



Quote of the year right here. I too can not understand the number of folks on here wanting to try what amounts to, a "stunt" caliber to see if they can take a deer. The hunter is trying to cleanly and humanely take a living breathing animal. Folks, that animal deserves better than that.

Not part of this argument by any means, but, the "head shot" guys are the same way in my eyes. Just another stunt, that when things go wrong, guess who suffers? The animal...the one that deserves our respect and BEST efforts to cleanly take him. 

Sorry to rant, but if a 22 hornet is all the recoil you can take, then you might be better served to limit your hunting to squirrels, foxes, etc.


----------



## bowbuck

For those that cant imagine having the buck of a lifetime come out while holding a .22 Hornet you have practiced a lot with. I want you to think how Mr. Jordan felt that morning holding his 25-20 Winchester.  For you babies, Google it.


----------



## Jeff Phillips

bowbuck said:


> For those that cant imagine having the buck of a lifetime come out while holding a .22 Hornet you have practiced a lot with. I want you to think how Mr. Jordan felt that morning holding his 25-20 Winchester.  For you babies, Google it.



Yep, he had to shoot that buck 4 times, the last one after he had blood trailed it for a considerable distance and only caught up with it because the buck was swimming across the river. 

What was the point you were trying to make?


----------



## asc

Enjoyed the thread. Hope to see you try again and please post up results.


----------



## GunnSmokeer

hunter rich said:


> ...  Don't sweat the idgits posting negatively... If its legal then there is no reason for anyone to be attacked about it....
> 
> .



If it's legal, it must be ethical and moral, with no grounds for criticism, right?



That's an idgiotic claim if ever I heared one.

Would you care to address my prior post above where I proposed to hunt deer with a .32 acp or .25 acp pocket pistol? That's legal. They're over .22 caliber and they're centerfire rounds.


----------



## snuffy

godogs57 said:


> Quote of the year right here. I too can not understand the number of folks on here wanting to try what amounts to, a "stunt" caliber to see if they can take a deer. The hunter is trying to cleanly and humanely take a living breathing animal. Folks, that animal deserves better than that.
> 
> Not part of this argument by any means, but, the "head shot" guys are the same way in my eyes. Just another stunt, that when things go wrong, guess who suffers? The animal...the one that deserves our respect and BEST efforts to cleanly take him.
> 
> Sorry to rant, but if a 22 hornet is all the recoil you can take, then you might be better served to limit your hunting to squirrels, foxes, etc.



Well put!


----------



## Reel Nauti

You should check out the waterfowl forum.  It's an absolute joke!


JohnK said:


> I hope this is a joke....and some responses, PETA really? I do believe I'm done with the deer forum much like the political forum. This is getting like Jerry Springer


----------



## hunter rich

GunnSmokeer said:


> If it's legal, it must be ethical and moral, with no grounds for criticism, right?
> 
> 
> 
> That's an idgiotic claim if ever I heared one.
> 
> Would you care to address my prior post above where I proposed to hunt deer with a .32 acp or .25 acp pocket pistol? That's legal. They're over .22 caliber and they're centerfire rounds.



Go for it...If you think its going to achieve what you want. He has put time into this and tested the round until he felt he could dispatch a deer.  He did just that.  If the deer would have ran farther and exerted itself it would have died in less than those "6 minutes" ( we all know how hard it is to judge time in these circumstances. Unless he looked at his watch then pulled the trigger and then checked his watch consistently...) Like others have said here on Woody's - "Haters gonna hate..."


----------



## Luvntheoutdors

:


----------



## kmckinnie

Interesting thread. I have a hornet also. I think we need more data. I'll try it out on a 200pd buck and see what happens. With factory ammo 45 gr soft point.


----------



## 660griz

tree cutter 08 said:


> All you guys doggin about the caliber I want to know if you bow hunt?



I do. To extend my hunting season.


----------



## Huntinfool

....so will a perfectly thrown rock.  

I'm failing to see the relevance of what will and what won't kill something.

The question that should be asked is what will most effectively and quickly kill something.  Most....being the operative word in that last sentence.

Testing the effective limits of a firearm on a live animal....well...I'm sure you can guess what I think about it.


----------



## Buzz

My father grew up in poor rural Georgia and killed a pile of deer with a .22 rimfire as did his friends.  Why?  Because it was all they had and could afford.    You started your posts earlier in the year saying that you were on a mission to prove it was enough gun.    Why on earth you'd want to prove to a bunch of people you don't know on a shooting forum that a gun is enough is beyond me.    Whether you feel it was a stunt or not, it looks like it from here.

I'm not going to bash you but I will say you are very fortunate, and many could  say lucky, that the deer who lived for 6m stood nearby behind a thicket instead of running to the next zip code.    I've killed a lot of deer with a lot of different chamberings / gauges / bullet types / arrow types / etc.,  but the older I get the less trouble I try to make myself.    That doesn't mean I promote using cannons, I killed one with a .223 just last year, but it does mean I'm certainly going to error on the side of caution.

Of course a .22 caliber centerfire will kill a deer,  but obviously you know there are better choices and you have better choices.   Just like Dtala said from the beginning, I don't really get the point of proving how small a round works - you don't get a special ribbon for a smaller gun.    One of my favorite hunting rifles is a .243 Winchester and I know for a fact if I put the bullet in the same spot you describe the internals are going to suffer massive damage and the deer will be dead in seconds instead of 6 minutes.  

If you are going to shoot a TSX, especially in such a small caliber I would recommend drilling the shoulders.     The deer isn't going to stop it, and it's not going to stand there scared and wheezing for 6 minutes.    Longest shot I ever made on a deer was 425y with a 168g TSX out of a .300 Win Mag.   The bullet certainly expanded and without a doubt your hornet had more speed.


----------



## SlowRain

godogs57 said:


> Quote of the year right here. I too can not understand the number of folks on here wanting to try what amounts to, a "stunt" caliber to see if they can take a deer. The hunter is trying to cleanly and humanely take a living breathing animal. Folks, that animal deserves better than that.
> 
> Not part of this argument by any means, but, the "head shot" guys are the same way in my eyes. Just another stunt, that when things go wrong, guess who suffers? The animal...the one that deserves our respect and BEST efforts to cleanly take him.
> 
> Sorry to rant, but if a 22 hornet is all the recoil you can take, then you might be better served to limit your hunting to squirrels, foxes, etc.



Best observation on here.

I guess if you were in a true survival situation...then sure...in fact use a 22 LR if you have to.  But if that isn't the case...what is the point trying to be illustrated???  And what is the logic hoping to be shown in trying to illustrate it??

Personal opinion....if the answer is "so I can prove it works", "because I wanted to", or any other self-serving reason...well...maybe an ethics class might be a consideration.  Flame away.


----------



## ASH556

I think there's a lot of un-called for negativity being thrown around in this thread.  The man killed and recovered his deer.  That's good.  He's learning about his caliber of choice and we're all learning a little bit about bullet construction.  

Miles, thank you especially for your input.

I'll go ahead and share something that I was going to keep to myself in hopes that it will help all of us learn:

Saturday a week ago I shot about a 100lb-125lb doe with my 10.3" barreled AR15 pushing a 55gr Barnes TSX bullet.  Why?  Because I love the gun, it's the rifle I shoot the most with and have the utmost confidence in, it's compact and lightweight, and I wanted to see for myself how a .223 and the highly-praised Barnes bullet would work.

I'll echo what Buzz said above, 





			
				Buzz said:
			
		

> If you are going to shoot a TSX, especially in such a small caliber I would recommend drilling the shoulders. The deer isn't going to stop it, and it's not going to stand there scared and wheezing for 6 minutes.



I shot that doe straight through the back of the lungs and liver.  She dropped immediately.  I was impressed for about 90 seconds.  Then she stood up, wobbled, and started walking off.  As she was headed towards their rather thick bedding area nearby I let her hold another.  She dropped again, then got back up and started walking again.  The same process happened as I dumped 4 rounds total (the initial shot and 3 follow-ups) into this poor doe.  After round 4, she stayed down.  The lungs exhibited no gelatin effects, just nice, clean holes that looked like they were cut with scissors, and minimal bruising.  The blood trail was very poor at first and obviously got better the more holes I punched in her.  All 4 shots were lung/liver shots.  The first shot was at 50 yds and the last was at about 75.  

If you're going to shoot a deer with a high-velocity small caliber and a Barnes bullet (IE, no fragmentation) You need to incapacitate the heart or CNS.  These things don't do enough lung damage to drop a deer like you'd expect a rifle too.  It's basically the same result as bow-hunting, but with an even smaller cutting diameter.

Here are pics of the deer and then a closeup of the lungs...you can see the darker, bruised tissue on the back side and the cleanly-cut portion of removed lungs:




Untitled by ASH556, on Flickr



Untitled by ASH556, on Flickr


----------



## Buzz

In comparison, here is a single shot from a 100g Partition out of a .243 Win at 2850 fps impact.

Deer lived about 10 seconds tops.







BTW - for the folks asking about bow hunting, that's a very different discussion.    Bows kill by exsanguination but even so, it's very common for a wide cutting broadhead to have them down inside of 100y.


----------



## ASH556

...fragmentation kills!


----------



## Flaustin1

Some of yall folks on here are obviously not reading all of my posts.


----------



## Flaustin1

miles58 said:


> First off, Barnes bullets are not impressed with bone.  You might get some bone fragments that do a little secondary damage, but it won't make any difference in the expansion and consequent cavitation of the bullet.  That's just life in the copper bullet world.  If they hit wet tissue like hide they start to and usually expand well, if the don't they do not tend to.  They can expand quite poorly when hitting dry dirt or wood.
> 
> Second, when I have seen that kind of wound channel in the past, it has been associated with under 2400 FPS impacts.  Not the case here.  The TSX 45 grain is a flat base bullet and when expanded both the front and the back end of the bullet should be creating good cavitation at >2500 FPS.  The size of the hole in the hide is meaningless with copper bullets.  I have seen really massive internal damage with small or even caliber size holes in the hide.
> 
> I don't see a high shoulder shot telling you (and us) much useful.  It will undoubtedly drop Bambi on the spot.  The wound damage may not mean much that's useful.
> 
> I've seen a lot of deer shot and sustain wound channels like you describe.  At that speed, the one thing I'd like to see by way of comparison would be what does a 45 grain TSX do at the same speed out of a 9 twist barrel.  I have my suspicions that a 9 twist barrel instead of the 14 twist barrel common to most Hornets might make a lot of difference.  I have a 22-250 that I think is 14 twist, and a couple of .223s that are 9 twist.  I might just load them to the same velocity and shoot a few water jugs.  If I am right, a person might well be able to see the difference with the water.
> 
> Like I said earlier...  That's not at all unusual performance for a 30-30 class rifle.  Nor is it all that unusual a response from the deer.  Sometimes they run and aggravate the bleeding a lot.  I have seen more deer than I care to have seen shot with 30-30s and heavy bullets out of .308s, 300 Savage, 30-06 and the like that make it a few hundred yards on a little bit of lung capacity.  It's the same reason why bow hunters lose so many.  They just don't have the ability to do such a good job of dropping blood pressure to zero instantly.  Blow out the lungs and great vessels and Bambi literally just cannot make it much more than fifty yards.  In every case where what looked like a "good" hit allowed the deer to go more than a hundred yards, I have found that there was lung and heart capacity still present to some degree.  I have never found a deer to make it past 100 yards with the lungs turned wholly into red soup.  Adrenaline or no, they cannot run far with no oxygen to supply the brain and muscles.
> 
> If my suspicions are correct, it's not the caliber, but rather the twist combined with the velocity that's the problem.  Crank the velocity up to 22-250 speed and you get a lot more RPMs than you can out of a Hornet.  I know I have been so thoroughly disappointed with what I can do with a 12 or 14 twist .223 that I spent the money to buy a new barrel and have it screwed on.   In particular, a copper bullet might be much more sensitive in terms of performance on game to the RPMs it's turning than the FPS it's traveling.  That would go some ways to explaining why I see so little difference in deer shot at 25 feet with copper and deer shot at 200 yards with copper, as well as the similarity in wounds between big calibers and tiny ones.



I agree with what youre saying.  The holes that i was refering to werent in the hide.  They were dime size or slightly bigger in the muscle between the ribs.  

I forgot to mention earlier that i very well could have hit a twig or something.  It was low light but i did look for limbs etc before i shot because i knew how important that shot was.  Anything can happen though.

I too kinda think that a 1:9 twist would produce different results.  Its an interesting thought.  Im going to chrono my loads again just to be on the safe side because i did change the seating depth afterwards.  My mistake.  I will let you know how it turns out.


----------



## Flaustin1

Jeff Phillips said:


> Now that your experiment proved the round is sub par, 1 through the lungs, 1 in the guts, and a head shot is sub par performance, experiment with a deer appropriate round!



1 example does not represent a conclusion.  I played the lotto once.  Won ten bucks.  That dont mean im gonna win ten bucks everytime.


----------



## billy62green

GunnSmokeer said:


> at one point in the past, I might have thought that any gun and ammo combination that was "legal" under state law must be at least "okay" to use.  Because the legislature, or the DNR, studied this issue and took testimony from experts and evaluated everything when coming up with a list of what calibers are OK and which are not OK for what kind of animals, right?
> 
> WRONG.
> Georgia's minimum caliber law is hardly any better than having no law at all, except that so many people have .22 rimfires that I suppose it's useful to tell people not to hunt deer with those.
> 
> For example, while the .22 magnum is banned for deer hunting, a nearly identical centerfire round 5.7 x 28mm is perfectly legal.  Same bullet diameter, same weight, and nearly the same velocity (both push 30 grain bullets at around 2400 f.p.s.).
> 
> Actually, in Georgia you can hunt deer with a pistol, with no caliber restriction other than centerfire at least .22 caliber.  So a .25 acp "Baby Browning" could be your deer gun. It's legal to use, so it must be moral and ethical to use, too?
> 
> Maybe I should put my Kel-Tec -32 for deer. It would be a good challenge.  3" barrel and double-action trigger pull and all that. No sights.  But if I hit the deer in the right spot from 25 yards or less, it should be fatal, after some period of waiting.



Perhaps I should have elaborated more on the last part of my post for for the sake of time and space I didn't. I simply mentioned becoming proficient with ones rifle and left it at that. One could write volumes upon volumes of instances that are not on the books (thankfully) but common sense would suggest to a reasonable person not to do it. The law doesn't say to my knowledge an age where someone has to stop riding a motorcycle, if they are still licensed. However I would suggest most 90 year olds really don't need to take the old bike out for a spin on 285. There may be one out there and if so bless them. Most are just not still proficient enough. If you really feel proficient enough with your kel tec to get within whatever range you think is necessary and it is legal, then I guess that's your decision. I've seen lots of people bash the use of buckshot for deer on forums. I've got a friend that that's all he uses. Won't even talk with me about using a rifle. Kills deer ever year and almost every one is DRT or falls within sight. Thing is, he's got a shotgun that just patterns the heck out of buckshot, and he knows which shots to take. He has become proficient with what he uses. So to me if someone is using a legal round, and responsible enough to learn to use it right and well, I got no beef with them.


----------



## ambush80

Is this small caliber thing an experiment?


----------



## billy62green

GunnSmokeer said:


> at one point in the past, I might have thought that any gun and ammo combination that was "legal" under state law must be at least "okay" to use.  Because the legislature, or the DNR, studied this issue and took testimony from experts and evaluated everything when coming up with a list of what calibers are OK and which are not OK for what kind of animals, right?
> 
> WRONG.
> Georgia's minimum caliber law is hardly any better than having no law at all, except that so many people have .22 rimfires that I suppose it's useful to tell people not to hunt deer with those.
> 
> For example, while the .22 magnum is banned for deer hunting, a nearly identical centerfire round 5.7 x 28mm is perfectly legal.  Same bullet diameter, same weight, and nearly the same velocity (both push 30 grain bullets at around 2400 f.p.s.).
> 
> Actually, in Georgia you can hunt deer with a pistol, with no caliber restriction other than centerfire at least .22 caliber.  So a .25 acp "Baby Browning" could be your deer gun. It's legal to use, so it must be moral and ethical to use, too?
> 
> Maybe I should put my Kel-Tec -32 for deer. It would be a good challenge.  3" barrel and double-action trigger pull and all that. No sights.  But if I hit the deer in the right spot from 25 yards or less, it should be fatal, after some period of waiting.



Perhaps I should have elaborated more on the last part of my post for for the sake of time and space I didn't. I simply mentioned becoming proficient with ones rifle and left it at that. One could write volumes upon volumes of instances that are not on the books (thankfully) but common sense would suggest to a reasonable person not to do it. The law doesn't say to my knowledge an age where someone has to stop riding a motorcycle, if they are still licensed. However I would suggest most 90 year olds really don't need to take the old bike out for a spin on 285. There may be one out there and if so bless them. Most are just not still proficient enough. If you really feel proficient enough with your kel tec to get within whatever range you think is necessary and it is legal, then I guess that's your decision. I've seen lots of people bash the use of buckshot for deer on forums. I've got a friend that that's all he uses. Won't even talk with me about using a rifle. Kills deer ever year and almost every one is DRT or falls within sight. Thing is, he's got a shotgun that just patterns the heck out of buckshot, and he knows which shots to take. He has become proficient with what he uses. So to me if someone is using a legal round, and responsible enough to learn to use it right and well, I got no beef with them.


----------



## dawgs511

So basically after reading your initial post, you let a deer suffer after being shot because you chose to use a cartridge that is not meant to be used for deer hunting.


----------



## Flaustin1

I will not resort to name calling or arguing.  Its childish.  Ambush80, I guess in a sense it is an experiment.  I know that ethics are  behind peoples resoning.  It is exactly why im doing it.  I want to know(so do a few other people) if the 22 hornet is a capable round in the hands of a capable shooter.  So far, i will say no.  Like i stated above though, you cannot come to a conclusion from one example.  It simply cant be done.  

What if i kill the next ten i shoot with one shot, DRT?  What will you people say then?  Maybe this was a fluke, maybe not.  I will let yall know by the end of the season.


----------



## tree cutter 08

Poor fish suffer to for sometimes longer than six minutes when there put in a livewell or on a stringer. You guys haven't been bashing the fishing forum. Or out yote hunting and gut shoot one and it runs off to die a slow painful death. Never heard anyone bash a poor shot or under gunned for yotes. Sound like a bunch of girls whinnying on hear.


----------



## dawgs511

Perhaps you should quit trying your little scientific "experiments" on living breathing animals that we are suppose to respect and take ethically in this sport. I'm sure you own a big boy gun, maybe you should stick to using it so you don't have results like this again after making a good shot. Just a thought.


----------



## Flaustin1

Sorry bud, cant do it.  If it happens again, then and only then will i be able to come to the conclusion that it is not an acceptable round.  If that happens, i will go back to my "big boy gun".  

That being said, I will probably go back to my .308 after i kill another deer with the hornet simply because my freezer will be full an i will be hunting horns.  And before anyone says it,  Sometimes the horns walk out at 300yds and the hornet is definately NOT good for more than a hundred yards or so.


----------



## dtala

live animals are not something to "experiment" on....


----------



## mbs0983

Good grief. Man up and use something bigger. All I have to say.


----------



## ReelAffair

Flaustin1 said:


> I just got nervous about the small round and put another in him.


This should tell you all you need to know.  Use a better caliber please.


----------



## BlastinBill

dtala said:


> live animals are not something to "experiment" on....



We have been experimenting on live animals for thousands of years.


----------



## batoncolle

Should change the title of the thread to "*Three* 22 Hornets WILL kill a deer"


----------



## BlastinBill

batoncolle said:


> Should change the title of the thread to "*Three* 22 Hornets WILL kill a deer"



I shot a deer 3 times before with a 30-06 180 grain Winchester soft points. All three shots were in the kill zone. I've also shot a truck load with a .223 and most are DRT...

I also double lunged one with a 30-30 and it ran over 200 yards before dying.


----------



## batoncolle

BlastinBill said:


> I shot a deer 3 times before with a 30-06 180 grain Winchester soft points. All three shots were in the kill zone. I've also shot a truck load with a .223 and most are DRT...
> 
> I also double lunged one with a 30-30 and it ran over 200 yards before dying.



That must have been a heckuva deer.  My guess is though, the chances of having to shoot a deer multiple times with a 30-06 is considerably lower than with a 22 Hornet.  But since I like to eat deer and not experiment on them, I will never know for sure.


----------



## JustUs4All

miles58 said:


> ....I've seen a lot of deer shot and sustain wound channels like you describe.  At that speed, the one thing I'd like to see by way of comparison would be what does a 45 grain TSX do at the same speed out of a 9 twist barrel.  I have my suspicions that a 9 twist barrel instead of the 14 twist barrel common to most Hornets might make a lot of difference.  I have a 22-250 that I think is 14 twist, and a couple of .223s that are 9 twist.  I might just load them to the same velocity and shoot a few water jugs.  If I am right, a person might well be able to see the difference with the water.
> 
> ....In particular, a copper bullet might be much more sensitive in terms of performance on game to the RPMs it's turning than the FPS it's traveling.  That would go some ways to explaining why I see so little difference in deer shot at 25 feet with copper and deer shot at 200 yards with copper, as well as the similarity in wounds between big calibers and tiny ones.


 


Flaustin1 said:


> ....I too kinda think that a 1:9 twist would produce different results.  Its an interesting thought.



Would one of you gentlemen mind explaining to me exactly how a different twist will effect the performance of a bullet on game beyond the effect it has on stabilizing the bullet in flight.  Do you expect that a change might stabilize the bullet as it passes through tissue as well?


----------



## JBranch

I still think the problem that you had is due to poor expansion in your bullet.  If you shot high shoulder I believe that you would have had better results. The bullet would still have passed through. If you change to a soft point or even a hollow point I think the behind the shoulder shot would have been better. End result would still be the same, dead deer with a legal weapon.


----------



## dawgs511

mbs0983 said:


> Good grief. Man up and use something bigger. All I have to say.



Exactly. I'll never understand the guys that come on here with these kind of threads trying to prove something to everybody on here by killing a deer with smaller and smaller calibers. Sounds like compensating for something else in my opinion


----------



## BlastinBill

dawgs511 said:


> Exactly. I'll never understand the guys that come on here with these kind of threads trying to prove something to everybody on here by killing a deer with smaller and smaller calibers. Sounds like compensating for something else in my opinion



Or that small calibers kill just as good as larger calibers, and those that feel the need for magnums are compensating for something


----------



## ambush80

You can drive with a putter and putt with a driver but that's not what they were designed for and I think the results will show.


----------



## Flaustin1

Folks go back and read all of my posts please.  Im not trying to compensate for anything.  I have a wife and kids so im doing fine in that department.  I have a home.  Good there.  2 trucks, good there.  Wife has a car, good there etc. etc.


----------



## Flaustin1

JustUs4All said:


> Would one of you gentlemen mind explaining to me exactly how a different twist will effect the performance of a bullet on game beyond the effect it has on stabilizing the bullet in flight.  Do you expect that a change might stabilize the bullet as it passes through tissue as well?



Miles can explain this one much better than I can but I have a feeling we wont be hearing from him in this thread any longer.

The more a bullet spins while in a certain amount of tissue the more damage it causes.  That's really the only way I can explain it.  Miles has studied it to a point to where he has all of the technical terms and data to back it up.  Maybe he will chime in, but I doubt it.


----------



## Flaustin1

batoncolle said:


> Should change the title of the thread to "*Three* 22 Hornets WILL kill a deer"



Guy at camp shot a 200lb buck 4 times with a 300win mag before it died.  He was shooting a poor bullet for a 30yd shot.  Just stay tuned, I think the next experience will end differently.


----------



## NCummins

I don't know why people are so angry, I don't think what you are doing is right, but it isn't really that big of a deal, so long as you don't make a habit out of it I guess. I am glad you posted this thread though, you may have lead somebody away from using a smaller caliber, I look forward to the results of the next deer. Hopefully it dies slowly and painfully so will no longer use a .22 Hornet haha. Don't listen to the haters man, (even me) just don't try to be cruel.


----------



## bowbuck

Its a waste of breath.   However I happen to have the time.  Deer are PREY animals.  God put them on earth to feed predators.  Humans included.  They dont have familys with houses and white picket fences ( some city deer might).  They dont get married and work a career.  They eat natural food and grow their bodies into large amounts of protein for predators to eat.  They dont cry, feel lonely or use mental health professionals.  They live to die to feed something higher in the food chain thats it. 

Getting shot three times with a .22 hornet beats the snot out if them starving to death, getting chased for hours and dragged down by coyotes or dogs or  getting their legs broke when hit by some of you desk jockeys Saab on the way home to your house on .35 acres of what once was deer habitat.  Get over it.  They are here to die.  

I love deer and deer hunting.  Plan a large part of my year around the rut.  But I am a predator chasing prey.  I know when I shoot a deer its not a pleasurable experience for anyone but the hunter.   Hunt as you please but deer arent gods. We shouldnt worship them.  Just kill em and eat em and hang their heads on the wall to reminesce about between hunting seasons with friends and family.


----------



## hylander

Here is my 2 cents on this issue. It is your choice in the end on whether you will experiment with a .22 hornet on more deer or not.  You have stated you also have a .308 as well that you hunt with, so using the .22 hornet is really  curiosity for you to see if you can just kill a deer with it or not successfully, not the need to take a deer for food for example, your .308 would be far better suited for that endeavor.  

There have been comments on both sides supporting you and against what you are doing, but it really comes down to this....  When you hunt, is hunting a pass time for you, is it a hobby?  Is it a chance to kill something?  Is it a respect and appreciation of being out there and not just shooting a doe or buck, but becoming a part of the whole process of the hunt?  

What I worry about here is we are losing sight of the big picture and looking at all the what can we get away with as long as it is 'legal'.  Just because something is legal, does not make it right.   Sometimes, we need to take a step back and think to ourselves, is this really something we need to be trying?  If you can honestly say yes, then that will be your choice and no one can really tell you differently.  In the end, it is up to you.


----------



## JBranch

bowbuck said:


> Its a waste of breath.   However I happen to have the time.  Deer are PREY animals.  God put them on earth to feed predators.  Humans included.  They dont have familys with houses and white picket fences ( some city deer might).  They dont get married and work a career.  They eat natural food and grow their bodies into large amounts of protein for predators to eat.  They dont cry, feel lonely or use mental health professionals.  They live to die to feed something higher in the food chain thats it.
> 
> Getting shot three times with a .22 hornet beats the snot out if them starving to death, getting chased for hours and dragged down by coyotes or dogs or  getting their legs broke when hit by some of you desk jockeys Saab on the way home to your house on .35 acres of what once was deer habitat.  Get over it.  They are here to die.
> 
> I love deer and deer hunting.  Plan a large part of my year around the rut.  But I am a predator chasing prey.  I know when I shoot a deer its not a pleasurable experience for anyone but the hunter.   Hunt as you please but deer arent gods. We shouldnt worship them.  Just kill em and eat em and hang their heads on the wall to reminesce about between hunting seasons with friends and family.



Well said sir.


----------



## miles58

JustUs4All said:


> Would one of you gentlemen mind explaining to me exactly how a different twist will effect the performance of a bullet on game beyond the effect it has on stabilizing the bullet in flight.  Do you expect that a change might stabilize the bullet as it passes through tissue as well?



It's pretty well recognized by varmint shooters that faster twists produce better splatter.   I don't know precisely why.  I do not know if that applies equally or even more when you are using copper bullets. 

The difference between the RPMs a 9 twist barrel turns out at a given velocity, and what a 14 twist barrel turns out at the same velocity is huge.  Intuitively it makes sense that something like a copper bullet with four discrete petals forming an irregular meplat as the bullet travels through tissue will do more damage the faster it spins.  This does comport with varminters observations.    It is also consistent with what I have observed.  In looking at Barnes' high speed videos of gelatin block tests you can clearly see the effect of the petals, so there is definitely something different than lead core bullets going on, and it is easily observable.  It appears to me to be a fairly substantial additive effect to wound trauma.

Copper being less dense than lead makes for a noticeably longer bullet for the same weight.  Longer bullets require faster twists to stabilize them equally.  Up to a point, more RPMs can produce more stability on the way to the target, and as it passes through the target.  My experience with copper bullets is that wound channels tend to be much straighter and deflection is non-existent.  I would think copper can deflect once it hits Bambi, but out of almost seventy deer I have never seen it.  I have seen some extraordinary amounts of bone hit and the remarkable thing to me is how incredibly consistently straight the wound channels have been compared to lead core bullets.

The Barnes bullets I commonly use on deer are not all that much bigger than the 45 grain bullet Flaustin1 used in his Hornet  80 grain TTSXs in my experience when run through the chest of a deer will completely shred the lungs.  If the path is reasonably centered, you wind up with a chest full of red soup with no chunks to speak of.  EVEN AT RANGE WHERE VELOCITY HAS DROPPED BELOW WHAT HE IS SEEING!  This when coupled with the fact that all the wounds from copper bullets I have examined look remarkably similar.  I would not even consider trying to guess caliber and velocity based on wound channel resulting from copper bullets.  I have seen 300 WM wound channels that look like .223 wound channels and vice-versa.  Close range wound channels look just like long range wound channels with them.

This is why the 30-30 style wound channel he describes is puzzling to me.  I have personally put quite a few copper bullets through deer's chests.  I have seen quite a few more.  I have seen wounds made when the speed of the bullet was dropped below what he is talking about produce the complete shredded lungs.  The difference between the situations is bullet weight and bullet RPMs.  My experience is that bullet weight down to 53 grains has shown me no difference in wound channel.  His bullets penetrated all the way through the deer so it carried plenty of energy to hold velocity  and thus cavitation up.

What's left to explain the difference that's obvious is RPMs.  A 53 grain TSXs look for all the world like you ran a 180 grain 30-06 through the deer's chest at fifty yards.   I  find it hard to believe that 8 grains and a few FPS can make that much difference.  There might well be a threshold here where bullet weight, bullet speed and target size combine to reduce performance to 30-30 equivalence.  I haven't shot any deer far enough out to see copper bullets still expand, but fail to produce their typical damage.  I have some 30-30 Barnes bullets and some .357 Barnes bullets which have whopping big hollow points and slow twist rates which when combined with their lousy ballistics may well do the same thing.  Perhaps when more people use them we might learn if that's true.


----------



## hunter rich

batoncolle said:


> Should change the title of the thread to "*Three* 22 Hornets WILL kill a deer"



I had a 180lbs 4 point take 3 12ga copper solid sabots before going down.  All 3 hit in a 2.5" pattern in the boiler room.  The heart was jello and the lungs were shredded.  He never ran, just jumped after each hit and walked about 5 yards between shots.  He was at approximate 65 yards, I shoot a Remington 11-87 slug gun with a rifled barrel and cantilever mounted Burris 3x scope. 

If you aren't interested in the topic being discussed here without constant negativity then don't comment.


----------



## batoncolle

hunter rich said:


> I had a 180lbs 4 point take 3 12ga copper solid sabots before going down.  All 3 hit in a 2.5" pattern in the boiler room.  The heart was jello and the lungs were shredded.  He never ran, just jumped after each hit and walked about 5 yards between shots.  He was at approximate 65 yards, I shoot a Remington 11-87 slug gun with a rifled barrel and cantilever mounted Burris 3x scope.
> 
> If you aren't interested in the topic being discussed here without constant negativity then don't comment.



Sorry I did not realize disagreeing with someone was against site rules.  Can you point me to where I could find that rule???

And I will say to you exactly what I said to the other guy.  That must have been a heckuva deer. My guess is though, the chances of having to shoot a deer multiple times with a 11-87 slug is considerably lower than with a 22 Hornet. But since I like to eat deer and not experiment on them, I will never know for sure.


----------



## Canvasback27

A anti hunters dream.

Sir if you want a challenge,why not try a white jump suit and a cow bell around your neck while deer hunting.


----------



## hunter rich

batoncolle said:


> Sorry I did not realize disagreeing with someone was against site rules.  Can you point me to where I could find that rule???
> 
> And I will say to you exactly what I said to the other guy.  That must have been a heckuva deer. My guess is though, the chances of having to shoot a deer multiple times with a 11-87 slug is considerably lower than with a 22 Hornet. But since I like to eat deer and not experiment on them, I will never know for sure.



I'm sorry, didn't realize you could read my invisible typing where i said it was against the rules...

Just don't understand why people have to use so much negativity against a man because they don't agree with him.  Maybe the deer he shot was "a heckuva deer"...


----------



## Huntinfool

> Just don't understand why people have to use so much negativity against a man because they don't agree with him.



Because....we don't agree with him.

Are we supposed to be positive about something we disagree strongly with?

Boy, I really don't agree with that Obamacare thing.  But they sure are trying hard and heck, it IS the law.  So, since it is legal and they think they are trying hard to help people, I sure am proud for them.

The concept of "tolerance" (meaning 'you are not allowed to tell me I'm wrong ever') that is so pervasive in America right now has found its way in here as well.  It's sad.  If you disagree with something or someone....it actually is ok to say so....especially if they put it out there for the world to comment on.



> Maybe the deer he shot was "a heckuva deer"...



So....in other words, the quality of the deer determines the ethical boundaries of the kill shot taken?  A 160" buck can be taken with more questionable methods than a doe?  Is that the take away?


----------



## batoncolle

hunter rich said:


> I'm sorry, didn't realize you could read my invisible typing where i said it was against the rules...
> 
> Just don't understand why people have to use so much negativity against a man because they don't agree with him.  Maybe the deer he shot was "a heckuva deer"...



My comment on site rules was based on you telling me not to post negative comments.

Regarding my personal reasoning, I saw this thread originally, and I was going to stay out of it.  22 is part of our hunting heritage, and I would like to keep it legal.  Especially since the way this country is headed, we all might only be able to afford 22 one day soon - if we can find it.

But then I saw this from the OP, "*For the folks that keep asking why why why, well heres the reason. Alot of people have children, girls, small framed and not very strong. Alot of them would like to hunt but are to recoil/blast sensitive to become proficient with a larger caliber.

Im testing the hornet to help some of these people out. Im also doing it to either prove or disprove a lot of the reasoning behind people believing it is sub par."*

And I am sorry, but I completely disagree with this.

1.  Manufacturers with tons of money have already tested and created recoil sensitive and child specific firearms.
2.  You do not help someone with recoil sensitivity by shooting animals anyway.  That is what the range is for.
3.  We already know it is a subpar round.  Just from a deflection standpoint, it would not take much to alter the course of that bullet either on its way to the target or once it hits it.

I am not knocking the round.  I am not knocking the reasoning.  If you want to hunt with it, and it is what you have, go for it.


----------



## The Professor

I can also kill one with a slingshot and a rusty, old ball bearing.  It will get lodged under the skin and the rust will cause a skin infection that will kill him slowly.  Over a period of about a year and a half he will die.  I placed a fatal shot but is it ethical?  I will let you decide.


----------



## miles58

OK, let's have a show of hands.

How many of the people against using a Hornet have ever even fired one?  

How many of you have ever even used a copper bullet of any stripe?

How many of you have killed a deer with a centerfire .22 caliber round?

How many of you have gone to the trouble of loading your own ammo and making sure it does what you want over a chronograph?

How many of you have had a deer make it more than fifty yards ever regardless of caliber?

How many of you have done all of the above?


----------



## Millcreekfarms

I think you had bad bullet performance my father in law double lunged a 9 point last year with  a 338 win. Mag with the barnes triple shock and it penciled through we didnt find the deer till the next day ran 500 yds at least


----------



## Jeff Phillips

miles58 said:


> OK, let's have a show of hands.
> 
> How many of the people against using a Hornet have ever even fired one?
> 
> How many of you have ever even used a copper bullet of any stripe?
> 
> How many of you have killed a deer with a centerfire .22 caliber round?
> 
> How many of you have gone to the trouble of loading your own ammo and making sure it does what you want over a chronograph?
> 
> How many of you have had a deer make it more than fifty yards ever regardless of caliber?
> 
> How many of you have done all of the above?



What does any of the above have to do with the discussion? Does experimentation with inadaquate rounds make you special in some egotistical way?

I have never killed a deer with a 300 mag, but the basic science says it is adaquate for the job. The basic science also says that the .22 is marginal at best. I struggle with why a hunter would intentionally use a marginal round.

For what it is worth, I shot my first deer ever with a Barnes triple shock Sunday afternoon. I was not impressed with the performance. Out of a 270WSM the 130 grain bullet broke her shoulder and deflected straight down out her brisket, on a slight quartering too, 110 yard shot, out of a 15' ladder stand. She ran about 180 yards.


----------



## ASH556

Jeff Phillips said:


> What does any of the above have to do with the discussion? Does experimentation with inadaquate rounds make you special in some egotistical way?
> 
> I have never killed a deer with a 300 mag, but the basic science says it is adaquate for the job. The basic science also says that the .22 is marginal at best. I struggle with why a hunter would intentionally use a marginal round.
> 
> For what it is worth, I shot my first deer ever with a Barnes triple shock Sunday afternoon. I was not impressed with the performance. Out of a 270WSM the 130 grain bullet broke her shoulder and deflected straight down out her brisket, on a slight quartering too, 110 yard shot, out of a 15' ladder stand. She ran about 180 yards.


See Jeff, that's the problem.  Arguably his shot(s) were more successful than yours.  Your deer went a lot farther after the shot than his did.  IS .270 WSM suddenly a marginal caliber?  

I don't think so, but neither do I think that a 22 centerfire is a marginal caliber (.22 hornet, .223. .22-250, etc).  

Instead of this being a caliber war thread with a bunch of mud slinging by some guys who don't like small calibers, perhaps we could all learn a little bit about bullet construction and terminal performance.


----------



## lonewolf247

I say as long as it's a legal caliber, knock yourself out! 
Not sure why the people who choose to shoot the small calibers have to try and justify them, or the large caliber lovers have to knock them down. 

I've seen large caliber lovers saying .223, .243, etc, are not enough gun, and small caliber  lovers saying people hunting with 30-06, 7mm mag, and .300 weatherby are compensating etc. 

Not, trying to bash either choice, just saying, you shoot what you want and I'll shoot what I want, and as long as they are legal, we are both hunting by what's considered ethical, by the authorities, so no debate is needed.

Congrats on your kill!


----------



## Buzz

miles58 said:


> OK, let's have a show of hands.
> 
> How many of the people against using a Hornet have ever even fired one?



I wouldn't say I'm necessarily against it but I do think there are far better choices.   We simply don't live in the days where most of us hunt with the one rifle we own.  Being that even a .243 Win is a far better choice than a .22 centerfire, I just don't see the allure into a .22 centerfire.

Yes, I have fired many rounds from a .22 hornet and a .22 K-Hornet.   It's a fun little cartridge but not my cup of tea for hunting anything larger than a coyote.




miles58 said:


> How many of you have ever even used a copper bullet of any stripe?



Hundreds upon hundreds.



miles58 said:


> How many of you have killed a deer with a centerfire .22 caliber round?



Yes.   Including one last year.   One shot one kill, but there was zero blood trail.    Come to think of it, I can't think of any deer I've shot with a .22 centerfire that bled but I never lost one either.



miles58 said:


> How many of you have gone to the trouble of loading your own ammo and making sure it does what you want over a chronograph?



I've not killed a deer with a factory load since I was a teenager.    I roll all my own bullets and chronograph them at various weather conditions, most specifically in the heat of the GA summer and the coldest days of the winter and record the differences in velocity and point of impact at 100, 200, and 300y.



miles58 said:


> How many of you have had a deer make it more than fifty yards ever regardless of caliber?



I can think of a couple but they were still dead within a few seconds.   Double lung shots, lots of blood.



miles58 said:


> How many of you have done all of the above?



Yes.


----------



## lonewolf247

If I'm reading the Georgia regulations right, the 22 hornet fits in this category:

Modern Rifles and Handguns: Centerfire Only, .22-cal. or larger with expanding bullets. There is no restriction on magazine capacity for rifles.


----------



## JustUs4All

miles58 said:


> It's pretty well recognized by varmint shooters that faster twists produce better splatter.   I don't know precisely why.  I do not know if that applies equally or even more when you are using copper bullets.
> 
> The difference between the RPMs a 9 twist barrel turns out at a given velocity, and what a 14 twist barrel turns out at the same velocity is huge.  Intuitively it makes sense that something like a copper bullet with four discrete petals forming an irregular meplat as the bullet travels through tissue will do more damage the faster it spins.  This does comport with varminters observations.    It is also consistent with what I have observed.  In looking at Barnes' high speed videos of gelatin block tests you can clearly see the effect of the petals, so there is definitely something different than lead core bullets going on, and it is easily observable.  It appears to me to be a fairly substantial additive effect to wound trauma.
> 
> Copper being less dense than lead makes for a noticeably longer bullet for the same weight.  Longer bullets require faster twists to stabilize them equally.  Up to a point, more RPMs can produce more stability on the way to the target, and as it passes through the target.  My experience with copper bullets is that wound channels tend to be much straighter and deflection is non-existent.  I would think copper can deflect once it hits Bambi, but out of almost seventy deer I have never seen it.  I have seen some extraordinary amounts of bone hit and the remarkable thing to me is how incredibly consistently straight the wound channels have been compared to lead core bullets.
> 
> The Barnes bullets I commonly use on deer are not all that much bigger than the 45 grain bullet Flaustin1 used in his Hornet  80 grain TTSXs in my experience when run through the chest of a deer will completely shred the lungs.  If the path is reasonably centered, you wind up with a chest full of red soup with no chunks to speak of.  EVEN AT RANGE WHERE VELOCITY HAS DROPPED BELOW WHAT HE IS SEEING!  This when coupled with the fact that all the wounds from copper bullets I have examined look remarkably similar.  I would not even consider trying to guess caliber and velocity based on wound channel resulting from copper bullets.  I have seen 300 WM wound channels that look like .223 wound channels and vice-versa.  Close range wound channels look just like long range wound channels with them.
> 
> This is why the 30-30 style wound channel he describes is puzzling to me.  I have personally put quite a few copper bullets through deer's chests.  I have seen quite a few more.  I have seen wounds made when the speed of the bullet was dropped below what he is talking about produce the complete shredded lungs.  The difference between the situations is bullet weight and bullet RPMs.  My experience is that bullet weight down to 53 grains has shown me no difference in wound channel.  His bullets penetrated all the way through the deer so it carried plenty of energy to hold velocity  and thus cavitation up.
> 
> What's left to explain the difference that's obvious is RPMs.  A 53 grain TSXs look for all the world like you ran a 180 grain 30-06 through the deer's chest at fifty yards.   I  find it hard to believe that 8 grains and a few FPS can make that much difference.  There might well be a threshold here where bullet weight, bullet speed and target size combine to reduce performance to 30-30 equivalence.  I haven't shot any deer far enough out to see copper bullets still expand, but fail to produce their typical damage.  I have some 30-30 Barnes bullets and some .357 Barnes bullets which have whopping big hollow points and slow twist rates which when combined with their lousy ballistics may well do the same thing.  Perhaps when more people use them we might learn if that's true.


 Thank you for the explanation.  I understand the effect that twist rate has in the external ballistics of a bullet and appreciate that different twist rates are required to stabilize bullets of different lengths.  I think I am going to have a hard time agreeing that the twist rate will make any appreciable difference in wound characteristics on white tails once the bullet contacts tissue.    


 Lets assume a 100 yard broadside shot at a deer with a chest that is 12 inches thick with a bullet that had a muzzle velocity of 2800 fps and a velocity at 100 yards of 2500 fps. When fired, the bullet will be imparted a spin rate of 3,733 rps @ 1:9 and 2,400 rps @ 1:14.  At the deer at 2500 fps it will take the bullet .0004 sec. to transect the animal.  The 1:9 would have the opportunity to revolve 1.49 times and the 1:14 would have the opportunity to revolve .96 times.  The difference would be just over half a revolution.   


 In a perfect world, where both .22 caliber bullets four-petaled out perfectly to .33 caliber and completely traversed the animal, the 1:9 twist rate would provide .7 inches of additional petal tip travel in the deer over the 1:14 bullet.  This would certainly allow for some amount of additional energy transfer into the animal, the realistic calculation of which is beyond me.  In the same perfect world the perfectly 4-petaled bullet with the 1:14 twist would have total petal tip travel in the deer of 63.8 inches.  Assuming the energy is transferred into the target solely by the rotation of the bullet, then there could be no more than an additional 1.08%  transfer of the available energy from the bullet with the higher twist rate.    


 Since we know that the energy transfer is not accomplished solely by the rotation of the bullet  There would be a difference, but it would not seem to me that that the difference would be very significant and certainly not significant to the deer.  I doubt that the deer would notice the additional cutting imposed by the additional .7 inches of petal tip travel either.


We both know that bullets do strange things and twist rates might have a lot more to do with wounding characteristics than I am able to understand.


----------



## The mtn man

I say the whole ordeal was a fluke, although I wouldn't set out to deer hunt with a hornet, I think it's the op business, noone elses, As far as being a fluke goes, I have had this very same thing happen with a 30/06 twice, once on my biggest buck ever, I shot him through the lungs with a 150gr. corelockt bullet, he took off running, I was on the ground so I chased him down,found him just standing in a thicket, shot him through the back part of the lungs again, he ran again, found him bedded, shot him through the shoulder to finish him off, there was no blood trail, was perfect pass through shots with minimal damage, also saw one shot 4 times through the lungs by another hunter, with minimal damage, I finished it off with a neck shot, after we found it.I thank the op for the experiment.


----------



## Buzz

lonewolf247 said:


> If I'm reading the Georgia regulations right, the 22 hornet fits in this category:
> 
> Modern Rifles and Handguns: Centerfire Only, .22-cal. or larger with expanding bullets. There is no restriction on magazine capacity for rifles.



What an awesome regulation it is.   By the same token you can use a Jennings "Saturday Night Special" in .25 ACP and be perfectly legal.   Just because it's legal doesn't mean it is sensible.

Wouldn't surprise me if posters decided to do their own little experiment with a .25 ACP.  After all it's legal right?


----------



## MarineBow

I am by no means as educated on ballistics as the post above but it makes since to me that the difference in spin rate is less than marginal and would not have enough of an effect to be meaningful. My thought is from a different prospective. In the Marines we used the Colt M4 with a 1:7 twist when I posed the question as to why the 1:7 and not a 1:9 based on the loss of accuracy at range. I found that the 1:9 spin would punch through with a clean wound channel and less trauma, where as the 1:7 would tend to destabilize and would roll or tumble on impact with the same round. Causing much more trauma. With this thought in mind it would seam that with the .22 cal round you would want a slower spin rate to cause the round to tumble causing more trauma to soft tissue than a clean pass through. All in an effort to make up for the lesser amount of energy transfer from say a .30 cal round. Any thoughts on this or am I off base. Like I said I'm no expert.


----------



## hunter rich

Huntinfool said:


> Because....we don't agree with him.
> 
> Are we supposed to be positive about something we disagree strongly with?
> 
> Boy, I really don't agree with that Obamacare thing.  But they sure are trying hard and heck, it IS the law.  So, since it is legal and they think they are trying hard to help people, I sure am proud for them.
> 
> The concept of "tolerance" (meaning 'you are not allowed to tell me I'm wrong ever') that is so pervasive in America right now has found its way in here as well.  It's sad.  If you disagree with something or someone....it actually is ok to say so....especially if they put it out there for the world to comment on.
> 
> 
> 
> So....in other words, the quality of the deer determines the ethical boundaries of the kill shot taken?  A 160" buck can be taken with more questionable methods than a doe?  Is that the take away?



I was just quoting batoncolle on the "heckuva deer" thing.

 No, you don't have to be positive about your statements, but I think the use of a legal weapon to dispatch a prey animal does not deserve the bullcrap that is being thrown at the man.  If you don't agree, then say "I don't agree with this and I will no longer contribute to this thread." and be done with it. 

Mocking someone and calling names or insinuating about him is not necessary and below most of the members here on Woody's.


----------



## lonewolf247

Buzz said:


> What an awesome regulation it is.   By the same token you can use a Jennings "Saturday Night Special" in .25 ACP and be perfectly legal.   Just because it's legal doesn't mean it is sensible.
> 
> Wouldn't surprise me if posters decided to do their own little experiment with a .25 ACP.  After all it's legal right?



Your right Buzz, 

IMO, some legal choices are better than others, I will go that far, for the sake of avoiding being in the middle of a caliber war. 

Unfortunately we don't pick the legal firearms, we just go by the regulations.  As much I'd like to say everyone needs to hunt with a 30-06, I can't !

I'm not going to bash the small calibers , as long as they are legal, I'll congratulate them.


I'm all for following the rules and saving our sport.


----------



## miles58

JustUs4All said:


> We both know that bullets do strange things and twist rates might have a lot more to do with wounding characteristics than I am able to understand.



You forgot to factor in that rotational velocity slows much less than forward velocity and forward velocity slows at a greatly increased rate when the bullet hits meat.

I am not certain anyone has laid this out cleanly and definitively, but varmint hunters have noticed for a long time that more spin = more splatter.  My personal observations are that it makes for more wound channel if you have more spin.  I wouldn't begin to try to quantify it though.

Go to barnesbullets.com and look at the videos in gelatin.  You can easily see the spin has a substantial effect and it looks like the rate of spin increases with penetration.  That is not true, it just looks that way because the bullet slows down and spin not so much.


----------



## TaxPhd

Flaustin1 said:


> For the folks that keep asking why why why, well heres the reason.  Alot of people have children, girls, small framed and not very strong.  Alot of them would like to hunt but are to recoil/blast sensitive to become proficient with a larger caliber.



So you want to put what is a very marginal deer cartridge into the hands of what are traditionally very marginally skilled shooters.

You're like some kind of a genius.  Or a wizard.


----------



## ASH556

TaxPhd said:


> So you want to put what is a very marginal deer cartridge into the hands of what are traditionally very marginally skilled shooters.
> 
> You're like some kind of a genius.  Or a wizard.



No, you're right...let's give the kiddo's a .30/06 and blow their shoulder off and turn them off to guns and hunting for the rest of their life.

It's not a marginal cartridge any more than any other within average Georgia hunting distances.  Read a couple posts above where Jeff Phillips had a doe run 180yds after a shoulder shot with a 270 WSM...is that a marginal cartridge now too?


----------



## TaxPhd

ASH556 said:


> No, you're right...let's give the kiddo's a .30/06 and blow their shoulder off and turn them off to guns and hunting for the rest of their life.



Nice reductio ad absurdum.  I'm not suggesting that they use a large heavy recoiling rifle (that's the absurdum part of your argument).  But a .243, .257, .260 is EASILY handled by small statured shooters, and all three are significantly better choices than a Hornet for deer.



> It's not a marginal cartridge any more than any other within average Georgia hunting distances.  Read a couple posts above where Jeff Phillips had a doe run 180yds after a shoulder shot with a 270 WSM...is that a marginal cartridge now too?



Are you trying to make the argument that a .270 WSM is the equivalent of a Hornet?


----------



## Flaustin1

hylander said:


> Here is my 2 cents on this issue. It is your choice in the end on whether you will experiment with a .22 hornet on more deer or not.  You have stated you also have a .308 as well that you hunt with, so using the .22 hornet is really  curiosity for you to see if you can just kill a deer with it or not successfully, not the need to take a deer for food for example, your .308 would be far better suited for that endeavor.
> 
> There have been comments on both sides supporting you and against what you are doing, but it really comes down to this....  When you hunt, is hunting a pass time for you, is it a hobby?  Is it a chance to kill something?  Is it a respect and appreciation of being out there and not just shooting a doe or buck, but becoming a part of the whole process of the hunt?
> 
> What I worry about here is we are losing sight of the big picture and looking at all the what can we get away with as long as it is 'legal'.  Just because something is legal, does not make it right.   Sometimes, we need to take a step back and think to ourselves, is this really something we need to be trying?  If you can honestly say yes, then that will be your choice and no one can really tell you differently.  In the end, it is up to you.



You obviously didnt read all of my posts, nor did you follow the thread that started this whole endevour.  

Im testing the Hornet to see if it is a suitable weapon for kids that are to small to use a large caliber rifle.  And for my own curiosity.


----------



## Flaustin1

ASH556 said:


> See Jeff, that's the problem.  Arguably his shot(s) were more successful than yours.  Your deer went a lot farther after the shot than his did.  IS .270 WSM suddenly a marginal caliber?
> 
> I don't think so, but neither do I think that a 22 centerfire is a marginal caliber (.22 hornet, .223. .22-250, etc).
> 
> Instead of this being a caliber war thread with a bunch of mud slinging by some guys who don't like small calibers, perhaps we could all learn a little bit about bullet construction and terminal performance.



Wow, somebody with a little sense.  Thank you sir.


----------



## Da Possum

Not only can Hornet22 kill deer; you should see him perform in the duck blind


----------



## Flaustin1

My 11 yr old neice is about 4-10 and only weighs about 90lbs.  She cried when she shot my .243.  However, she loves to shoot the lil hornet.  And shes a dang good shot with it too.  End of that arguement.


----------



## Flaustin1

hdm03 said:


> Not only can Hornet22 kill deer; you should see him perform in the duck blind



Dont even go there.  Ive killed a ton of ducks over the last 12 yrs.


----------



## Da Possum

I've been hearing other things on da skreet


----------



## Buzz

TaxPhd said:


> Nice reductio ad absurdum.  I'm not suggesting that they use a large heavy recoiling rifle (that's the absurdum part of your argument).  But a .243, .257, .260 is EASILY handled by small statured shooters, and all three are significantly better choices than a Hornet for deer.



Agreed - I don't understand the logic of the jump between the .22 hornet and the .30-06.  There are dozens of great cartridges in between. 




Flaustin1 said:


> My 11 yr old neice is about 4-10 and only weighs about 90lbs.  She cried when she shot my .243.  However, she loves to shoot the lil hornet.  And shes a dang good shot with it too.  End of that arguement.



I'm really beginning to think you are just doing this for the sake of stirring the pot (some of your other posts started with ).    If a 90# kid cries from the recoil of a .243 Win that fits properly and is a normal sporter weight rifle, I seriously doubt this is a kid that's ready to hunt.


----------



## ASH556

TaxPhd said:


> Nice reductio ad absurdum.  I'm not suggesting that they use a large heavy recoiling rifle (that's the absurdum part of your argument).  But a .243, .257, .260 is EASILY handled by small statured shooters, and *all three are significantly better choices than a Hornet for deer.*


Based on what data?




TaxPhd said:


> Are you trying to make the argument that a .270 WSM is the equivalent of a Hornet?


Inside 100yds with no intermediate barriers shooting the same bullet construction (ie softpoint vs monometal, etc) it doesn't matter, they will perform the same.  Ballistic calculators don't kill deer.  Poking holes in things that help them breath, circulate blood, and transmit signals does.  A relative hole size difference of 0.05" isn't going to magically make a difference.

Now, beyond 100yds, larger calibers retain more energy that is critical to expansion and penetration necessary to reach the vital organs.  That's the only valid place for the caliber debate to enter...or when shooting through light cover (grass, brush, etc).


----------



## JustUs4All

miles58 said:


> You forgot to factor in that rotational velocity slows much less than forward velocity and forward velocity slows at a greatly increased rate when the bullet hits meat.



Nope, didn't forget, just had no way to quantify that factor.   Whatever the differences are they would be tiny.  I just can't see how that could make that much difference.  Again, not saying it does not, just that I can't see it.


----------



## TaxPhd

ASH556 said:


> Inside 100yds with no intermediate barriers shooting the same bullet construction (ie softpoint vs monometal, etc) it doesn't matter, they will perform the same.



So, .22 Hornet and .270 WSM perform the same.  Who could possibly argue against that logic?  You sir, have clearly won the debate, and I award you two ears and a tail.  Any further discussion would simply be


----------



## hylander

ASH556 said:


> Based on what data?
> 
> 
> 
> Inside 100yds with no intermediate barriers shooting the same bullet construction (ie softpoint vs monometal, etc) it doesn't matter, they will perform the same.  Ballistic calculators don't kill deer.  Poking holes in things that help them breath, circulate blood, and transmit signals does.  A relative hole size difference of 0.05" isn't going to magically make a difference.
> 
> Now, beyond 100yds, larger calibers retain more energy that is critical to expansion and penetration necessary to reach the vital organs.  That's the only valid place for the caliber debate to enter...or when shooting through light cover (grass, brush, etc).



Are you seriously saying the hornet has the same foot pound of energy as the other calibers out to 100 yards?


----------



## hylander

Flaustin1 said:


> You obviously didnt read all of my posts, nor did you follow the thread that started this whole endevour.
> 
> Im testing the Hornet to see if it is a suitable weapon for kids that are to small to use a large caliber rifle.  And for my own curiosity.



Actually,  I did read all of it.  And I think that this has all been discussed before in other threads I believe with other calibers.  Yours is just another excuse to see if it can just be done without weighing the consequences.  And that is what concerns me the most.

I have a .22 as well as a .223 /5.56.  I would use neither on a deer.  I know the. 223 is more than capable and a lot of hunters on here are comfortable with taking a deer with it out to 150 yards.  I am not.  Mainly because I am not comfortable with it.  Not saying it is not capable, just not comfortable with using it for deer.   But, how small of a caliber do we really need to go.  The. 223 hardly has any recoil, so why is that not a good caliber for a kid to learn on?  Why go lower?


----------



## Nerf Warrior

Not that this really has anything to do with the whole conversation but recently I built a shop behind my house.  It wasn't big , about 12' x 16'.  It took close to a week for me finish since Im really not a carpenter.  Did everything myself.  My hammer of choice was a standard carpenters claw hammer.  I was concerned about using that since I have steel rods in my wrist. Anyway, I could have gotten the little picture hanging hammer out of my wifes little household tool kit.  If I struck the nails perfect everytime it would have driven the nails in and would have been easier to swing with my bad wrist. But a slightly off center hit was sure to result in a bent nail(as I had several of them with a full size hammer). I could have opted for a nail gun which would have been faster, and probably less room for error but didn't think It would benefit me that much for such a small project.  Anyway I got my shop built and it looks great if I do say so..


----------



## HandgunHTR

Wow.

Based on some of the posts here, I should definitely give up hunting with my handguns.  Based on your definitions, all of the cartridges I use are "marginal".  I guess I should tell the 20+ deer that I have killed with them.


----------



## hylander

HandgunHTR said:


> Wow.
> 
> Based on some of the posts here, I should definitely give up hunting with my handguns.  Based on your definitions, all of the cartridges I use are "marginal".  I guess I should tell the 20+ deer that I have killed with them.



There are a lot of handgun cartridges that are used for big game.  Depending on the maker, you can get .357 rounds producing over 800 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle.  I believe that either the .40 or 10mm is close as well, depending on the maker.  Moving up to the .44 Cal is a no brainer, then all the way up to the 454.  So, yeah, alot of handgun calibers produce more than the .22 hornet.  Now, if you want to argue over a distance, different story, but depending on the handgun, a handgun can be more than adequate.  But would you take a .22 pistol deer hunting?


----------



## RUNnGUN

This has been an interesting thread to read for sure. Personally I thought that this was a forum where mature men and women came to discuss hunting. If there was a newcomer to the forum and this was the first thread that they read, I would not blame them for running away with their tail tucked. It's unbelievable that so many people have so many negative things to say about this man's "project." I always used to come here so that I could read all of the cool and interesting stuff, but then I look at this and some more different threads and I see all of the rude, immature "men" that people talk about have run off so many other great forum members. Looks like there are members on here that think they rule the roost and if someone does something that they do not agree with then they gang up and attack someone for what they have done. That is absolutely ridiculous. Several of y'all need to go back and ask your mother's what respect is and learn how to use it. Flaustin1 thanks for telling us your results, and not getting intimidated by some of the other folks on here. Keep doing what you want and let them cry like little babies, because clearly that is all they are going to do. Grow up men! Act your age not your shoe size.


----------



## NCummins

I have a feeling a lot of people here have never seen another forum on the internet. You get people with 100% anonyminity and they won't lie and say, "cool." They will tell you exactly how you feel. OP knew what was going to happen when he posted this thread. This kind of heated discussion is constructive for both sides of the arguement, if it hurts your feelings that people don't agree with you then maybe the problem isn't with the forum, or the people here.


----------



## hylander

RUNnGUN said:


> This has been an interesting thread to read for sure. Personally I thought that this was a forum where mature men and women came to discuss hunting. If there was a newcomer to the forum and this was the first thread that they read, I would not blame them for running away with their tail tucked. It's unbelievable that so many people have so many negative things to say about this man's "project." I always used to come here so that I could read all of the cool and interesting stuff, but then I look at this and some more different threads and I see all of the rude, immature "men" that people talk about have run off so many other great forum members. Looks like there are members on here that think they rule the roost and if someone does something that they do not agree with then they gang up and attack someone for what they have done. That is absolutely ridiculous. Several of y'all need to go back and ask your mother's what respect is and learn how to use it. Flaustin1 thanks for telling us your results, and not getting intimidated by some of the other folks on here. Keep doing what you want and let them cry like little babies, because clearly that is all they are going to do. Grow up men! Act your age not your shoe size.



This will be the last I will say about this and I will go read other threads.  I thought people on this forum had a right to agree or disagree with what someone is posting.  If you are saying that no one has a right to give their opinion, what is the point of allowing replying to a thread?  If someone just wants all positive post, go on Facebook, invite only your friends so you won't get your feelings hurt.

Flaustin should have expected the good with the bad.  If he feels this is the right thing to do, then he should continue.  But he should also listen or read the comments on why it might not be right as well.  There are two sides to everything.  No one is perfect.  Weigh all the opinions, then make a decision.


----------



## RUNnGUN

NCummins said:


> I have a feeling a lot of people here have never seen another forum on the internet. You get people with 100% anonyminity and they won't lie and say, "cool." They will tell you exactly how you feel. OP knew what was going to happen when he posted this thread. This kind of heated discussion is constructive for both sides of the arguement, if it hurts your feelings that people don't agree with you then maybe the problem isn't with the forum, or the people here.



Simply saying that I've heard by many former forum members that I know personally that many members have left because they can't post anything without being deeply criticized for what they post. Point of the story is nothing wrong with someone stating their opinion, but when it starts being just down right rude, then that's when it has gone to far. And that is exactly what has started on this thread. I don't know how anyone can not agree with that.


----------



## hunter rich

hylander said:


> This will be the last I will say about this and I will go read other threads.  I thought people on this forum had a right to agree or disagree with what someone is posting.  If you are saying that no one has a right to give their opinion, what is the point of allowing replying to a thread?  If someone just wants all positive post, go on Facebook, invite only your friends so you won't get your feelings hurt.
> 
> Flaustin should have expected the good with the bad.  If he feels this is the right thing to do, then he should continue.  But he should also listen or read the comments on why it might not be right as well.  There are two sides to everything.  No one is perfect.  Weigh all the opinions, then make a decision.



You can have your opinion and let us all read it, but I think the problems come from the personal attacks and underhanded statements.

I believe he has weighed the options and made the decision to move forward with the 22 hornet.


----------



## RUNnGUN

hunter rich said:


> *You can have your opinion and let us all read it, but I think the problems come from the personal attacks and underhanded statements.*
> 
> I believe he has weighed the options and made the decision to move forward with the 22 hornet.



Thank you for reiterating what I've been trying to say! I still don't think that the stone throwers will get it though. There is a fine line between giving an opinion and attacking someone!!


----------



## Buzz

You guys are some sensitive fellers.   If you think anything on this thread even comes close to the category of personal attack, I suggest you stay on a heavily moderated site like this and steer well clear of places that have less moderation and far deeper experience.


----------



## Old Bart

The mans got a dead deer in his cooler, I don't think you can make any "unethical caliber" statements. Congrats Flaustin and good luck this season, hope you can tag another one!


----------



## tom ga hunter

I have been reading this for several days & see both sides. Personally I think my main duty as a hunter is a qiuck clean kill. I have killed over 100 deer & maybe 50% dropped there, some have gone as far as 50 yards & 1 nearly a mile. I have never failed to recover a deer but have lost a few pigs.  I hunt in a club where members have been members for over 30 years, we have a signifinant fine for failing to recover.  Opening day this year the smallest round was my 250AI, the most common was 7-08 & there was 1 7 RemMag.  Opening morning I saw what I thought was the man so I switched to the 7-08 I had with me. Bottom line in our club no one hunts deer with a 22 centerfire because they don't want to pay the fine or be the butt of jokes in camp.


----------



## NCHillbilly

Buzz said:


> You guys are some sensitive fellers.   If you think anything on this thread even comes close to the category of personal attack, I suggest you stay on a heavily moderated site like this and steer well clear of places that have less moderation and far deeper experience.



Just because you can't see personal attacks on the thread now, doesn't mean they weren't here. 

We encourage civil discussions from differing points of view, that's what forums are for-but personal attacks will not be tolerated.


----------



## ASH556

hylander said:


> Are you seriously saying the hornet has the same foot pound of energy as the other calibers out to 100 yards?



I think if you'll read what I typed (that you quoted) you'll find that is not what I said.


----------



## Flaustin1

Folks, first off,  I started the thread as a discussion not an  argument.  I understand that right now, people are questioning my ethics, rightly so.  Heck im not even sure if its ethical yet myself.  That's why im doing it.

Someone answer me this.  if I shoot one this evening and it goes on a mad 3 second dash then flops over dead, what are yall gonna say then?  What if I do it multiple times?  Will it still be inadequate? 

If I get the same results next time,  I will be hard pressed to try it a 3rd time.  But folks,  If I get better results I will keep trying it.  

Now, yall stop all the arguing, bickering and name calling and lets all act like grown men.


----------



## ASH556

Flaustin, I'm in agreement with you.  What you're seeing here is people's emotions override their rationale.  If you shoot a deer with a BB gun and it dies, then it works.  If you shoot a deer with a .50 BMG and it dies, then it works.  Guys have been told and have bought into the "you need ______ big of a caliber to kill a deer."  What's funny is that the guys opposing the Hornet cannot even agree on what that "blank" is.  

Roll on man, and I look forward to seeing your results!


----------



## hunter rich

I've seen video of a guy killing wild hogs with a pellet gun......Hope he doesn't post on here!


----------



## Rich M

I had seen one deer shot with a 243 and thought it was a great deer round - full penetration, heavy blood - good round!  

This year I have seen 6 deer from 50# yearling to two 2.5 yr old 8 pts (160# +/-) shot with 100 gr soft points out of 243 rifles.  One of the guns was my BLR a friend was using.

Not one of the deer had a pass-thru.  A couple were shoulder shot and one was gut & ham shot.  Did not give me a fuzzy feeling about the 243.  We did not lose any deer and had to track 4 of them.  The three that I helped track ranged from 100 yards to 1/2 mile.

So - the 243 is a bad round?  No, the guns were used by overexcited and less experienced hunters who did not take or did not have the ability to take the best shots possible.

The 22 hornet or other similar rounds can and will kill deer.  It is a legal round for GA and the report was honest and fair.  The deer died and was shot well.  Can't ask for anything more than that.

Some of the guys yammering about unethical or immoral gun choice have shot deer in the guts with a monster cannon and had them run off, some never to be seen again.  It isn't the arrow as much as it is the indian.  Be a good indian.


----------



## spurrs and racks

and so will a baseball bat, that doesn't mean you need to go hunting with one.

However, I agree with the indian theory.

It ain't what you shoot, it's where you shoot them.

I started off @ 8yrs old with a western auto 222, killed a bunch of deer with it. I hunt now with a .243 and up. You need 100 grns of bullet and a minimum of 3000 ft per sec......

in my opine

s&r


----------



## 308fan

so will a sling shot spit rock to the head but i dont want to try it


----------



## 660griz

Buzz said:


> If a 90# kid cries from the recoil of a .243 Win that fits properly and is a normal sporter weight rifle, I seriously doubt this is a kid that's ready to hunt.



I guess gone are the days when you just didn't get to do what you wanted to do. My first deer rifle was a 30-30. If I had cried, moaned or flinched too much, no hunting for me until I got bigger. Now, folks are asking what to get their 6 year olds that won't kick.

Of course a .22 centerfire will kill a deer. Called marginal because rules picked the lowest caliber legal to take deer and folks jumped on it. I don't fault folks for using it. It is kind of perplexing as to why. 

Have you ever seen a thread, .308 WILL kill a deer, or .270 WILL kill a deer, etc.? Maybe all the haters are getting fueled by threads and all the folks that shoot the 'marginal' rounds need a little pat on the back to instill confidence in a round that they really don't have. 

Just guessing of course. Like I said, don't knock anyone for using it, just curious, out of all the calibers, a grown man would choose a centerfire 22. Maybe just cause. I really don't know.


----------



## miles58

Jeff Phillips said:


> What does any of the above have to do with the discussion? Does experimentation with inadaquate rounds make you special in some egotistical way?
> 
> I have never killed a deer with a 300 mag, but the basic science says it is adaquate for the job. The basic science also says that the .22 is marginal at best. I struggle with why a hunter would intentionally use a marginal round.
> 
> For what it is worth, I shot my first deer ever with a Barnes triple shock Sunday afternoon. I was not impressed with the performance. Out of a 270WSM the 130 grain bullet broke her shoulder and deflected straight down out her brisket, on a slight quartering too, 110 yard shot, out of a 15' ladder stand. She ran about 180 yards.



I asked the question because it is relevant to the discussion.

Unless you've been through all of it you do not begin to know adequate from inadequate.  Hence, you don't know what you're talking about and just spouting an opinion based on zero experience.

Out of all the people opposed to using a Hornet, one, and only one stepped up and said he has the experience.  Buzz I am familiar with.  If Buzz told me he was going to kill a deer with a CB cap I would fully expect a dead deer when he made the attempt.  He knows me well enough to know exactly what steps I'd go through were to attempt the same, and he'd expect a dead deer out of me.  Flaustin1 did his homework before hand.  He didn't approach this on a lark.  

I have no doubt Buzz, like me, would much rather see a person do their homework and go out with a Hornet than any of the following:

Sight a rifle in at less than 100 yards.

Buy ammo they have never used before and head out hunting.

Shoot at deer with a patched round ball when they cannot accurately and reliably estimate range.

Accept paper plate accuracy at sight in and go hunting.

Fail to understand their equipment well enough that it doesn't stop them shooting at a deer at 200 yards with a 30-30 for instance.

Go hunting with a bore sighted rifle and no range time at all.

Fail to understand anatomy well enough that they wind up shooting at the middle of the deer.

Go hunting so poorly prepared they lose a deer they've hit when the deer is laying dead within two hundred yards of them.

This is day in day out  posting in these forums.  Every day there are multiple examples of these actions chronicled here.  Every day.

There is a difference between what Flaustin1 did and the above actions.  Flaustin1 did his homework, he reduced or eliminated the undesirable variables to the extent possible given his skill and experience.  When he pulled the trigger everything possible was in his favor because he made it so.  I know, because I not only talked to him before hand about it, I went so far as to give him some Barnes TSX 45 grainers to get started with.

If you want to be concerned about the ethics of people regarding deer hunting, a better place to start might just be with the folks engaging in the actions I listed above.  Just a warning though, over fifty odd years of deer hunting my opinion is that the majority of deer hunters regularly engage in those actions regularly.  That will leave you a lot of whining to do about some much, much more serious ethical lapses.

Flaustin1 produced a pretty typical result for 30-30 class rifles or most hand guns.  The deer died reasonably and was readily recovered.  Where would someone without the experience or the capability of eliminating as many adverse variable as possible get the stones to call into questions his ethics?  If you want to discuss ethical behavior, that might be a good place to begin.


----------



## hunter rich

Just finished reading a thread about losing 2 deer to a .308.   Nobody (yet) is roasting him over the coals...they are all giving advise and pats on the back and "Buck up chum, it happens to the best of us."

Wonder if the op didn't include the caliber, just ballistic info (bullet weight and type, powder gr, etc) if this thread would be different?


----------



## TaxPhd

miles58 said:


> I have no doubt Buzz, like me, would much rather see a person do their homework and go out with a Hornet than any of the following:
> 
> Sight a rifle in at less than 100 yards.
> 
> Buy ammo they have never used before and head out hunting.
> 
> Shoot at deer with a patched round ball when they cannot accurately and reliably estimate range.
> 
> Accept paper plate accuracy at sight in and go hunting.
> 
> Fail to understand their equipment well enough that it doesn't stop them shooting at a deer at 200 yards with a 30-30 for instance.
> 
> Go hunting with a bore sighted rifle and no range time at all.
> 
> Fail to understand anatomy well enough that they wind up shooting at the middle of the deer.
> 
> Go hunting so poorly prepared they lose a deer they've hit when the deer is laying dead within two hundred yards of them.
> 
> This is day in day out  posting in these forums.  Every day there are multiple examples of these actions chronicled here.  Every day.



So, since all those things are bad, it somehow makes shooting deer with an underpowered cartridge OK.

That's like your kid telling you, "Dad, it's OK that I was out getting drunk this weekend.  It's not as bad as all the other kids that were smoking pot."


----------



## hunter rich

TaxPhd said:


> So, since all those things are bad, it somehow makes shooting deer with an underpowered cartridge OK.
> 
> That's like your kid telling you, "Dad, it's OK that I was out getting drunk this weekend.  It's not as bad as all the other kids that were smoking pot."



Swooosh!  That is the sound of "The Point" going right over your head....

See post 158


----------



## TaxPhd

hunter rich said:


> Swooosh!  That is the sound of "The Point" going right over your head....
> 
> See post 158



Nope, didn't miss the point at all.  But hey, thanks for playing.


----------



## TaxPhd

hunter rich said:


> Just finished reading a thread about losing 2 deer to a .308.   Nobody (yet) is roasting him over the coals...they are all giving advise and pats on the back and "Buck up chum, it happens to the best of us."
> 
> Wonder if the op didn't include the caliber, just ballistic info (bullet weight and type, powder gr, etc) if this thread would be different?



He's not getting roasted because a .308 is perfectly adequate for deer.

Do you really not get this??


----------



## 660griz

hunter rich said:


> Just finished reading a thread about losing 2 deer to a .308.   Nobody (yet) is roasting him over the coals...they are all giving advise and pats on the back and "Buck up chum, it happens to the best of us."
> 
> Wonder if the op didn't include the caliber, just ballistic info (bullet weight and type, powder gr, etc) if this thread would be different?



Was it the 'Frustrated with lost deer' thread? I must have missed the, happens to the best of us, and pats on the back. Saw advice on how to not let it happen again.


----------



## tcward

dtala said:


> try a bigger gun, jeeze fella. I'lll never understand the thought process that makes folks try to use sub marginal rounds to kill stuff with....



Me either my friend, me either.


----------



## 308fan

hunter rich said:


> Just finished reading a thread about losing 2 deer to a .308.   Nobody (yet) is roasting him over the coals...they are all giving advise and pats on the back and "Buck up chum, it happens to the best of us."
> 
> Wonder if the op didn't include the caliber, just ballistic info (bullet weight and type, powder gr, etc) if this thread would be different?


 ive shot probably 20+ deer or so with a 308 and only lost one that i didnt hit...


----------



## JBranch

hylander said:


> There are a lot of handgun cartridges that are used for big game.  Depending on the maker, you can get .357 rounds producing over 800 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle.  I believe that either the .40 or 10mm is close as well, depending on the maker.  Moving up to the .44 Cal is a no brainer, then all the way up to the 454.  So, yeah, alot of handgun calibers produce more than the .22 hornet.  Now, if you want to argue over a distance, different story, but depending on the handgun, a handgun can be more than adequate.  But would you take a .22 pistol deer hunting?



 The ballistics based on the information that Flaustin1 gave in his posts, 45 gr. at 2800 fps muzzle velocity, and using the Hornady Ballistic Calculator, the muzzle energy of this round is 783 ft lbs, at 100 is 685 ft lbs. In comparison to the calibers you listed above, 40 S&W muzzle energy is 499 ft lbs, and 356 at 100. The 357 is 610 at the muzzle and 450 at 100, the 44 mag is 1056 at muzzle and 551 at 100 yards. These are not handloads or +P but are factory loads with expanding bullets. The ballistics chart these were found on were on the Sportsman Guide website. If I remember correctly, the old regulations for handguns required the round to produce at least 500 ft. lbs of energy at 50 yards. The round the OP shot the deer with exceeds any of these. This round in its factory loaded form has always been legal to hunt with in GA if I'm not completely mistaken, if I am I am sorry.

Sorry to all of you guys on the handgun forum, I guess these folks will be telling you that you are shooting marginal rounds next. I guess you will all have to give up your wheel guns and go to hunting with TC Encores chambered in more suitable rounds.


----------



## hunter rich

660griz said:


> Was it the 'Frustrated with lost deer' thread? I must have missed the, happens to the best of us, and pats on the back. Saw advice on how to not let it happen again.



And yet the guy who hasn't lost a deer with his chosen caliber gets insulted and his intelligence questioned.

  Maybe they didn't exactly say happens to the best of us, but here was no body saying you should have tried harder to find the deer, I personally have tracked deer for people who lost the blood trail and we found them usually within a few hundred yards.  I haven't lost a deer that I have shot.  No body said anything about the lost deer, that may have suffered much longer than the infamous 6 minutes...

How is losing 2 deer with a .308, more acceptable than KILLING and taking one home with a .22 hornet?????


----------



## Flaustin1

Now don't go thinking logically.  A lot of folks don't like it.


----------



## hunter rich

TaxPhd said:


> He's not getting roasted because a .308 is perfectly adequate for deer.
> 
> Do you really not get this??



Explain your qualifications for declaring a Hornet inadequate. 

How many deer have you personally killed with a center fire rifle and what was the caliber?

Please explain the points miles58 made in this post since you got them.


----------



## Fourayball

GTHunter007 said:


> I feel it my duty to dispatch my target as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Anything short of that I have failed on my end.  I simply don't know what to say about a .22 Hornet shot to the lungs.  Head/neck maybe.  No doubt the animal will die, but how quickly and how far can he travel.  6 minutes shot through both lungs is NOT efficient.



This.

My buddy used to deer hunt with a .22 Hornet. Watched him shoot a deer right in the chest once at less than 20 yes. Deer ran for over a mile before we lost blood. Never found the deer. Don't like the Hornet for deer hunting.


----------



## hylander

lrmed1 said:


> The ballistics based on the information that Flaustin1 gave in his posts, 45 gr. at 2800 fps muzzle velocity, and using the Hornady Ballistic Calculator, the muzzle energy of this round is 783 ft lbs, at 100 is 685 ft lbs. In comparison to the calibers you listed above, 40 S&W muzzle energy is 499 ft lbs, and 356 at 100. The 357 is 610 at the muzzle and 450 at 100, the 44 mag is 1056 at muzzle and 551 at 100 yards. These are not handloads or +P but are factory loads with expanding bullets. The ballistics chart these were found on were on the Sportsman Guide website. If I remember correctly, the old regulations for handguns required the round to produce at least 500 ft. lbs of energy at 50 yards. The round the OP shot the deer with exceeds any of these. This round in its factory loaded form has always been legal to hunt with in GA if I'm not completely mistaken, if I am I am sorry.
> 
> 
> 
> Sorry to all of you guys on the handgun forum, I guess these folks will be telling you that you are shooting marginal rounds next. I guess you will all have to give up your wheel guns and go to hunting with TC Encores chambered in more suitable rounds.



Irmed,

Before you quote just one site, please read again what I wrote.  One maker is putting out over 800 ft lbs in a .357 - buffalo.  Huge difference.


----------



## hylander

What is bothersome as well, is if you disagree with someone on here, you get called out pretty much.  Your condemned for disagreeing.  This is reminding me of a political thread.

We should be able to disagree and be mature without any childish behaviour.


----------



## sgtstinky

I don't care what you do on your land as long as it is legal.

But, I would never hunt for deer with a 22, and I will teach my son that this is not the way to hunt.


----------



## hunter rich

hylander said:


> Irmed,
> Before you quote just one site, please read again what I wrote.  One maker is putting out over 800 ft lbs in a .357 - buffalo.  Huge difference.



But this doesn't matter unless everyone has always and always will use the rounds with over 800ft lbs.


hylander said:


> What is bothersome as well, is if you disagree with someone on here, you get called out pretty much.  Your condemned for disagreeing.  This is reminding me of a political thread.
> 
> We should be able to disagree and be mature without any childish behavior.



The only ones being "Condemned" are the ones being immature with childish behavior.


----------



## Jeff Phillips

miles58 said:


> If you want to be concerned about the ethics of people regarding deer hunting, a better place to start might just be with the folks engaging in the actions I listed above.  Just a warning though, over fifty odd years of deer hunting my opinion is that the majority of deer hunters regularly engage in those actions regularly.  That will leave you a lot of whining to do about some much, much more serious ethical lapses.
> 
> Flaustin1 produced a pretty typical result for 30-30 class rifles or most hand guns.  The deer died reasonably and was readily recovered.  Where would someone without the experience or the capability of eliminating as many adverse variable as possible get the stones to call into questions his ethics?  If you want to discuss ethical behavior, that might be a good place to begin.



But the "experiment" was supposed to prove that children could use a 22 Hornet for deer hunting? 

Which is it, a test for the kids or an ego thing for the old guys?

All of the things you mentioned have been addressed on this forum, but have not by the "experts".


----------



## batoncolle

Rich M said:


> I had seen one deer shot with a 243 and thought it was a great deer round - full penetration, heavy blood - good round!
> 
> This year I have seen 6 deer from 50# yearling to two 2.5 yr old 8 pts (160# +/-) shot with 100 gr soft points out of 243 rifles.  One of the guns was my BLR a friend was using.
> 
> Not one of the deer had a pass-thru.  A couple were shoulder shot and one was gut & ham shot.  Did not give me a fuzzy feeling about the 243.  We did not lose any deer and had to track 4 of them.  The three that I helped track ranged from 100 yards to 1/2 mile.
> 
> *So - the 243 is a bad round?  No, the guns were used by overexcited and less experienced hunters who did not take or did not have the ability to take the best shots possible.*
> 
> The 22 hornet or other similar rounds can and will kill deer.  It is a legal round for GA and the report was honest and fair.  The deer died and was shot well.  Can't ask for anything more than that.
> 
> Some of the guys yammering about unethical or immoral gun choice have shot deer in the guts with a monster cannon and had them run off, some never to be seen again.  It isn't the arrow as much as it is the indian.  Be a good indian.



Your bolded statement is the key.  I know I could kill a deer all day long with a 22 caliber as I am sure many on here can.  Like I said before it is legal, and if it is what you have then knock yourself out.  I personally would not hunt with it, but I also sometimes hunt with 223/556, and many people also disagree with that round.

However the OP stated he was testing the caliber for recoil sensitive kids.  IMHO to take a 22 caliber and stick it in the hands of an inexperienced kid who also happens to be recoil shy and tell them to go out and shoot a deer is highly unethical.  And that is my problem with this thread.


----------



## dtala

miles58 said:


> Unless you've been through all of it you do not begin to know adequate from inadequate.  Hence, you don't know what you're talking about and just spouting an opinion based on zero experience.
> 
> Out of all the people opposed to using a Hornet, one, and only one stepped up and said he has the experience.  Buzz I am familiar with.  If Buzz told me he was going to kill a deer with a CB cap I would fully expect a dead deer when he made the attempt.  He knows me well enough to know exactly what steps I'd go through were to attempt the same, and he'd expect a dead deer out of me.  Flaustin1 did his homework before hand.  He didn't approach this on a lark.




well miles, since one seemingly has to post his credentials before critizing something( at least it seems by the post police), I'll try...

I'm 62 years old, been killing deer since I was 16. I've killed over 250 whitetail deer and over 500 head of big game on three continents with everything from a .22 short to a 50BMG, prolly 40 different cartridges used in all. So I guess you can call me a newbie...

The 22 Hornet is NOT a deer gun, it was never intended to be used as one, and should not be used as one. It simply isn't enough gun. Its a stunt, pure and simple.

If it's for a kid it is an even worse idea, sub par gun in unskilled hands is asking for wounded, lost deer.

And , yes, I've owned a Hornet, a Model 43 Winchester. And, no, I didn't shoot a deer with it.

I have, however, in the course of my duties as a game warden, killed a dozen plus deer with a .22 lr subsonic ammo. head shots, close(under 20 yards) no wounding, no 2-3 shot kills.

dang....


----------



## GunnSmokeer

*6 minutes of suffering*

six minutes of unnecessary suffering, and three shots required to make the kill, is not a good result.
Successful?  Well, the game was harvested, sure.  
But it wasn't a quick and humane kill. It turned out badly and the animal suffered because somebody intentionally chose to try to get away with too little gun for the job.

If he had gotten a bang-flop, or a deer that ran 50 yards and passed out in seconds, I'd say it was "successful" and then the only question would be whether it was good luck or whether more successes can be expected.


----------



## miles58

Jeff Phillips said:


> But the "experiment" was supposed to prove that children could use a 22 Hornet for deer hunting?
> 
> Which is it, a test for the kids or an ego thing for the old guys?
> 
> All of the things you mentioned have been addressed on this forum, but have not by the "experts".



Wrong.  The test was can a Hornet do a decent job killing a deer.  Eminently successful as far as I can see, he did a lot better than a .308 and a number of other calibers to judge from the lost deer threads.  Judging by the description alone, without regard to anything else, still eminently successful in that it compared very favorably with THE Classic deer round, the 30-30.  

Looks to me like because Flaustin1 did his homework and has done so for quite some time, he was hoping for much faster death than he got.   That he expressed his disappointment does not mean anything regarding the effectiveness of the caliber.  I have seen more or less the same results out of 30-06s shooting 220 grain bullets.  Something only a person without enough sense to hold their ears apart would call inadequate for deer.  I dunno, maybe Flaustin1 was EXPECTING much better performance.

I don't know where you get the idea this is or might be an ego thing.  Were that the case, please explain why he wouldn't do the expected thing and say the Hornet worked fine and the deer went a few yards and died?  That is after all what a person would expect were it done for his ego.  Frankly, if there's ego involved anywhere here it looks to me like the people condemning his action without a shred of experience in this are a whole lot closer to being on an ego trip.


----------



## batoncolle

miles58 said:


> *Wrong.  The test was can a Hornet do a decent job killing a deer.*  Eminently successful as far as I can see, he did a lot better than a .308 and a number of other calibers to judge from the lost deer threads.  Judging by the description alone, without regard to anything else, still eminently successful in that it compared very favorably with THE Classic deer round, the 30-30.
> 
> Looks to me like because Flaustin1 did his homework and has done so for quite some time, he was hoping for much faster death than he got.   That he expressed his disappointment does not mean anything regarding the effectiveness of the caliber.  I have seen more or less the same results out of 30-06s shooting 220 grain bullets.  Something only a person without enough sense to hold their ears apart would call inadequate for deer.  I dunno, maybe Flaustin1 was EXPECTING much better performance.
> 
> I don't know where you get the idea this is or might be an ego thing.  Were that the case, please explain why he wouldn't do the expected thing and say the Hornet worked fine and the deer went a few yards and died?  That is after all what a person would expect were it done for his ego.  Frankly, if there's ego involved anywhere here it looks to me like the people condemning his action without a shred of experience in this are a whole lot closer to being on an ego trip.



No wrong.  Quote from the OP on why he was doing it.  The decent job of killing was only the second so-called reason for his test.



Flaustin1 said:


> For the folks that keep asking why why why, well heres the reason.  Alot of people have children, girls, small framed and not very strong.  Alot of them would like to hunt but are to recoil/blast sensitive to become proficient with a larger caliber.
> 
> Im testing the hornet to help some of these people out.  Im also doing it to either prove or disprove a lot of the reasoning behind people believing it is sub par.


----------



## Old Winchesters

NCHillbilly said:


> Bigger caliber doesn't mean DRT necessarily, either. I shot a buck last Saturday with a .300 Winmag and a 180 grain Barnes TTSX at a little over a hundred yards. It was a perfect double-lung shot with no bone contact. There was a chunk of lung the size of my thumb laying there at the shot site. The deer went probably 150 yards or more, with only tiny specks of blood widely scattered for the first hundred. The entrance wound was almost invisible, and the exit wound was no more than dime-sized with very little internal trauma. Don't tell me I ain't getting enough speed from the .300.  There just wasn't anything but soft-tissue contact, and the bullet never expanded. I actually see much better results on lung shots with slow, heavy muzzleloader bullets or .30-30 type rounds than with the superfast magnum projectiles judging from thirty-some years of shooting deer with all kinds of weapons.
> 
> I shot a deer that morning with the same combo that hit scapula, and the deer dropped like a sack of taters and was missing nearly half its offside shoulder. I preferred the shot on the one that ran, because I didn't lose meat.
> 
> Would I deer hunt with a .22 Hornet if I had a better option on hand? Probably not. Could I kill deer with one if I needed to? Sure. But I would be picky with the shots I took.



This^


----------



## miles58

dtala said:


> The 22 Hornet is NOT a deer gun, it was never intended to be used as one, and should not be used as one. It simply isn't enough gun. Its a stunt, pure and simple.



130 grain bullets in 30-06 were never intended to be big game loads either now were they?  I would take on anything that you can find in North America with 130 grain Barnes bullets.  In point of fact, I'd take on the big bears with my 760 and those 130 grain TSXs in preference to anything else.

Today's 30-30 is a whole different rifle than it started out if you load it right.  Why would you handicap a rifle buy expecting it to remain forever with only the original capability it had at it's inception?


----------



## Jeff Phillips

miles58 said:


> I have seen more or less the same results out of 30-06s shooting 220 grain bullets.



You have seen a deer take a 220 grain .06 to the shoulders and just stand there, then take one to the gut, and still required a head shot to finish it? 

Even with the 220 not being a deer round, I find that hard to believe...


----------



## Flaustin1

Folks this aint an ego thing. I don't get caught up in that mess.  Its a simple test.  One that a lot of people don't agree with, but one that's gonna be done regardless.

Ive only lost one deer that ive shot in my 21 years of hunting,  That's right, im only 29, still young.

Ive only missed 2 deer that I can recall with a rifle.  Both being good bucks when I was in my teens.  Go figure.  Im extremely confident with my shooting ability because I burn through numerous rounds per year.  Maybe 1500?  just a guess, ive never kept up with it.

Could I head shoot every deer with the hornet?  Without a doubt, but that dosnt get me any closer to the answer I want to find.

Question for the folks that say its unethical to put an "inadequate" round in the hands of a beginner.  Do you not think it is wrong to put any caliber round in the hands of someone that has not proven there ability to put the round where it needs to be every time?

I know my oldest daughter (12) and my niece (11) can hit what they are intending to hit.  Sure they will be under some stress when a deer walks out, but teaching them proper shooting techniques will overcome that.

My oldest daughter has already proven herself in the deer woods.  Shes 2 for 2 so far with a .243.  She can handle that caliber.  My niece however cant, and hasn't hunted deer because of it.  Shes just to small framed.  The hornet however, she can shoot.  If I can prove its capable,  I will be able to get her in the woods.  I believe in the old saying "teach your kids to hunt and you wont have to hunt your kids".   

Thanks to all of the folks who have discussed this topic, whether for it or against it, without being rude, ignorant or childish.


----------



## Flaustin1

Jeff Phillips said:


> You have seen a deer take a 220 grain .06 to the shoulders and just stand there, then take one to the gut, and still required a head shot to finish it?
> 
> Even with the 220 not being a deer round, I find that hard to believe...



For the record, my first shot was just behind the shoulders.  No heavy muscle or bone was hit.  I will admit that the second round didn't get the penetration needed to finish the job at the angle it was taken.  It did anchor the deer though.

I have no doubt that I could put a barnes through the high shoulder and drop any Ga. whitetail I wanted.  However that is not the biggest vital target on a whitetail and I wanted to put it through the lungs because that is the easiest for a beginner to zero in on in my opinion.

And, to be honest, yes, I wanted to see what it could do.


----------



## miles58

Jeff Phillips said:


> You have seen a deer take a 220 grain .06 to the shoulders and just stand there, then take one to the gut, and still required a head shot to finish it?
> 
> Even with the 220 not being a deer round, I find that hard to believe...



That's not what I said, and I will thank you not to put words in my mouth n an attempt at supporting your own agenda.  I have seen deer (plural) shout through the chest with equivalent damage to Flaustin1's first shot and pretty similar result.

180s, 200s and 220s were commonly used deer rounds back in the fifties and sixties.   Until only very recently if you wanted a sturdy bullet, that was the choice available.


----------



## batoncolle

Flaustin1 said:


> Folks this aint an ego thing. I don't get caught up in that mess.  Its a simple test.  One that a lot of people don't agree with, but one that's gonna be done regardless.
> 
> Ive only lost one deer that ive shot in my 21 years of hunting,  That's right, im only 29, still young.
> 
> Ive only missed 2 deer that I can recall with a rifle.  Both being good bucks when I was in my teens.  Go figure.  Im extremely confident with my shooting ability because I burn through numerous rounds per year.  Maybe 1500?  just a guess, ive never kept up with it.
> 
> Could I head shoot every deer with the hornet?  Without a doubt, but that dosnt get me any closer to the answer I want to find.
> 
> Question for the folks that say its unethical to put an "inadequate" round in the hands of a beginner.  *Do you not think it is wrong to put any caliber round in the hands of someone that has not proven there ability to put the round where it needs to be every time?*
> I know my oldest daughter (12) and my niece (11) can hit what they are intending to hit.  Sure they will be under some stress when a deer walks out, but teaching them proper shooting techniques will overcome that.
> 
> My oldest daughter has already proven herself in the deer woods.  Shes 2 for 2 so far with a .243.  She can handle that caliber.  My niece however cant, and hasn't hunted deer because of it.  Shes just to small framed.  The hornet however, she can shoot.  If I can prove its capable,  I will be able to get her in the woods.  I believe in the old saying "teach your kids to hunt and you wont have to hunt your kids".
> 
> Thanks to all of the folks who have discussed this topic, whether for it or against it, without being rude, ignorant or childish.



I am the one who said it is unethical, and yes it applies to all calibers but more so with the light 22 round because there are so many additional possibilities for an error.   Just because a kid is going to be out in the woods does not mean they have to be out hunting deer.  There are plenty of smaller critters they could learn to hunt on such as squirrel or rabbit - which they should be doing anyway.  

So yes if you are truly doing this to put a young inexperienced kid in the woods hunting deer with a 22, I find it to be unethical.


----------



## TaxPhd

miles58 said:


> 130 grain bullets in 30-06 were never intended to be big game loads either now were they?  I would take on anything that you can find in North America with 130 grain Barnes bullets.  In point of fact, I'd take on the big bears with my 760 and those 130 grain TSXs in preference to anything else.



And with that, this discussion has gone from the ridiculous to the absurd.

Have fun everyone.  I'm done here.


----------



## burkehunter

I can't believe this thread is still being commented on.  If you keep fueling the fire.....  I wonder if this experiment thing could be a hit...um lets see....lets throw swiss army knives at deer!


----------



## miles58

TaxPhd said:


> And with that, this discussion has gone from the ridiculous to the absurd.
> 
> Have fun everyone.  I'm done here.



Wait!  Before you go, please enlighten us as to how many animals you've killed with Barnes bullets of any calibe or weight.  There's a few of us who'd really like to know where you get your opinions from.


----------



## treeman101

Flaustin1 If you will load me some of those rounds I will help you try them out.  I prefer any gun with 100 grains or less and have have no trouble at all with them.  If it was legal to use my 25 rimfire I would use it also.  Keep the posts coming love to see how it turns out.


----------



## JBranch

Hylander, 
 I did not mean to "call you out" or offend you or anyone else for that matter. As I apologize to you or anyone else that was or has been offended by anything I said or am about to say. 

 I was simply putting up numbers (the first ones I could find actually), in comparison to the load Faustin1 loaded and successfully harvested a legal game animal with. I have no beef whatsoever with anyone taking a game animal with any legal weapon. Fact of the matter is that he has put a lot of thought, time, and effort into finding a solution to the problem of too much recoil for a child to have a weapon to deer hunt with. As of yet, according to his posts, he still is searching for a solution. I think that a well placed shot with the right load/bullet configuration in this chambering will be a viable option. I agree that it is not the first gun I would grab, but it is proven. I believe that if he chooses to allow his niece or any other child to hunt with it, it will be after much practice and preparation, and he will feel confident that if a shot is made, it will be a success. 

Personally I would not use a 22 Hornet to hunt with, but it is not my place to decide who hunts with what or to try to make everyone hunt with whatever I deem as "enough" gun. I think that an adequate shot made with a marginal chambering is better than a marginal shot made with an adequate chambering. 

As far as the experiment goes, everyone who has shot a game animal with a new gun, bullet, or arrow that they have never tried before is experimenting. Trial and error is really the only way we develop or evolve. 

In the end, we all are free to use the chambering/bullet combination of our choice. I like my choice, I know it is not for everyone, but it is for me. If something in my combination does not suit me, then I will change it.

As far as ethics, that is for everyone to decide for themselves.


----------



## JB0704

I killed a deer with a 22 rimfire once.  The deer was crippled in a ditch and that's the only gun I had in the truck.  So, I know for a fact that a 22 rimfire will kill deer too,  I just personally don't actively seek to prove it.  To each his own, I recon.


----------



## miles58

Jeff Phillips said:


> You have seen a deer take a 220 grain .06 to the shoulders and just stand there, then take one to the gut, and still required a head shot to finish it?
> 
> Even with the 220 not being a deer round, I find that hard to believe...



I forgot!  I have seen a deer take a 250 grain Barnes through both shoulders and not go down.  In fact, he ran off.  Not only that, but he didn't bleed much at all.  Not only that, but I photographed the wounds from the inside and outside of the shoulders.  Not only that, but I also published those photos on this very web site for all to see.  And, on top of all of that, it was a fawn.


----------



## hylander

lrmed1 said:


> Hylander,
> I did not mean to "call you out" or offend you or anyone else for that matter. As I apologize to you or anyone else that was or has been offended by anything I said or am about to say.
> 
> I was simply putting up numbers (the first ones I could find actually), in comparison to the load Faustin1 loaded and successfully harvested a legal game animal with. I have no beef whatsoever with anyone taking a game animal with any legal weapon. Fact of the matter is that he has put a lot of thought, time, and effort into finding a solution to the problem of too much recoil for a child to have a weapon to deer hunt with. As of yet, according to his posts, he still is searching for a solution. I think that a well placed shot with the right load/bullet configuration in this chambering will be a viable option. I agree that it is not the first gun I would grab, but it is proven. I believe that if he chooses to allow his niece or any other child to hunt with it, it will be after much practice and preparation, and he will feel confident that if a shot is made, it will be a success.
> 
> Personally I would not use a 22 Hornet to hunt with, but it is not my place to decide who hunts with what or to try to make everyone hunt with whatever I deem as "enough" gun. I think that an adequate shot made with a marginal chambering is better than a marginal shot made with an adequate chambering.
> 
> As far as the experiment goes, everyone who has shot a game animal with a new gun, bullet, or arrow that they have never tried before is experimenting. Trial and error is really the only way we develop or evolve.
> 
> In the end, we all are free to use the chambering/bullet combination of our choice. I like my choice, I know it is not for everyone, but it is for me. If something in my combination does not suit me, then I will change it.
> 
> As far as ethics, that is for everyone to decide for themselves.



No problem.   healthy debates are good.  Problem is, on here it is hard to understand exactly sometimes the meaning behind a post.  Downside to typing on the internet vs discussing in person.

This is my first year using a bow, so you could say I am experimenting as well.  I have set some rules for myself, no shots over 30 yards the first year.  I will not take a chance on making a bad shot and wounding a deer.  If I have any concerns, then no shot whatsoever.   But I do agree with you on quite a bit.


----------



## Jeff Phillips

miles58 said:


> I forgot!  I have seen a deer take a 250 grain Barnes through both shoulders and not go down.  In fact, he ran off.  Not only that, but he didn't bleed much at all.  Not only that, but I photographed the wounds from the inside and outside of the shoulders.  Not only that, but I also published those photos on this very web site for all to see.  And, on top of all of that, it was a fawn.



Sorry I got you so worked up and snorting mad. I really have not been emotional about this thread at all. I just don't understand the why of it all. I started my daughters and son shooting deer calibers at 7 years old with a cut to fit Marlin 30-30. By the time they were 10 they were comfortable with a .308 or 30.06.

I believe the above, bullet construction was not made for deer size game. Just like the 220 you mentioned earlier.


----------



## meatseeker

I think there comes a time when "we" as adults have to say to our "young uns" your not ready yet and take them squirrel hunting. JMO


----------



## miles58

Jeff Phillips said:


> I believe the above, bullet construction was not made for deer size game. Just like the 220 you mentioned earlier.



Both bullets were made expressly for deer hunting.  Go find the thread of the fawn and the 250 grain Barnes and come back and try to tell me or anyone else for that matter, that bullet wasn't designed explicitly for deer.  

People get to believe anything they choose.  Most people look for a foundation on which to base their beliefs.  Intelligent people test their beliefs to see how well they stack up against what they can prove.  That's exactly the process Flaustin1 is going through right now.  I am pretty sure he at least isn't just talking about this, he's done the work before hand to have pretty good assurance his outcome would be good.  He knows what he's doing and what he is talking about.


----------



## kbuck1

For the people who say whats the difference in someone shooting  deer with a broadhead, there is a huge difference. Double lung a deer with a sharp broadhead and that deer lives less than 30 seconds. Sure people make less than perfect shots with archery equipment and deer suffer. The op made a " perfect shot"  with the hornet and the deer was still living 6 minutes later. That deer could have covered a lot of ground in 6 minutes. He was lucky he stayed close by. I'm not going to say it is or it isn't adequate because I have no history with one. But with the information you have given its enough for me to know its not adequate enough for me. And it's surely not adequate enough for any child that's a new hunter. Many seasoned hunters make bad shots, including myself from time to time. You got the results from a perfect shot. Can you imagine what the results would have been from a less than perfect shot? I understand you wanting to test the round. But, I don't understand you wanting to take it further. Seems like the answer is pretty clear to Most on here


----------



## K80

This thread cracks me up for so many reasons, mainly lack of reading comprehension. 

I've known F most of his life growing up in the same town and he's never been one with an ego, just an FYI for those mentioning egos.

Will the 22 hornet kill a deer cleanly, absolutly with the proper shot placement, just as any other hunting caliber will.  While I've never used one, I grew up and hunted in the same club as a deer slaying little girl that used a 22 hornet, there were also several others in the club that would use one occasionally.  Past experience tells me it is sufficient with the proper bullet selection and and shot placement.  My experience with my 6 mm growing up also tells me that another factor that's needs to be considered is the environment you are hunting.   I've lost one or two as a teen that was drilled perfectly however due to the tall vegetation finding the blood trail at night was next to impossible.  If I were using a 22 hornet I would stick to open hard woods or fields where blood trailing is easy and/or walking a grid and spotting the down deer at a distance is easy in case there is little to no blood trail.  For example, in the seventh grade I heart shot a doe with my 6 mm that ran ~100 yards that didn't leave a detectable blood trail until the last 20 yards.  My older brother was ready to give up looking but I refused to as I knew I made a solid hit.  The area I was hunting was hardwoods next to a thick stip of pines 50 yards wide that opened back up into mature hardwoods.  There were several trails that branched off the main trail the doe ran down. We searched all the trails for blood with no luck. Finally I just walked into the hard woods zig zagging over the the rolling terrain. I found her in a small depressed area not 30 yards from the pines and back tracked her trail to see how I missed the blood trail and there was very litte blood on the ground however her chest cavity was filled. (This is also one reason I like to hunt high so the exit is much lower than the entrance so blood can't pool up in the chest) This was a huge learning experince for me and from then on I have taken my hunting environment into consideration when choosing which rifle I take with me.  If I'm in/near a swamp or cutover I'll have my 06 or 308 but if I'm in big hardwoods I'll carry my 6mm.

For those that keep mentioning the six minutes the deer lived, I'm pretty confident that if the deer would have ran she would of depleted her oxygen much sooner thus dying quicker. I may be wrong in my assumption but I don't think so.

F, I had no clue you had a 12 year old daughter, off the top of my head it's probably been close to that long since I last saw you.


----------



## gma1320

shot placement is everything.


----------



## dtala

shot placement is NOT everything, one still has to shoot an appropriate bullet. A perfectly placed bullet that blows up on hitting a rib isn't going to work. Neither will a BB gun....


----------



## 660griz

hunter rich said:


> How is losing 2 deer with a .308, more acceptable than KILLING and taking one home with a .22 hornet?????



It is absolutely not. Taking every precaution to NOT lose deer should be the case for everyone.


----------



## NCHillbilly

I found it interesting reading "Fred Bear's Field Notes" that on one of his Kodiak bear hunts, his rifle backup was a guy with a .22 Hornet that he used to shoot seals off his boat with.


----------



## dtala

miles58 said:


> 130 grain bullets in 30-06 were never intended to be big game loads either now were they?



I'd guess that you have never seen, or killed deer, with a 30/06 and 130 gr Norma ammo.....

or the briefly made 135gr Nosler Partition in 30 cal???


----------



## gma1320

Ta





dtala said:


> shot placement is NOT everything, one still has to shoot an appropriate bullet. A perfectly placed bullet that blows up on hitting a rib isn't going to work. Neither will a BB gun....



Didn't state my opinion about his caliber of choice. But I don't agree with it for those who want to know. Just stated a fact . Shot placement is everything. You wouldn't intentionally shoot a deer in the guts or hind quarters would you.  No even if you were shootin the thing with a 300 mag. But I do know from talking with my game warden pals that poachers shoot deer in the head all night long with 22 rimfires and unfortunaltly for us ethical guys they suceed in what they are doing. Like I simply stated. Shot placement is everything. And for anyone who cares to know I like to shoot em with a 12 gauge shotgun with a hollow point slug. Has a way of making them fall over and rest on impact which is better for me because I'm usually by my self and I don't have to track them. Just gut em drag em to the truck


----------



## whitedog

So yes if you are truly doing this to put a young inexperienced kid in the woods hunting deer with a 22, I find it to be unethical.[/QUOTE]

Between the ages of 5 and 12, my youngest son killed 16deer with a .222 including a number of good bucks. He never lost a deer, he did shoot one buck a second time.


----------



## JustUs4All

Lively discussion here.  Encouraged by it, I am going to take my grandson out with a cap gun.  Perhaps, if we can get close enough, we can frighten one to death. LOL


----------



## Flaustin1

K80 said:


> This thread cracks me up for so many reasons, mainly lack of reading comprehension.
> 
> I've known F most of his life growing up in the same town and he's never been one with an ego, just an FYI for those mentioning egos.
> 
> Will the 22 hornet kill a deer cleanly, absolutly with the proper shot placement, just as any other hunting caliber will.  While I've never used one, I grew up and hunted in the same club as a deer slaying little girl that used a 22 hornet, there were also several others in the club that would use one occasionally.  Past experience tells me it is sufficient with the proper bullet selection and and shot placement.  My experience with my 6 mm growing up also tells me that another factor that's needs to be considered is the environment you are hunting.   I've lost one or two as a teen that was drilled perfectly however due to the tall vegetation finding the blood trail at night was next to impossible.  If I were using a 22 hornet I would stick to open hard woods or fields where blood trailing is easy and/or walking a grid and spotting the down deer at a distance is easy in case there is little to no blood trail.  For example, in the seventh grade I heart shot a doe with my 6 mm that ran ~100 yards that didn't leave a detectable blood trail until the last 20 yards.  My older brother was ready to give up looking but I refused to as I knew I made a solid hit.  The area I was hunting was hardwoods next to a thick stip of pines 50 yards wide that opened back up into mature hardwoods.  There were several trails that branched off the main trail the doe ran down. We searched all the trails for blood with no luck. Finally I just walked into the hard woods zig zagging over the the rolling terrain. I found her in a small depressed area not 30 yards from the pines and back tracked her trail to see how I missed the blood trail and there was very litte blood on the ground however her chest cavity was filled. (This is also one reason I like to hunt high so the exit is much lower than the entrance so blood can't pool up in the chest) This was a huge learning experince for me and from then on I have taken my hunting environment into consideration when choosing which rifle I take with me.  If I'm in/near a swamp or cutover I'll have my 06 or 308 but if I'm in big hardwoods I'll carry my 6mm.
> 
> For those that keep mentioning the six minutes the deer lived, I'm pretty confident that if the deer would have ran she would of depleted her oxygen much sooner thus dying quicker. I may be wrong in my assumption but I don't think so.
> 
> F, I had no clue you had a 12 year old daughter, off the top of my head it's probably been close to that long since I last saw you.



Thanks man, shes actually my step daughter but her mother and I have been together for almost 8 years so ive pretty much helped raise her.  I have a 3 year old girl too.


----------



## Flaustin1

whitedog said:


> So yes if you are truly doing this to put a young inexperienced kid in the woods hunting deer with a 22, I find it to be unethical.



Between the ages of 5 and 12, my youngest son killed 16deer with a .222 including a number of good bucks. He never lost a deer, he did shoot one buck a second time.[/QUOTE]

Just out of curiosity, what were the ballistics on the ammo he was using.?  Weight, FPS, and bullet construction.  It could be helpful info.


----------



## Flaustin1

whitedog said:


> So yes if you are truly doing this to put a young inexperienced kid in the woods hunting deer with a 22, I find it to be unethical.



Between the ages of 5 and 12, my youngest son killed 16deer with a .222 including a number of good bucks. He never lost a deer, he did shoot one buck a second time.[/QUOTE]

Just checked for myself.  Assuming he was shooting a 45 gr. bullet, he was only getting about 250-300 fps more than me.  That being said, im sure the barnes is a much better constructed bullet than the one he was using unless you handload of course.


----------



## denbow

Short answer yes !!
I've have a TC Encore 22-250 1-12 twist, I've had great results with Barnes 50 grain TTSX with Varget and H380. It did take some work, once I started to get some descent groups (under 1.5") I started moving my loads up by .1grain until I was consistently under 1". This is a hunting load and 1" was good for this purpose.
I taken several deer over the last year or with this load. Haven't lost a deer haven't had to one over 40 yds. Only had one where there wasn't an exit hole, bullet hit opposing shoulder, shattered shoulder and broke front leg. This bullet traveling at 3700-3800 fps is designed to send a shock wave thru the internal and it does.


----------



## whitedog

batoncolle said:


> I am the one who said it is unethical, and yes it applies to all calibers but more so with the light 22 round because there are so many additional possibilities for an error.   Just because a kid is going to be out in the woods does not mean they have to be out hunting deer.  There are plenty of smaller critters they could learn to hunt on such as squirrel or rabbit - which they should be doing anyway.
> 
> So yes if you are truly doing this to put a young inexperienced kid in the woods hunting deer with a 22, I find it to be unethical.



Flaustin, just to clear it up, I was quoting batoncolle in my earlier post.

With the .222, we were shooting Remington factory loaded 50 grain psp bullets. The muzzle velo is about 3100 and the energy at the muzzle is just under 1100 ft/lbs. It's not near the bullet the Barnes is but we had great success with it. The lack of recoil played a big part in his ability to accurately place his shots and he was deadly with it. I have killed a number of deer with it myself and I can assure you that if the shooter does his job, the bullet will too.


----------



## Flaustin1

Yep, thats what im thinking too.  Thanks.


----------



## jetblasted

bowbuck said:


> I want you to think how Mr. Jordan felt that morning holding his 25-20 Winchester.  For you babies, Google it.



I must be a baby. I googled it & came up with nothin' ...


----------



## miles58

On Saturday morning I shot one with a .223 and a 53 grain TSX.  That's just a little faster and only 8 grains heavier that what Flaustin1 used in the Hornet.  I tried to pick a shot like he described.  I put it in behind the shoulder on the left side and it left through the right shoulder.  The deer made it little more than 100 feet.  It had a sparse but usable blood trail.  The lungs were tore up pretty good but not completely jellied.  The top of the heart was gone and the heart was loose in the chest.  This was a big doe, 170ish dressed, bigger than most of your bucks.

On Saturday evening I shot another big doe with a .270.  Almost identical shot placement with a Barnes 110 TTSX, just a little bit lower.  She made it 2-3 times as far with a blown out heart and similar damage to the lungs.  Very poor blood trail, just a little wipe here or there on the brush and widely spaced.

Unless I knew which deer was killed with which bullet there'd be no way to tell, they were that similar.  Both had small holes in the hide, the .223 was maybe smaller, but without putting a calipers on it I wouldn't bet money on it.  The .223 kill was at ~ 80 yards and the .270 kill was ~110-120 yards.

I am pretty sure 8 grains of bullet weight will not make a very respectable killer into a marginal round.  I am also pretty certain that above 2500 FPS the difference velocity makes diminishes very rapidly.  Given a choice, I would take the 45 grain Barnes at 2700-2800 out of a Hornet before I would run factory loads out of a 30-30.  I would most assuredly choose the .223 and 53 grain TSX over heavy for caliber lead core 30 caliber ammo coming out of a .308 or 30-06.


----------



## PopPop

Keep it up and congrats on the kill. It because of threads like this that covered the .223/5.56, that I had the confidence to use mine. The .223 allows me to hunt deer where I otherwise would not due to concerns of over penetration. I need to kill these deer who ravage my garden but can not shoot my "deer" rifles and risk a bullet getting off of my property.


----------



## duckhunter2.0

Imagine this, the least important subject to a deer hunting thread gets this much attention.....just imagine it. If it's legal in the regs why does everyone continue to BEAT IT TO DEATH? Just hunt and be happy.  Don't worry about everyone else....


----------



## Chris Kalinski

Still waiting on results from #2


----------



## Flaustin1

Me too.  Havnt been able to pull the trigger yet.  Out doe days are out and ive already shot my little buck.


----------



## vixzilla

Look - I'm no animal rights activist and I'm a pure blood hunter. But letting this animal die a slow death for the sport of using a smaller caliber successfully is horse crap.  this is the kind of garbage that gets the peta jerks stirred up. Be respectful of the animal and be responsible.


----------



## Da Possum

Ya'll are still debating Hornet22?  I didn't realize that he was such a controversial topic.   I know he's done some questionable things in his duck blind; but Mud and Quack are grown men and could have said no.


----------



## Hornet22

hdm03 said:


> Ya'll are still debating Hornet22?  I didn't realize that he was such a controversial topic.   I know he's done some questionable things in his duck blind; but Mud and Quack are grown men and could have said no.



I had noooooooooo idea I was so controversial and famous at da same time.


----------



## Da Possum

Hornet22 said:


> I had noooooooooo idea I was so controversial and famous at da same time.



You've finally made it to the big time!!


----------



## jwf2506

it is probably safe to say there has been more deer killed with a 22 hornet than has been lost with much larger calibers just saying


----------



## Flaustin1

Im beginning to think I know Quack, Hornet22 and hdm03 and just don't realize it.


----------



## Flaustin1

vixzilla said:


> Look - I'm no animal rights activist and I'm a pure blood hunter. But letting this animal die a slow death for the sport of using a smaller caliber successfully is horse crap.  this is the kind of garbage that gets the peta jerks stirred up. Be respectful of the animal and be responsible.



How many deer have you shot and lost in your lifetime?


----------



## hunter rich

vixzilla said:


> Look - I'm no animal rights activist and I'm a pure blood hunter. But letting this animal die a slow death for the sport of using a smaller caliber successfully is horse crap.  this is the kind of garbage that gets the peta jerks stirred up. Be respectful of the animal and be responsible.



This is just like the gun control nuts...You don't need AR type guns.
 Seriously, he respects the animal, and is responsible.  He didn't do anything illegal but people want to jump on him anyway.  

Infighting among hunters is more of a fuel for peta jerks than someone legally taking an animal.


----------



## miles58

Here's how I look at this.

When it comes to killing deer with small calibers, we have some experience within our community to base a decision on, but not a lot and not broadly based.

I have seen deer shot with "legal minimum" rifles produce wounds the deer could likely have survived, not because the shot placement was poor, but because the choice of bullet was poor.  I have seen this happen when "varmint" bullets were used on deer.  I have seen this happen when heavy bullets with heavy jackets are used on deer.

What we have here is Flaustin1 doing some exploration of whether the legal minimum in Georgia (and many other states) really is adequate.  There really is no other way to find out if a Hornet with a tough bullet is adequate to kill deer without actually doing it, and doing it enough times to have a meaningful result across a number of deer.  

I have killed well more than enough animals quite a bit bigger than deer with a .22 using both long rifle and short loads to know absolutely that I can do it.  I have killed enough deer with .22 LR to be absolutely certain I can do it not only reliably, but with much, much better results than I or any other bow hunter I have ever seen can produce with a bow.  For many years  would sit on my front steps and shoot charcoal briquettes in a dirt bank at 60 yards, and then shoot the bigger pieces with an aperture sighted Remington 510, and a scope sighted Winchester model 75.

For me, as one specific hunter,  a .22 LR might make sense as a legal minimum.  It certainly makes much better sense than allowing anyone with the ability to purchase a license to shoot deer with a bow.  At least in Minnesota, and at least based on the last numbers I saw which showed somewhere in the thirty percent range for wounding losses with a bow.  Even while our legal minimum rifle was .243, we saw more than ten per cent wounding losses with rifles.

I just killed my first deer ever with a .223.  I used a 53 grain TSX bullet at over 3000 FPS and it not only penetrated through the deer but it was also well more than enough to kill that deer very quickly with ample tissue damage.  I shoot a lot of 35 grain VMax bullets out of the same rifle.  That bullet is perfectly legal for deer hunting here, and in my experience, I doubt it could be made even as effective as a .22LR.  It's a ballistic tipped bullet of extremely fragile construction.  Having watched and considered what people do when buying ammo and why, I have no doubt that some people will buy ammo loaded with those bullets on price or because it's a "Ballistic Tip" bullet.  Maybe they'll just buy it because they are flat out stupid.

When it comes down to it, there are many, many examples of this kind of foolishness.  People "stretch" the range of a 30-30 beyond 100 yards.  Some think 200-250 is OK.  They couldn't give you the drop at those ranges for the bullet they have in most cases, much less it's remaining velocity.  Least of all, they virtually never know what the designed window of expansion velocity is for that bullet, or what that bullet is doing for speed when it comes out of their barrel.

This thread demonstrated that all but one contributor who was against using a Hornet  had not the experience with the subject matter to know what he was talking about.  When it comes to finding out where the margins really lie when it comes to killing deer, there is no substitute for doing the work.  Without KNOWING where the margins lie, you cannot know if what you are doing is adequate or not.  Just a simple thing like accuracy can make more difference than caliber or bullet choice.  There's a whole lot of people who go deer hunting with rifles that are lucky to put a few shots on a 9 inch paper plate.  When you couple that with people who can't tell you whether a target is at 50 or 150 yards when they have time to look at it and consider it, that alone is well more than enough to cause a complete miss.  Add the excitement of seeing a deer to shoot and you quickly get onto a lot shakier ground criticizing anyone about what they use for shooting deer.

Simply put, there are so many common things that affect so many people that they cannot or will not control, it's ridiculous to worry about caliber alone.  If you want to see wounded deer take a 300 WM  straight out of the box, load it with 180 or 200 grain full house load and I would bet with that 8 pound factory trigger you could build a respectable flinch into more than half of deer hunters.  Go to sight in days at a local range before deer hunting if you don't believe that.


----------



## Rich M

miles58 said:


> Simply put, there are so many common things that affect so many people that they cannot or will not control, it's ridiculous to worry about caliber alone.  If you want to see wounded deer take a 300 WM  straight out of the box, load it with 180 or 200 grain full house load and I would bet with that 8 pound factory trigger you could build a respectable flinch into more than half of deer hunters.  Go to sight in days at a local range before deer hunting if you don't believe that.



I have a flinch from the 30-06.  Been shooting it since I was 8 (over 30 years) and hate it.  I can shoot a nickel at 100 yards but it takes effort and energy to focus on not flinching.  I missed the biggest buck I ever shot at this year cause I flinched.

To combat this I picked up a 243 and a 357 magnum rifle.  And both are a joy to shoot.  Have yet to shoot a deer with the 243 myself but saw 6 shot with it this year and the performance was dismal - all deer died and all were found but all had only 1 hole to bleed out of.  They kill elk with the 243 so we know it is adequate for a deer.

The 357 mag is more limited in range but put a nice buck (my biggest to date) on the ground for me - with complete penetration.  He was my second deer with the 357 mag.  I have yet to shoot over 50 yards at a deer with it, so the jury is still out if the performance will be adequate at 100 yards.

To me, any reasonable caliber and bullet can kill a deer.  It is up to the hunter/shooter to do their part.


----------



## Thatherton

miles58 said:


> Here's how I look at this.
> 
> When it comes to killing deer with small calibers, we have some experience within our community to base a decision on, but not a lot and not broadly based.
> 
> I have seen deer shot with "legal minimum" rifles produce wounds the deer could likely have survived, not because the shot placement was poor, but because the choice of bullet was poor.  I have seen this happen when "varmint" bullets were used on deer.  I have seen this happen when heavy bullets with heavy jackets are used on deer.
> 
> What we have here is Flaustin1 doing some exploration of whether the legal minimum in Georgia (and many other states) really is adequate.  There really is no other way to find out if a Hornet with a tough bullet is adequate to kill deer without actually doing it, and doing it enough times to have a meaningful result across a number of deer.
> 
> I have killed well more than enough animals quite a bit bigger than deer with a .22 using both long rifle and short loads to know absolutely that I can do it.  I have killed enough deer with .22 LR to be absolutely certain I can do it not only reliably, but with much, much better results than I or any other bow hunter I have ever seen can produce with a bow.  For many years  would sit on my front steps and shoot charcoal briquettes in a dirt bank at 60 yards, and then shoot the bigger pieces with an aperture sighted Remington 510, and a scope sighted Winchester model 75.
> 
> For me, as one specific hunter,  a .22 LR might make sense as a legal minimum.  It certainly makes much better sense than allowing anyone with the ability to purchase a license to shoot deer with a bow.  At least in Minnesota, and at least based on the last numbers I saw which showed somewhere in the thirty percent range for wounding losses with a bow.  Even while our legal minimum rifle was .243, we saw more than ten per cent wounding losses with rifles.
> 
> I just killed my first deer ever with a .223.  I used a 53 grain TSX bullet at over 3000 FPS and it not only penetrated through the deer but it was also well more than enough to kill that deer very quickly with ample tissue damage.  I shoot a lot of 35 grain VMax bullets out of the same rifle.  That bullet is perfectly legal for deer hunting here, and in my experience, I doubt it could be made even as effective as a .22LR.  It's a ballistic tipped bullet of extremely fragile construction.  Having watched and considered what people do when buying ammo and why, I have no doubt that some people will buy ammo loaded with those bullets on price or because it's a "Ballistic Tip" bullet.  Maybe they'll just buy it because they are flat out stupid.
> 
> When it comes down to it, there are many, many examples of this kind of foolishness.  People "stretch" the range of a 30-30 beyond 100 yards.  Some think 200-250 is OK.  They couldn't give you the drop at those ranges for the bullet they have in most cases, much less it's remaining velocity.  Least of all, they virtually never know what the designed window of expansion velocity is for that bullet, or what that bullet is doing for speed when it comes out of their barrel.
> 
> This thread demonstrated that all but one contributor who was against using a Hornet  had not the experience with the subject matter to know what he was talking about.  When it comes to finding out where the margins really lie when it comes to killing deer, there is no substitute for doing the work.  Without KNOWING where the margins lie, you cannot know if what you are doing is adequate or not.  Just a simple thing like accuracy can make more difference than caliber or bullet choice.  There's a whole lot of people who go deer hunting with rifles that are lucky to put a few shots on a 9 inch paper plate.  When you couple that with people who can't tell you whether a target is at 50 or 150 yards when they have time to look at it and consider it, that alone is well more than enough to cause a complete miss.  Add the excitement of seeing a deer to shoot and you quickly get onto a lot shakier ground criticizing anyone about what they use for shooting deer.
> 
> Simply put, there are so many common things that affect so many people that they cannot or will not control, it's ridiculous to worry about caliber alone.  If you want to see wounded deer take a 300 WM  straight out of the box, load it with 180 or 200 grain full house load and I would bet with that 8 pound factory trigger you could build a respectable flinch into more than half of deer hunters.  Go to sight in days at a local range before deer hunting if you don't believe that.



Since you guys are so into experimenting, why don't you go experiment on a brown bear with the minimum caliber allowed??? And please have someone video it so we will all know the results. Also if you carry for defense, please use a 22, and if you are ever in the unfortunate position to have to use it, please let us know how that works our for you. 

The last time I checked the forum, I did not see a long list of people asking you to go out and experiment. And the reason why is because we already know the 22 will kill deer. People have been using the 22 to kill deer for a very long time. 

Shoot all the deer you want with a 22, but please do not act like you are doing us all a favor.


----------



## ASH556

Thatherton said:


> Since you guys are so into experimenting, why don't you go experiment on a brown bear with the minimum caliber allowed??? And please have someone video it so we will all know the results. Also if you carry for defense, please use a 22, and if you are ever in the unfortunate position to have to use it, please let us know how that works our for you.
> 
> The last time I checked the forum, I did not see a long list of people asking you to go out and experiment. And the reason why is because we already know the 22 will kill deer. People have been using the 22 to kill deer for a very long time.
> 
> Shoot all the deer you want with a 22, but please do not act like you are doing us all a favor.




Right, because we really don't want people sharing information or helping each other.  Since you know it all, maybe you should just head on down the road.  Coming in here and criticizing those who are actually doing things and sharing the results, while sharing nothing yourself makes you just about worthless.


----------



## Thatherton

ASH556 said:


> Right, because we really don't want people sharing information or helping each other.  Since you know it all, maybe you should just head on down the road.  Coming in here and criticizing those who are actually doing things and sharing the results, while sharing nothing yourself makes you just about worthless.



Helping each other how???  Is there really someone here that is not aware that 22 will kill a deer?

Seems easy to me to "experiment" on something that will not bite back, but I thought that is what ballistics gel was made for...


----------



## ASH556

Thatherton said:


> Helping each other how???  Is there really someone here that is not aware that 22 will kill a deer?
> 
> Seems easy to me to "experiment" on something that will not bite back, but I thought that is what ballistics gel was made for...



Ballistics gel doesn't have:

A) A will to live

B) Adrenaline

C) Bones

D) All of the above


hmmmm....I vote "D".  Time for you to move on.  You're beginning to sound an awful lot like a PETA troll.


----------



## Thatherton

ASH556 said:


> Ballistics gel doesn't have:
> 
> A) A will to live
> 
> B) Adrenaline
> 
> C) Bones
> 
> D) All of the above
> 
> 
> hmmmm....I vote "D".  Time for you to move on.  You're beginning to sound an awful lot like a PETA troll.



Well then you should not have a problem with my original suggestion to experiment on a brown bear.  Once again we all know 22 will kill deer.

And just because you can't debate, no need to name call.  I enjoy hunting, but I have never found a need to experiment on the things I kill to eat.  If anything this weird experimentation just invites mud slinging from PETA nuts.


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> Since you guys are so into experimenting, why don't you go experiment on a brown bear with the minimum caliber allowed??? And please have someone video it so we will all know the results. Also if you carry for defense, please use a 22, and if you are ever in the unfortunate position to have to use it, please let us know how that works our for you.
> 
> The last time I checked the forum, I did not see a long list of people asking you to go out and experiment. And the reason why is because we already know the 22 will kill deer. People have been using the 22 to kill deer for a very long time.
> 
> Shoot all the deer you want with a 22, but please do not act like you are doing us all a favor.



I don't think you want to know how many polar or brown bears and interior grizzly Alaska/canada natives kill with .22 caliber rifles.  

But that's neither here nor there.  Perhaps you could enlighten us on what you shoot and how you know it works.  Please specify the rifle, the caliber, the bullet, it's velocity, and how many you have necropsied to see what happened.  And, since you are so certain that 22 calber weapons are so inadequate would you please tell us how many deer you've killed with them, the bullet you used, it's velocity, which rifle and how many of them you necropsied.


----------



## Thatherton

miles58 said:


> I don't think you want to know how many polar or brown bears and interior grizzly Alaska/canada natives kill with .22 caliber rifles.
> 
> But that's neither here nor there.  Perhaps you could enlighten us on what you shoot and how you know it works.  Please specify the rifle, the caliber, the bullet, it's velocity, and how many you have necropsied to see what happened.  And, since you are so certain that 22 calber weapons are so inadequate would you please tell us how many deer you've killed with them, the bullet you used, it's velocity, which rifle and how many of them you necropsied.



Did you read what I wrote?  WE ALREADY KNOW 22 WILL KILL DEER.  You simply would not hunt a brown bear with an inadequate cartridge, period.  You would not carry it as your primary defense weapon.  Explain to us all how this is anything more than an ego trip, and I'll answer your questions - minus using the terminlogy necropsied...

And if you actually do try to explain it, please keep in mind once agai nthat WE ALL KNOW 22 WILL KILL DEER.


----------



## hunter rich

miles58 said:


> I don't think you want to know how many polar or brown bears and interior grizzly Alaska/canada natives kill with .22 caliber rifles.
> 
> But that's neither here nor there.  Perhaps you could enlighten us on what you shoot and how you know it works.  Please specify the rifle, the caliber, the bullet, it's velocity, and how many you have necropsied to see what happened.  And, since you are so certain that 22 calber weapons are so inadequate would you please tell us how many deer you've killed with them, the bullet you used, it's velocity, which rifle and how many of them you necropsied.



Let me help Thatherton out a little...

A necropsy is the animal equivalent of an autopsy.


----------



## Thatherton

hunter rich said:


> Let me help Thatherton out a little...
> 
> A necropsy is the animal equivalent of an autopsy.



I am well aware of the definition.  I just see no need to use certain terminology since I do not have to over compensate for the losing side of the debate.

Once again let's see a show of hands for people that did not know. 22 could kill a deer.  If you truly feel you need to experiment, then you have already it admitted it is inadequate.


----------



## Rich M

Thatherton said:


> You simply would not hunt a brown bear with an inadequate cartridge, period.



The problem here is that we are not hunting brown bear, nor do we ever intend to hunt brown bear as it is just a giant raccoon - why people need to go shoot them is beyond me.  

So, we have deer shooting with a legal rifle, albeit a small one that you agree kills deer.  If it kills deer without losing it, then it must be an adequate rifle being used by someone who can hunt & shoot without getting all flustered.


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> Did you read what I wrote?  WE ALREADY KNOW 22 WILL KILL DEER.  You simply would not hunt a brown bear with an inadequate cartridge, period.  You would not carry it as your primary defense weapon.  Explain to us all how this is anything more than an ego trip, and I'll answer your questions - minus using the terminlogy necropsied...
> 
> And if you actually do try to explain it, please keep in mind once agai nthat WE ALL KNOW 22 WILL KILL DEER.



I killed my first "legal" deer 53 years ago with a .410 shotgun.  That deer dropped in it's tracks.  When I skinned and butchered the deer I payed very close attention to what exactly happened because it was ammo I loaded and spent a lot of time understanding.  I grew up in a tme when milsurp components were the most common and cheapest for loading.  Designated "hunting" bullets were very uneven.  They had accuracy problems.  They had penetration problems.  They had consistency problems.   Loading was quite primitive by today's standards.  Chronographs were unknown in individuals hands.  Loading manuals were wildly optimistic with velocities.  Working up loads for rifles (which I started when I was 8 YO in 1956) was much more difficult and dangerous.

I did what I could to make things better for me, to the point of designing and building an electronic chronograph.  I live by the belief that things do not get better unless you make them better.

I have never killed a deer that I did not carefully inspect as I butchered it to see what I could learn.  I have never killed a deer I did not butcher.  I have photographed a number of them I thought interesting.

I am very interested in the performance of the "little" rounds right now.  For years I have seen and heard people describe the results of shooting deer with sub 6mm rounds and I have experimented carefully at first with copper bullets to the point where I have now killed deer with X bullets, XLCs, TSXs, TTSXs, GMXs and E-tips.  I have killed deer with .22 caliber rounds using these bullets up to and including 300 Win Mag.  I see almost no discernible difference in the wounds created by them, large or small and fast or hyper-fast.  I have not found the need yet to try to find the bottom of the speed range because Barnes in particular has published some very good video of slower impacts that seem to me to agree with what they publish as minimum effective velocity.

I have a lifetime of effort invested in understanding what I am doing with guns.  I take the time to teach other people how to load.  At this point in my life I don't need ego trips, I have killed more than enough deer and other game and find that I am much harder to impress by what I do than anyone I ever met.  Without prodding or even gentle ribbing, I have taken my deer camp from a group of paper plate group shooters to each and every one of them shooting inch groups and EXPECTING NOTHING LESS, and shooting ammo that has consistently produced one shot kills with zero lost deer in eight years now.  This simply by example.  They like the fact that when the gun goes bang the deer dies.  They have learned the limitations of not being able to do better than paper plate size groups and will never again go back.   None of them.  They are now coming to the realization that I am not immortal and they need to acquire the knowledge I posses and learn how to apply it.  Just this last weekend another one asked me what happens when I die and would I teach him.

It's like I said earlier in the thread.  If Buzz decided he could kill a deer with a CB cap and stated his intent to do so, I would expect nothing less of him than a dead deer.  Nor would he expect anything less of me, yet he is one of the people opposed to using a Hornet on deer.

OK.  It's your turn.  Shows us the basis for declaring what we are doing wrong.


----------



## 308 WIN

I'm a little late on this one, but here's my take..... unethical period. 

223 with a well constructed 60 grain or larger bullet should be the absolute minimum for deer. A 60 gr Partition in the lungs at 3100 fps puts them down in six seconds, not a six minute suffering period.


----------



## miles58

308 WIN said:


> I'm a little late on this one, but here's my take..... unethical period.
> 
> 223 with a well constructed 60 grain or larger bullet should be the absolute minimum for deer. A 60 gr Partition in the lungs at 3100 fps puts them down in six seconds, not a six minute suffering period.



Care to explain how a .270 with a MV of 3170 FPS didn't take one down in six seconds last Saturday evening when it blew up the heart and lungs and took out a shoulder too?  Was that unethical period too?


----------



## Thatherton

miles58 said:


> I killed my first "legal" deer 53 years ago with a .410 shotgun.  That deer dropped in it's tracks.  When I skinned and butchered the deer I payed very close attention to what exactly happened because it was ammo I loaded and spent a lot of time understanding.  I grew up in a tme when milsurp components were the most common and cheapest for loading.  Designated "hunting" bullets were very uneven.  They had accuracy problems.  They had penetration problems.  They had consistency problems.   Loading was quite primitive by today's standards.  Chronographs were unknown in individuals hands.  Loading manuals were wildly optimistic with velocities.  Working up loads for rifles (which I started when I was 8 YO in 1956) was much more difficult and dangerous.
> 
> I did what I could to make things better for me, to the point of designing and building an electronic chronograph.  I live by the belief that things do not get better unless you make them better.
> 
> I have never killed a deer that I did not carefully inspect as I butchered it to see what I could learn.  I have never killed a deer I did not butcher.  I have photographed a number of them I thought interesting.
> 
> I am very interested in the performance of the "little" rounds right now.  For years I have seen and heard people describe the results of shooting deer with sub 6mm rounds and I have experimented carefully at first with copper bullets to the point where I have now killed deer with X bullets, XLCs, TSXs, TTSXs, GMXs and E-tips.  I have killed deer with .22 caliber rounds using these bullets up to and including 300 Win Mag.  I see almost no discernible difference in the wounds created by them, large or small and fast or hyper-fast.  I have not found the need yet to try to find the bottom of the speed range because Barnes in particular has published some very good video of slower impacts that seem to me to agree with what they publish as minimum effective velocity.
> 
> I have a lifetime of effort invested in understanding what I am doing with guns.  I take the time to teach other people how to load.  At this point in my life I don't need ego trips, I have killed more than enough deer and other game and find that I am much harder to impress by what I do than anyone I ever met.  Without prodding or even gentle ribbing, I have taken my deer camp from a group of paper plate group shooters to each and every one of them shooting inch groups and EXPECTING NOTHING LESS, and shooting ammo that has consistently produced one shot kills with zero lost deer in eight years now.  This simply by example.  They like the fact that when the gun goes bang the deer dies.  They have learned the limitations of not being able to do better than paper plate size groups and will never again go back.   None of them.  They are now coming to the realization that I am not immortal and they need to acquire the knowledge I posses and learn how to apply it.  Just this last weekend another one asked me what happens when I die and would I teach him.
> 
> It's like I said earlier in the thread.  If Buzz decided he could kill a deer with a CB cap and stated his intent to do so, I would expect nothing less of him than a dead deer.  Nor would he expect anything less of me, yet he is one of the people opposed to using a Hornet on deer.
> 
> OK.  It's your turn.  Shows us the basis for declaring what we are doing wrong.



Thank you for proving my point, albeit in a very winded fashion.  We all know 22 will kill deer so there is no need to experiment further.  And if your rear end was on the line, you would not be playing these games.

Obviously this could go on forever based on the length of this thread but your comment about not being able to distinguish a wound channel from a small and and large caliber tells me I would just be wasting my time.  There is a reason why the make larger calibers you know.   

Bottomline is shot placement will always be king.  If you do not hit vitals, you ain't killing anything quickly.  But there will always be less room for error from outside forces such as wind, length of shot, foliage, and more, when you use a small caliber as opposed to a large caliber.  But this is probably why most hunters use the right tool for the right job.


----------



## Thatherton

miles58 said:


> Care to explain how a .270 with a MV of 3170 FPS didn't take one down in six seconds last Saturday evening when it blew up the heart and lungs and took out a shoulder too?  Was that unethical period too?



If it happened as you say it happened, it darn sure did not take 6 minutes and 2 more shots to finish it.
	
	




		PHP:


----------



## 308 WIN

miles58 said:


> Care to explain how a .270 with a MV of 3170 FPS didn't take one down in six seconds last Saturday evening when it blew up the heart and lungs and took out a shoulder too?  Was that unethical period too?



Maybe it's got something to do with them all copper bullets? I've never used them, but assumed they were ok. My 270 WIN has never had a problem putting deer down quickly using 130 grain power points, hot-cors, pro-hunters etc.


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> Thank you for proving my point, albeit in a very winded fashion.  We all know 22 will kill deer so there is no need to experiment further.  And if your rear end was on the line, you would not be playing these games.
> 
> Obviously this could go on forever based on the length of this thread but your comment about not being able to distinguish a wound channel from a small and and large caliber tells me I would just be wasting my time.  There is a reason why the make larger calibers you know.
> 
> Bottomline is shot placement will always be king.  If you do not hit vitals, you ain't killing anything quickly.  But there will always be less room for error from outside forces such as wind, length of shot, foliage, and more, when you use a small caliber as opposed to a large caliber.  But this is probably why most hunters use the right tool for the right job.



You said you'd show us your basis for decalring what we do wrong.  I am holding you to your word.  I want to hear it.


----------



## Fuzzy D Fellers

Big truck and shoots 7mm mag,  suffers from little man syndrome. One in every club.


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> If it happened as you say it happened, it darn sure did not take 6 minutes and 2 more shots to finish it.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PHP:



The point I was making is, precisely when does it go from ethical to unethical?  I have seen a lot of deer shot with 30 caliber rifles that took multiple shots and lived for more than six seconds.  So, please enlighten me, when does it go from ethical to unethical how long does it take?

I regularly shoot deer in the head and have heard that declared unethical as well.  I have done that for almost sixty years now and had one and only one result, a dead dear on the spot.  No blown off nose or ears or jaws.   I have seen a few deer hit in the head where it went wrong, and I have always done my best to make it right even though I have never had one go wrong myself.  None of the deer I have known of where they suffered a head wound that was not immediately fatal were intended as head shots by the way.  Every single one has come from people missing the deer's body and accidentally hitting them in the head. EVERY SINGLE ONE!   I have also seen a few killed by head wounds that resulted from missed body shots.  I would bet money based on a lot of years experience with a lot of deer hunters that most horror stories over deer head shots result from missed body shots.  The average deer hunter is just not that good a shot and he's not shooting a rifle accurate enough to do the job, and he knows it.  They shoot at the big part of the deer because they want it, and don't want to miss.

If you want unimpeachable ethics you are going to lose a lot of deer hunters for a lot of reasons that will come well ahead of choice of caliber and bullet.  So, I don't think that's a good avenue to go down for your argument against small guns.


----------



## miles58

308 WIN said:


> Maybe it's got something to do with them all copper bullets? I've never used them, but assumed they were ok. My 270 WIN has never had a problem putting deer down quickly using 130 grain power points, hot-cors, pro-hunters etc.



If the copper bullet blew up the heart and lungs it would be very difficult to find fault with it now wouldn't it?  

Like I asked the tatherton, when does it go from ethical to unethical?


----------



## Flaustin1

I have some more info to post and will do so when i have time.


----------



## lonewolf247

miles58 said:


> Here's how I look at this.
> 
> When it comes to killing deer with small calibers, we have some experience within our community to base a decision on, but not a lot and not broadly based.
> 
> I have seen deer shot with "legal minimum" rifles produce wounds the deer could likely have survived, not because the shot placement was poor, but because the choice of bullet was poor.  I have seen this happen when "varmint" bullets were used on deer.  I have seen this happen when heavy bullets with heavy jackets are used on deer.
> 
> What we have here is Flaustin1 doing some exploration of whether the legal minimum in Georgia (and many other states) really is adequate.  There really is no other way to find out if a Hornet with a tough bullet is adequate to kill deer without actually doing it, and doing it enough times to have a meaningful result across a number of deer.
> 
> I have killed well more than enough animals quite a bit bigger than deer with a .22 using both long rifle and short loads to know absolutely that I can do it.  I have killed enough deer with .22 LR to be absolutely certain I can do it not only reliably, but with much, much better results than I or any other bow hunter I have ever seen can produce with a bow.  For many years  would sit on my front steps and shoot charcoal briquettes in a dirt bank at 60 yards, and then shoot the bigger pieces with an aperture sighted Remington 510, and a scope sighted Winchester model 75.
> 
> For me, as one specific hunter,  a .22 LR might make sense as a legal minimum.  It certainly makes much better sense than allowing anyone with the ability to purchase a license to shoot deer with a bow.  At least in Minnesota, and at least based on the last numbers I saw which showed somewhere in the thirty percent range for wounding losses with a bow.  Even while our legal minimum rifle was .243, we saw more than ten per cent wounding losses with rifles.
> 
> I just killed my first deer ever with a .223.  I used a 53 grain TSX bullet at over 3000 FPS and it not only penetrated through the deer but it was also well more than enough to kill that deer very quickly with ample tissue damage.  I shoot a lot of 35 grain VMax bullets out of the same rifle.  That bullet is perfectly legal for deer hunting here, and in my experience, I doubt it could be made even as effective as a .22LR.  It's a ballistic tipped bullet of extremely fragile construction.  Having watched and considered what people do when buying ammo and why, I have no doubt that some people will buy ammo loaded with those bullets on price or because it's a "Ballistic Tip" bullet.  Maybe they'll just buy it because they are flat out stupid.
> 
> When it comes down to it, there are many, many examples of this kind of foolishness.  People "stretch" the range of a 30-30 beyond 100 yards.  Some think 200-250 is OK.  They couldn't give you the drop at those ranges for the bullet they have in most cases, much less it's remaining velocity.  Least of all, they virtually never know what the designed window of expansion velocity is for that bullet, or what that bullet is doing for speed when it comes out of their barrel.
> 
> This thread demonstrated that all but one contributor who was against using a Hornet  had not the experience with the subject matter to know what he was talking about.  When it comes to finding out where the margins really lie when it comes to killing deer, there is no substitute for doing the work.  Without KNOWING where the margins lie, you cannot know if what you are doing is adequate or not.  Just a simple thing like accuracy can make more difference than caliber or bullet choice.  There's a whole lot of people who go deer hunting with rifles that are lucky to put a few shots on a 9 inch paper plate.  When you couple that with people who can't tell you whether a target is at 50 or 150 yards when they have time to look at it and consider it, that alone is well more than enough to cause a complete miss.  Add the excitement of seeing a deer to shoot and you quickly get onto a lot shakier ground criticizing anyone about what they use for shooting deer.
> 
> Simply put, there are so many common things that affect so many people that they cannot or will not control, it's ridiculous to worry about caliber alone.  If you want to see wounded deer take a 300 WM  straight out of the box, load it with 180 or 200 grain full house load and I would bet with that 8 pound factory trigger you could build a respectable flinch into more than half of deer hunters.  Go to sight in days at a local range before deer hunting if you don't believe that.



I can really respect the fact that you've done your ground work, you understand the calibers that you hunt with, and you know how to load them to be efficient rounds for deer hunting.  

You not only are able to make your argument that the small calibers will harvest a deer just as humanly and quickly as the larger calibers, when in the right hands, loaded right, and good shot placement. You have the data to show it.  I get all that.

The problems I see are when people that are not near as educated of these calibers, buy one, and really don't understand the best ammo to use to deer hunt with them.  
Some of these hunters are adults, and some adults buy them for the kids to hunt with.  

Personally, when people ask me the best caliber for a youth starting out, I always recomend 7mm-08/.308.  
Unless they are really small, female, or recoil intolerant, then I'd say .243. I'd recogmend a little larger caliber, because of lack of knowlege of the bullet construction and performance, whether it be by the parent or the youth.  

I personally just believe the 22 centerfires are best left in the hands of professionals who really understand them.
By the same token, I'm to the point, as long as it's legal, whether or not you have good knowledge of bullet construction, it's on you and it's your choice.  I personally could care less if someone kills a deer in less than 6 seconds after making the shot, if the deer doesn't bleed, and runs off in the bushes, only to be eaten by the coyotes.  It's not my place to decide the legal calibers, I just follow the regulations. Bottom line, while I have my opinions on best calibers for deer hunting, and I base my choice on that, I'm not going to argue about making a distinction on where it goes from ethical and not ethical, as long as it's legal.


Thanks for sharing your knowledge and findings!


----------



## gcallaway

There is no way I would sit in a stand with any 22 caliber rifle for even the smallest deer, not because of my ability with a rifle it's just not enough gun.


----------



## jwf2506

lonewolf247 said:


> I can really respect the fact that you've done your ground work, you understand the calibers that you hunt with, and you know how to load them to be efficient rounds for deer hunting.
> 
> You not only are able to make your argument that the small calibers will harvest a deer just as humanly and quickly as the larger calibers, when in the right hands, loaded right, and good shot placement. You have the data to show it.  I get all that.
> 
> The problems I see are when people that are not near as educated of these calibers, buy one, and really don't understand the best ammo to use to deer hunt with them.
> Some of these hunters are adults, and some adults buy them for the kids to hunt with.
> 
> Personally, when people ask me the best caliber for a youth starting out, I always recomend 7mm-08/.308.
> Unless they are really small, female, or recoil intolerant, then I'd say .243. I'd recogmend a little larger caliber, because of lack of knowlege of the bullet construction and performance, whether it be by the parent or the youth.
> 
> I personally just believe the 22 centerfires are best left in the hands of professionals who really understand them.
> By the same token, I'm to the point, as long as it's legal, whether or not you have good knowledge of bullet construction, it's on you and it's your choice.  I personally could care less if someone kills a deer in less than 6 seconds after making the shot, if the deer doesn't bleed, and runs off in the bushes, only to be eaten by the coyotes.  It's not my place to decide the legal calibers, I just follow the regulations. Bottom line, while I have my opinions on best calibers for deer hunting, and I base my choice on that, I'm not going to argue about making a distinction on where it goes from ethical and not ethical, as long as it's legal.
> 
> 
> Thanks for sharing your knowledge and findings!


   very well said


----------



## Rich M

This has been an enlightening thread.  We can argue the lethality of any cartridge and it always comes down to the shooter and the ability of the bullet to do its thing.

Many people will scream bloody murder if the guns doesn't meet their requirements, even if the deer is killed quickly - my example is the 243.  6 deer and no exit wounds.

The ethics are when things get interesting.  Most people have opinions without any experience or real life examples.

The idea of guys just blasting at the center-mass on a whitetail is unnerving.  My ethics say that you need to know where your bullet will impact at any given range.  Within an inch or so.  Just cause.


----------



## miles58

lonewolf247 said:


> I can really respect the fact that you've done your ground work, you understand the calibers that you hunt with, and you know how to load them to be efficient rounds for deer hunting.
> 
> You not only are able to make your argument that the small calibers will harvest a deer just as humanly and quickly as the larger calibers, when in the right hands, loaded right, and good shot placement. You have the data to show it.  I get all that.
> 
> The problems I see are when people that are not near as educated of these calibers, buy one, and really don't understand the best ammo to use to deer hunt with them.
> Some of these hunters are adults, and some adults buy them for the kids to hunt with.
> 
> Personally, when people ask me the best caliber for a youth starting out, I always recomend 7mm-08/.308.
> Unless they are really small, female, or recoil intolerant, then I'd say .243. I'd recogmend a little larger caliber, because of lack of knowlege of the bullet construction and performance, whether it be by the parent or the youth.
> 
> I personally just believe the 22 centerfires are best left in the hands of professionals who really understand them.
> By the same token, I'm to the point, as long as it's legal, whether or not you have good knowledge of bullet construction, it's on you and it's your choice.  I personally could care less if someone kills a deer in less than 6 seconds after making the shot, if the deer doesn't bleed, and runs off in the bushes, only to be eaten by the coyotes.  It's not my place to decide the legal calibers, I just follow the regulations. Bottom line, while I have my opinions on best calibers for deer hunting, and I base my choice on that, I'm not going to argue about making a distinction on where it goes from ethical and not ethical, as long as it's legal.
> 
> 
> Thanks for sharing your knowledge and findings!



^ This!  I cannot not do it this way.  I have never been able to.  But for the fact that I really do believe that someone who cannot kill a deer cleanly with a small gun sure won't be any better at it with a big gun, and will not be even remotely capable of taking advantage of what a big gun offers that the little gun cannot.  Taking full advantage of my bigger guns is beyond what I am good at and truly does drag me into marginal territory.

It is and has been for quite some time my opinion that smaller guns would wound fewer deer because most shooters will shoot them better.


----------



## miles58

Rich M said:


> The idea of guys just blasting at the center-mass on a whitetail is unnerving.  My ethics say that you need to know where your bullet will impact at any given range.  Within an inch or so.  Just cause.



Most hunters in my opinion need to learn to shoot at what they want to hit inside the animal, not at a spot on the outside.  They need to learn how to center that target from any angle, and they need to learn what the various angles may look like in bad light.

Some people just shoot at center mass and don't begin to understand deer anatomy well enough to choose, much less hit a specific target.  That's how we get to 19% wounding loss in firearms deer season.  You don't need to add in the wretched accuracy or inability to judge range accurately.

Doing this well is hard, it takes discipline and attention to detail.  Controlling your mind and body at trigger time is not easy.  Choosing a bullet to handle what you may be presented with and have to handle is not easy.  That's why I use only the copper bullets.  For the dollar or so I spend on bullets killing deer in a given year I get off cheap in that I don't have to worry about them.


----------



## lonewolf247

miles58 said:


> ^ This!  I cannot not do it this way.  I have never been able to.  But for the fact that I really do believe that someone who cannot kill a deer cleanly with a small gun sure won't be any better at it with a big gun, and will not be even remotely capable of taking advantage of what a big gun offers that the little gun cannot.  Taking full advantage of my bigger guns is beyond what I am good at and truly does drag me into marginal territory.
> 
> It is and has been for quite some time my opinion that smaller guns would wound fewer deer because most shooters will shoot them better.



Your correct, larger calibers don't make up for bad shooting!  Bad shooting usually ends up with no deer, or a deer running off and dieing afterwards, reguardless of the caliber.

IMO, the most important things are:

-knowing your caliber

-knowing the best performing ammo for your caliber 

-knowing the trajectory of your caliber with a given ammo, and make your shots accordingly.  (If you sight in to be dead on at 100 yards, and don't have a clue what happens at 200 or 300, you shouldn't shoot that far.  If you know that with a +1.7" high zero @ 100yards gives you a dead on zero @200 yards, and 7.4" low @ 300, you sorta have a basis for shooting out to 250-300 yards. I personally won't shoot past that range at anything, because I don't have any sort of compensation on my scope, and therfore no game plan. 

-also knowing the type of downrange energy of your caliber, and don't try to push it out past the limitations of it. (example:  shooting a 30/30 or any given caliber out to a point where the energy is not good enough to make the bullet perform correctly)

Other than that, practice at the range and make sure your scope is in calibration.  Your possibly right about many small caliber shooters shooting better because of the awareness that your placement really counts. But, I'm a larger caliber shooter and it's on my mind as well, because I know that poor bullet placement will not be made up by shooting larger calibers. 

On the same token, I hunt in a club that hunts with dogs, and still hunts, so many hunters hunt with semi-auto Bars.  I purposely started my son off with a bolt gun, to let him know he's only getting one shot, so make it count. He's done really well. At age 14 he can shoot just about good as me at the range.  I'm a competent shooter, not claiming to be any better than average though, when compared to more advanced marksman. 

I see other youths starting with the semi-auto's and under the mentality of shoot as fast as you can, as long as you see hair in the scope, and end up crippling up many deer.

Anyhow, knowledge of your caliber goes a long ways.


----------



## BlastinBill

Thatherton said:


> Thank you for proving my point, albeit in a very winded fashion.  We all know 22 will kill deer so there is no need to experiment further.  And if your rear end was on the line, you would not be playing these games.
> 
> Obviously this could go on forever based on the length of this thread but your comment about not being able to distinguish a wound channel from a small and and large caliber tells me I would just be wasting my time.  There is a reason why the make larger calibers you know.
> 
> Bottomline is shot placement will always be king.  If you do not hit vitals, you ain't killing anything quickly.  But there will always be less room for error from outside forces such as wind, length of shot, foliage, and more, when you use a small caliber as opposed to a large caliber.  But this is probably why most hunters use the right tool for the right job.



You do know that we take the 5.56 into battle right? It's neutralizes targets just fine, I can promise you that. They don't stand broadside while grazing either and that's with FMJs.


----------



## jmblackw

.22LR in the head....thru the eye or ear is a dropper don't ask why I know


----------



## lonewolf247

miles58 said:


> Most hunters in my opinion need to learn to shoot at what they want to hit inside the animal, not at a spot on the outside.  They need to learn how to center that target from any angle, and they need to learn what the various angles may look like in bad light.
> Some people just shoot at center mass and don't begin to understand deer anatomy well enough to choose, much less hit a specific target.  That's how we get to 19% wounding loss in firearms deer season.  You don't need to add in the wretched accuracy or inability to judge range accurately.
> 
> Doing this well is hard, it takes discipline and attention to detail.  Controlling your mind and body at trigger time is not easy.  Choosing a bullet to handle what you may be presented with and have to handle is not easy.  That's why I use only the copper bullets.  For the dollar or so I spend on bullets killing deer in a given year I get off cheap in that I don't have to worry about them.





That part of your post is spoken like a true seasoned deer hunter, and not just someone with knowledge of bullets, firearms, and calibers too, which I know you have also.

That's one of the single most important things of teaching a youth about shooting a deer.  Until you understand how to hit a deer in the particliar spot necessary to hit the vital your aiming for, you will have problems, and thinking your bullet didn't perform right.  Aiming for the exact right location on the outside, changes depending on the quarting angle. 

I've shot many quartering deer and no matter the angle, I shoot to hit in the middle of the lungs. This shot, I find will give you the most margin of error than any other shot.


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> Did you read what I wrote?  WE ALREADY KNOW 22 WILL KILL DEER.  You simply would not hunt a brown bear with an inadequate cartridge, period.  You would not carry it as your primary defense weapon.  Explain to us all how this is anything more than an ego trip, and I'll answer your questions - minus using the terminlogy necropsied...
> 
> And if you actually do try to explain it, please keep in mind once agai nthat WE ALL KNOW 22 WILL KILL DEER.



I am still waiting for an answer.   I know you will stand behind your word, please let us know when to expect an answer.


----------



## Thatherton

BlastinBill said:


> You do know that we take the 5.56 into battle right? It's neutralizes targets just fine, I can promise you that. They don't stand broadside while grazing either and that's with FMJs.



Well no I did not, and thank you for educating me.  sarcasm font installed here

And btw sometimes I hunt with an AR.


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## Thatherton

miles58 said:


> I am still waiting for an answer.   I know you will stand behind your word, please let us know when to expect an answer.



2 points

First point
You did not addess my questions to you.  Once again we all know that 22 will kill deer in the hands of a competent person.  Based on the thread starter's description, he does not seem to be a competent shot or else he proved it is a less than inadequate round.  But eitherway what is the point of the experimentation???  What are you trying to prove?  And you simply would not conduct the same experimentation on something that bites back so why is it acceptable on deer?

And btw if you noticed, I explained to you why it is an inadequate round - because it leaves you less room for error than larger calibers based on outside factors.

Second point
You made the following statement.  "I have killed deer with .22 caliber rounds using these bullets up to and including 300 Win Mag. I see almost no discernible difference in the wounds created by them, large or small and fast or hyper-fast."

This is simply not true especially considering you used the 300 Win Mag for comparison.  Based on that statement I can only assume one of two things.  Either you do not know what you are talking about, or you are making things up.  Either way though you lost all credibility with that statement, and it is pointless for me to continue debating you.


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## Flaustin1

Actually he didnt lose credit at all.  If you had any experience with barnes bullets, you would understand.  Now that ive said that, notice the words in his statement "fast or hyper-fast".  IMO thats the key with a Barnes.  You gotta push em fast.  Small hole going in, slightly larger hole going out.  Inside turned to jelly.  As long as its going fast.


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## brad2727

I kill all my deer with the .22 hornet... Got 130+ bucks on my wall to boot..( killed with the hornet) shot a nice one Sunday mornin.. ( with the hornet) .. I won't change and don't care what nobody thinks.. Not one deer has complained yet..when they do .. I will stop


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## hunter rich

For all you PETA types crying about the poor deer lived for 6 +/- minutes after being shot; I hope none of you bow hunt, pulled this off a thread on the archery/primitive weapons forum "Amazing thing he was alive 40 mins after I shot him."  The thing is, NO BODY is tearing him a new one for this (not that they should)...Hmmmm


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## Strickland1984a

True easier to get a clean kill with a 22 hornet than a with a bow. Granted some bow hunters that practice enough and shoot excellent with a bow could probably shoot almost as accurate as me with my 22. True nobody says nothing about all the unethical bow hunters who should not even be shooting one. I always thought that was funny


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## Buzz

Flaustin1 said:


> Actually he didnt lose credit at all.  If you had any experience with barnes bullets, you would understand.  Now that ive said that, notice the words in his statement "fast or hyper-fast".  IMO thats the key with a Barnes.  You gotta push em fast.  Small hole going in, slightly larger hole going out.  Inside turned to jelly.  As long as its going fast.




I've killed deer with a Barnes bullet at 425y.   It was a 168g TSX out of a .300 Magnum.  It wasn't going fast and it most certainly expanded resulting in a bam-flop kill.   I've killed plenty others at distances where the impact velocity was around 2500 fps as well and they also seemed to have expanded sufficiently.


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## ambush80

hunter rich said:


> For all you PETA types crying about the poor deer lived for 6 +/- minutes after being shot; I hope none of you bow hunt, pulled this off a thread on the archery/primitive weapons forum "Amazing thing he was alive 40 mins after I shot him."  The thing is, NO BODY is tearing him a new one for this (not that they should)...Hmmmm



If you don't care about an animal suffering needlessly then I don't know what that makes you.  

"PETA types crying about the poor deer."  Tough guy.


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## hunter rich

ambush80 said:


> If you don't care about an animal suffering needlessly then I don't know what that makes you.
> 
> "PETA types crying about the poor deer."  Tough guy.



You have me totally confused on this...

I have never suggested that I don't care about an animal suffering...

But you are right, I am pretty tough...


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## ambush80

Flaustin,  

I hope that you come up with a round that kills deer as quickly as possible.  How do these smaller rounds work if they hit a shoulder bone going in?  

For the record I bowhunt but it still bothers me that they run for 3 seconds even with an ideal shot. If it bothers me enough I guess I'll quit.


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> 2 points
> 
> First point
> You did not addess my questions to you.  Once again we all know that 22 will kill deer in the hands of a competent person.  Based on the thread starter's description, he does not seem to be a competent shot or else he proved it is a less than inadequate round.  But eitherway what is the point of the experimentation???  What are you trying to prove?  And you simply would not conduct the same experimentation on something that bites back so why is it acceptable on deer?



*Your terms were explain how it was anything other than an ego trip.  I did that it's on you now.  Man up.*



Thatherton said:


> And btw if you noticed, I explained to you why it is an inadequate round - because it leaves you less room for error than larger calibers based on outside factors.



*You expressed an opinion I an most others do not share.  It's time for you to tell us how many deer you've killed with the "inadequate round" on whch you base this opinion
*



Thatherton said:


> Second point
> You made the following statement.  "I have killed deer with .22 caliber rounds using these bullets up to and including 300 Win Mag. I see almost no discernible difference in the wounds created by them, large or small and fast or hyper-fast."
> 
> This is simply not true especially considering you used the 300 Win Mag for comparison.  Based on that statement I can only assume one of two things.  Either you do not know what you are talking about, or you are making things up.  Either way though you lost all credibility with that statement, and it is pointless for me to continue debating you.



*What I said was true and it is a fact pure plain and simple.  Based on my personal examinations in detail in the flesh of animals I put the bullets through.  I did photograph some of them and can produce photos if you are such a forensic expert for you to assign caliber to if you'd like.  But, I would be remiss if I didn't warn you that it's not possible and you're only digging yourself in deeper by making such a statement.  perhaps when you graduate from high school in a few years you'll then be capable of it, who knows?

It's time for you to lay out your experience like you agreed.*


----------



## miles58

Thatherton said:


> 2 points
> 
> This is simply not true especially considering you used the 300 Win Mag for comparison.  Based on that statement I can only assume one of two things.  Either you do not know what you are talking about, or you are making things up.  Either way though you lost all credibility with that statement, and it is pointless for me to continue debating you.



Here's a freebie for you...  This is an absolutely typical Barnes bullet hole in a deer.  Three inches across.  You identify the round and the piece of deer you're looking at.


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## ambush80

miles58 said:


> Here's a freebie for you...  This is an absolutely typical Barnes bullet hole in a deer.  Three inches across.  You identify the round and the piece of deer you're looking at.



Is that from a 22 Hornet?  If so, then it looks adequate to me.


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## miles58

ambush80 said:


> Is that from a 22 Hornet?  If so, then it looks adequate to me.



It's a three inch hole.  It's adequate if it's from a 300 WM.  It's adequate if it's from a BB gun.


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## Flaustin1

Buzz said:


> I've killed deer with a Barnes bullet at 425y.   It was a 168g TSX out of a .300 Magnum.  It wasn't going fast and it most certainly expanded resulting in a bam-flop kill.   I've killed plenty others at distances where the impact velocity was around 2500 fps as well and they also seemed to have expanded sufficiently.



I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.  No doubt they expand.  I wasn't saying they don't.  I think that (purely opinion) they perform a lot better at higher velocities.


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## miles58

My season's experiment with the .223 and 53 grain Barnes bullets has ended now.

I killed a very large doe, even by Minnesota standards, and she'd have been bigger and heavier than an awful lot of good down south bucks.     I shot the biggest fawn of my life two weeks later, it was as big as a lot of does up here.

The first one was shot with a 53 grain TSX that had a muzzle velocity of 3300 FPS out of a 9 twist barrel.  pushed that load hard with BLC-2.   The second was shot with a 53 grain TSX that had a muzzle velocity of 3000 FPS out of the same rifle using TAC.

The shots were mirror image shots, in just behind the shoulder, out through the opposite shoulder,  The first was at 80 yards, the second at 60 yards.  The deer both ran comparable distances, about 100 feet into the same aspen cutting.  The gut piles weren't but about fifty-80 feet apart.  

The first one produced a sparse but usable blood trail.  The second produced nothing until the last 30 feet, and then it was not all that good.  The second deer was found by flashlight and just making a loop where I figured it had to be.  

The lungs were wrecked well in both deer.  The vessels at the top of the heart were blown out in both deer, the first one just at the top, the second, an inch or two higher.  The damage inside the chest was virtually identical on the two.

These are both comparable loads to Hornet performance, the second is but 100-200 FPS better than a Hornet will do.  Both deer were easier to find than a comparable hit on a third doe that was in between these two in size but shot with a 270 and a 110 grain TTSX.

Both deer instantly lost blood pressure.  Neither deer left hair or blood where they were hit.  The first began leaking some 30-40 feet from where it was hit.  Judging from the damage inside the chest of the two, there was plenty of margin in bullet performance.  I have seen more than a few 30 caliber wounds do less damage, and it was certainly well beyond what an arrow is capable of doing even under the very best of circumstances.  A Hornet will more likely use a bullet 8 grains lighter, and 100-200 FPS slower.  Neither of which is likely to make any difference whatsoever, and either of which would be overshadowed by simply adding a little more distance.

Does this make either a .223 or Hornet an acceptable deer round?  For me, no.  I have the skill with a rifle and loading press to cleanly kill deer with either, and had I the need to do so I know that I can do it at will and at reasonable yardage with full confidence to do it well.  While in my hands and with my ammunition, the results would be no different than any other rifle I own, I am a different person than most.  I have spent a lifetime developing the skills to do what I do, and I "exercise" those skills in different ways.  I have done my homework and conducted this experiment well.  It is done now and I won't be doing it again.  I put these loads together for coyote hunting where I could have a lot of variability in range and still not produce big holes in the hide.

Does it make a .223 or Hornet an acceptable rifle for someone else?  Probably, they are well within the performance range of many "traditional" muzzle loaders and low velocity 30 caliber rounds that are favored by a lot of people, and they certainly with these bullets will out perform many more "accepted" deer rifle calibers with poor bullet selection.  Some people may well wish to only own and shoot a .223  or Hornet for everything.  Used within their respective range limitations, they both could well be very fine and deadly for those people.

What would in my opinion be an ideal application for them?  Under 100 yards.  Typical easier recovery, not the very dense swamps and brush I hunt where you need to trip over one sometimes before you see it.  Depredation work where low noise is better than big noise and range is not needed.  When low recoil is important, like people with shoulder/retina damage.  I do not think small or recoil sensitive people should necessarily use them.  Personally, I think such a person needs to learn to handle the muzzle blast and minimal recoil of something like a .243 shooting full power loads or just not hunt.  There is a level of personal commitment that needs to accompany killing animals in my opinion lest we take that too lightly.  That commitment needs to begin with handling the rifle and the shot, and go all the way through recovering the deer, no matter how difficult or how long it takes and continues right through processing the animal yourself.  I have no respect for someone who'll kill a deer and carry it off to a processor without even gutting it first.  Learning to butcher a deer and make the most you can out of the meat is more important than learning how to kill one.

Dave


----------



## Flaustin1

Well said miles.  Hopefully tomorrow evening will be the evening i get to shoot my secound one with the hornet.  I havnt had time to go lately.

Im kinda like you in a way, when i pull the trigger, i know exactly where the bullet is going and what the end result is going to be.   Im still young but ive literally had a gun in my hands since the age of 5 and have been reloading since the age of 15.  

Im not trying to sound "cocky", but i knew when i started this venture,  the end result would be a dead deer.  I dont think that everybody can grasp the concept like me or miles.  I say that because everybody dosnt have the experience with different weapons, ammo etc.  that it requires.   To be continued. .. .


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## T.P.

Well done Flaustin! I may have missed it but what rifle are you shooting the hornet out of?


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## MFOSTER

So will a voltswagon compared to a 18 wheeler which had you rather sitting behind the wheel in


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## Flaustin1

T.P. said:


> Well done Flaustin! I may have missed it but what rifle are you shooting the hornet out of?



Ruger M77


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## Flaustin1

MFOSTER said:


> So will a voltswagon compared to a 18 wheeler which had you rather sitting behind the wheel in



Yada yada yada.  Im confident in my shooting ability.  If legal, I feel sure I could kill every deer I wanted with a .22LR.


----------



## T.P.

Flaustin1 said:


> Ruger M77



I noticed somewhere y'all going back and forth about twist and such. If you had to do it again would you buy the M77?


----------



## kmckinnie

Mine is a  savage made in the early days. 22 inch barrel. I can lung punch one at 200 yds easy.


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## MFOSTER

Flaustin1 said:


> Yada yada yada.  Im confident in my shooting ability.  If legal, I feel sure I could kill every deer I wanted with a .22LR.



Shooting ability has zero to do with common sense


----------



## kmckinnie

Flaustin1 said:


> I have some more info to post and will do so when i have time.



How much better do you think you reloads are  than a box of Remington 45 grain soft points.
I don't reload anymore(need to). Just asking, thx.


----------



## flacarnivore

Bone Collector said:


> You can kill a deer with a pellet rifle too! I just don't see the point other than trying to prove a point. If you've got a larger caliber rifle, then that's what you should be using. This is not quite like someone trying to catch a 1,000 lb marlin on 4 lb test line. If a marlin breaks the line, it will surely live without debilitation. If the deer survives after the shot it will likely suffer a while. It's sounds like an experiment to satisfy curiosity. The experiment results indicate the round will kill a deer, but is very suboptimal. The .22 Hornet is intended for varmints, small game, and predators.
> 
> BC[/QUOTE
> 
> 
> I would like to add for me it is about respect.


----------



## hylander

I have thought about this a lot.  In the hands of a shooter who has total confidence in the shot and can make it, then sure, this cartridge can take a deer, no issue.  I can't do it though.  I know it and not ashamed to admit it.  With a larger cartridge, I don't feel that way.  Maybe it is a mental thing, but it is there.  I just am not willing to risk it.


----------



## Flaustin1

T.P. said:


> I noticed somewhere y'all going back and forth about twist and such. If you had to do it again would you buy the M77?



If i had it to do over, no i wouldnt buy the M77.  I wouldve went with something with a faster rate of twist if its even an option.  I havnt checked the specs on other manufacturers so i dont know if anybody even builds one with a faster twist.

Im seriously thinking about having it rebarreled with a 1:9 twist and starting over again next year.


----------



## Flaustin1

kmckinnie said:


> How much better do you think you reloads are  than a box of Remington 45 grain soft points.
> I don't reload anymore(need to). Just asking, thx.



I honestly cant answer that question yet.  From an accuracy standpoint, the 45 grainers beat the barnes when fired from my gun.  Its the length of the bullet and the slow rate of twist that hurts the barnes.

That being said, the barnes did punch right on through the deer without any issues and the soft point that i used for a follow up shot only penetrated about 8-10".  It did hold suprisingly well though.  It was a nice pretty mushroom.


----------



## Flaustin1

MFOSTER said:


> Shooting ability has zero to do with common sense



So what are you saying?


----------



## Flaustin1

flacarnivore said:


> Bone Collector said:
> 
> 
> 
> You can kill a deer with a pellet rifle too! I just don't see the point other than trying to prove a point. If you've got a larger caliber rifle, then that's what you should be using. This is not quite like someone trying to catch a 1,000 lb marlin on 4 lb test line. If a marlin breaks the line, it will surely live without debilitation. If the deer survives after the shot it will likely suffer a while. It's sounds like an experiment to satisfy curiosity. The experiment results indicate the round will kill a deer, but is very suboptimal. The .22 Hornet is intended for varmints, small game, and predators.
> 
> BC[/QUOTE
> 
> 
> I would like to add for me it is about respect.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I would also like to add that its been proven that the mortality rate on marlin increases greatly when the fight is long, drawn out and strenuous.
> 
> I gave the deer utmost respect.  I used all the meat and gave the hide to a woman that makes gloves.  Still got the horns, gonna use them for something one day.  Its all about perspective.  In the end, when we hunt, we are intentionally taking the life of an animal.  Its how we treat the animal afterwards that really shows the amount of respect given.
> 
> I dont like the fact that the deer didnt keel over dead as soon as the bullet hit it, but it happens.  Ive tracked deer shot with large caliber rifles that had been given plenty of time to die still be alive when we find them.  All about shot placement.
Click to expand...


----------



## FishinMech

There is one simply way to fix all of this. Head shot or is that to unethical for some of you PETA lovers on here. And it seems to me you reload. I would load a 60gr nosler partition. And before someone says a NP is for big game. You are shooting a 22 cal bullet that has a good bit of speed on it you want weight retention plus expantion. I use an NP in my 6mm and have never had a problem with it not expanding.


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## Buzz

This is the thread that won't die, so I will add to it. 

The first post in the thread says "textbook perfect" shot.  Well, it sure seems that either the shot wasn't textbook perfect or the performance of the load in question was inadequate.  Simply put, deer shot textbook perfect with an adequate hunting load just don't live 6 minutes.  Perhaps we'd disagree with the meaning of textbook perfect - to me it means double lungs / heart or two broke shoulders resulting in a face plow.   A textbook perfect shot with anything from a .243 Winchester, using any big game hunting load you want to use, or larger result in the animal doing a bam-flop or a short death sprint. At any rate it will be dead or down in mere seconds, not after two shots are placed it in 6+ minutes later. 

That's not meant to be inflammatory or belittling it's just what happens when you see hundreds and hundreds of animals killed by your own hands and other partners you've been hunting with for years. I've tracked PLENTY of animals that people, including myself, thought were textbook perfect but they weren't.  

I killed one just a couple of weeks ago with a 80g TTSX out of a .243 Win. It wasn't a textbook perfect shot but a strong quartering shot. The shot went in at the back of the ribs and completely wrecked the internals exiting the neck. The deer went 3', straight down. She kicked a few times and tried to lift her head once and was dead. Not a small one either, 155# on the hoof.


----------



## Flaustin1

Buzz, I agree with you completely.  The shot was good.  It center punched the onside lung and exited the off side lung maybe 1-1.5" above the bottom.  

Ive said it in this thread before and i will say it again,  Im not sure that the round is appropriate for deer.  Thats why im trying it.  To give myself a definitive answer.  Ive seen deer do some crazy things when shot, so im gonna have to shoot one more just to be sure it wasnt a fluke.

I shot a deer one time that had just swam across a big river.  When i fired the first shot the deer just stood there.  I thought, dang i missed!  I fired again.  Again the deer just stood there.  Long story short, i hit that deer center mass through the lungs both shots.  I cant explain why it didnt run or flop over but it didnt.  That was shooting .30 caliber 165gr. NBT bullets that were being pushed by a healthy dose of Varget.

Its just one example of the strange reactions ive seen from a wounded deer.  So my experience with the hornet so far couldve been one them strange things deer do sometimes.  When doe days come back in, ive got a piece of property that needs a couple taken off of it and im going to be totin the hornet.

Hopefully i can get one in range and i will be sure to post the results.


----------



## Flaustin1

FishinMech said:


> There is one simply way to fix all of this. Head shot or is that to unethical for some of you PETA lovers on here. And it seems to me you reload. I would load a 60gr nosler partition. And before someone says a NP is for big game. You are shooting a 22 cal bullet that has a good bit of speed on it you want weight retention plus expantion. I use an NP in my 6mm and have never had a problem with it not expanding.



I agree the head shot would be a no brainer(no pun intended) when using a small caliber but it wouldnt answer the question i have about the effectiveness of a .22 Hornet on a Ga. whitetail.  Im trying it to prove to myself whether it is or isnt an appropriate round for youth to use.  

The lungs are the biggest target on a deer so thats what i would want a young person shooting at.  

As far as a partition goes, yea they are good bullets but 60grs is to heavy(long actually) for my 1:14 twist barrel to stabilize.  Thats takes them out of the equation.  Im not sure i could get the speed it would take to make one perform as intended out of the hornet either.


----------



## Bigtimber

hunter rich said:


> For all you PETA types crying about the poor deer lived for 6 +/- minutes after being shot; I hope none of you bow hunt, pulled this off a thread on the archery/primitive weapons forum "Amazing thing he was alive 40 mins after I shot him."  The thing is, NO BODY is tearing him a new one for this (not that they should)...Hmmmm



Very true....and thats what I was thinking. Heard countless stories of trailing a deer after a bow shot. Hours and hours looking. I don't think many would argue against a well placed 7mm magnum or the like shot would kill a deer quicker that a well placed bow shot....but don't hear alot about them slamming those that choose the bow over the rifle.


----------



## hylander

Bigtimber said:


> Very true....and thats what I was thinking. Heard countless stories of trailing a deer after a bow shot. Hours and hours looking. I don't think many would argue against a well placed 7mm magnum or the like shot would kill a deer quicker that a well placed bow shot....but don't hear alot about them slamming those that choose the bow over the rifle.



I have also seen where a deer dropped not to far after being shot with a bow, so what is your point?  You can shoot a deer with a magnum and the deer could still run over 100 yards if you make a lousy shot.  Same with a bow.  It is all with placement.


----------



## The Big Boo

*22 hornet experiment*



Flaustin1 said:


> I agree the head shot would be a no brainer(no pun intended) when using a small caliber but it wouldnt answer the question i have about the effectiveness of a .22 Hornet on a Ga. whitetail.  Im trying it to prove to myself whether it is or isnt an appropriate round for youth to use.
> 
> The lungs are the biggest target on a deer so thats what i would want a young person shooting at.
> 
> As far as a partition goes, yea they are good bullets but 60grs is to heavy(long actually) for my 1:14 twist barrel to stabilize.  Thats takes them out of the equation.  Im not sure i could get the speed it would take to make one perform as intended out of the hornet either.



I guess you can say I have already completed your experiment.  I have shot four deer with a 22 hornet (two bucks, a button buck, and one doe).  I (and my boys and my wife) also have hunted extensively with 50 Cal BP, 243, 270, 270 wsm, 308, and 30.06.  I have examined many deer that have been shot with these calibers, and though we have lost several deer (almost all with xbow), we never had to trail significantly any that were shot properly in any caliber.

I use my hornet as a field gun, really what it was designed for, low noise and fairly short range caliber for farm and ranch use, predator and varmint control.  In today’s world with their overabundance, if you are growing vegetables, deer are varmints.

From my experience, the deer hit with the hornet, did one of two things.  They either  jolted and ran  (not very far -40 to 60 yards), then fell and expired, or they fell over immediately.  The ones that fell immediately had bone hit.  One buck literally flipped over as the bullet traveled upwards and was just a bit high on exit and nicked the spine.  As you surmised, hitting a rib on the way in really would make a difference.  I don’t think the little button buck, knew he had been hit.  He ran and circled, ending up back near his sister, and laid down and died.  I believe that was a clean pass through missing the ribs.  Shots with the hornet have ranged from 60 to 150 yards.

A lot of deer have died by my family’s hands in the larger calibers, but results were really not all that different.  Those that were hit too low or had been “zippered”, we needed to trail them out.  Those with shoulders broken, necks or spine hit, went down hard. Those with heart/lung shots did the typical 30 yard death dash.  I shoot the hornet the same as the others, holding for the heart lung,  a tad bit higher is okay, never back.  

I use a Savage, Model 40, single shot with accutrigger.  Heavy barrel varmint rifle and very accurate.  I use the PPU 45 gr SPs and they work just fine.  Hits consistently within one inch or less at 175 yds.  Longest shot has been 225 yards at a Turkey, and I broke his neck.  I regularly pop groundhogs at 150 to 200 yards.

I grow most all my own food  (2000 lbs of all different kinds of vegetables and potatoes) a year.  I don’t have a significant control problem but that is due partly because no animal is safe within the fields that I don’t want in the fields.  We don’t hunt deer regularly on the farm (we prefer backpack hunting/backwoods camping up in the mountains), but if they become too bold, then they are asking for it.  We shoot off the porch.

The hornet, with the right set-up would make a great gun for a boy/girl starting out.  If you have the right bullet for the caliber and the distance, then being accurate is all that matters.  Having a rifle that the child likes, and can shoot well, in good form, with absolutely no flinching, and good trigger control, and lots of practice are absolutely the most important things to build a successful shooter.  In this regard, the hornet is a very nice step up from the 22LR.  With form and accuracy (and most importantly – confidence) mastered, the child or woman will tell you when they are ready to move up to the larger centerfires.

Would I hunt deer in the mountains and heavy brush with the hornet?  No.  But for fairly clear field areas, it works just as good as anything else you can use.  On the negative side, there is a little less room for error with the hornet, but on the positive side it is can be very accurate.  A good rest and waiting for a good presentation by the deer will really help. I’ll keep using mine when the situation calls for it.

The Big Boo
Off the grid (well almost) in WV

P.S. As for those who start off talking about the hornet as in the same class as a rimfire 22, well they never have shot both at steelies at 175 yds, had to hold over for tragectory on the 22lr, and listened to the result.


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## Bob2010

I have killed 40 plus deer with my .243 I got at 12 years old. Most die within a minute.  A few have laid there until I shot it again.  Ive lost one before too. My buddies shooting these big rounds are like my deer dropped in its tracks! Then they are like we usually don't keep the shoulders.  Well duhh! They are jello anyway. I think the .22 would be awesome at less than 50 yards. So accurate with a .22. We used to shoot dimes at 30 yards as kids all day long. Put one in the right spot and its done. Just need to be realistic when you pull the trigger that shot is right.


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## flacarnivore

so will a .22short


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## sman

So will a bb gun. Says so on the side. 

Next yr I'm gonna dress up as a pile of corn.  Cock it like a 100 times.


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## TheDeerCommander

yes a 22 hornet can kill a deer techincally but it is unethical mainly because its not meant for deer hunting and it is such a light round that without perfect shot placement and can just wound a deer instead of killing it. So it can kill a deer but its unethical. On the other hand I've shot a deer with a 338. and blew the spinal cord out of it which is also unethical, so i don't use high caliber rounds. I only use a 7mm-08. Its good for coyotes so you can keep the fur and its good for hogs and deer.


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## Lilly001

TheDeerCommander said:


> yes a 22 hornet can kill a deer techincally but it is unethical mainly because its not meant for deer hunting and it is such a light round that without perfect shot placement and can just wound a deer instead of killing it. So it can kill a deer but its unethical. On the other hand I've shot a deer with a 338. and blew the spinal cord out of it which is also unethical, so i don't use high caliber rounds. I only use a 7mm-08. Its good for coyotes so you can keep the fur and its good for hogs and deer.



I'm confused of your definition of unethical. Is it a subjective or objective term. If it's subjective I don't think it has any valid meaning except to yourself.


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## thehunterguy

Very...very....very old thread. Love how folks are dragging it on. Oh well here's my 2 cents, not sure if many of you know but one of the biggest typical bucks was killed in the early 1900s with a 25-20 win. That being said it is less ballisticlly true than a 22 hornet maybe going as far as saying both have equal energy. If you never heard of the James Jordan buck, look it up. Don't have to have a 30 cal pill to shoot a big'un


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## Flaustin1

That same 22 hornet is still killing deer lol.  Not gonna stop either.


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## spurrs and racks

*so will....*

a #2 pencil but that does not mean you have any business hunting with one.

s&r


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## NCHillbilly

Flaustin1 said:


> That same 22 hornet is still killing deer lol.  Not gonna stop either.



You never did post an update that I saw. Sounds like you have since shot more with it. What happened? What was the conclusion? Inquiring minds want to know.


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## furtaker

thehunterguy said:


> Very...very....very old thread. Love how folks are dragging it on. Oh well here's my 2 cents, not sure if many of you know but one of the biggest typical bucks was killed in the early 1900s with a 25-20 win. That being said it is less ballisticlly true than a 22 hornet maybe going as far as saying both have equal energy. If you never heard of the James Jordan buck, look it up. Don't have to have a 30 cal pill to shoot a big'un



No kidding.  And he almost lost that deer.  Had to shoot it 3 or 4 times, 4 if I remember correctly.


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## Rich M

This is only marginally diff from a .223 rounds people are touting as good enough for deer.  I think they are 20 gr heavier in bullet.

It is all about shot placement.  Aint the arrow, it's the indian!

We should do a survey of the dog guys on here - what rounds do people wound the most deer with?  Besides arrows...


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## Flaustin1

furtaker said:


> No kidding.  And he almost lost that deer.  Had to shoot it 3 or 4 times, 4 if I remember correctly.



I didn't almost lose it.  It was a dead deer walking.  Two collapsed lungs is a dead critter.  Plain and simple.  The initial uncertainty of it is why I put 2 more in it.


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## Flaustin1

NCHillbilly said:


> You never did post an update that I saw. Sounds like you have since shot more with it. What happened? What was the conclusion? Inquiring minds want to know.



After shooting another with the barnes bullets and getting similar results to the first, I changed to the 45 gr. soft points and have killed 4 more with it.  Bang, run 30-50 yds, flop over dead.  Just like with my .308.  Its all in where you put the lead.


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## furtaker

Flaustin1 said:


> I didn't almost lose it.  It was a dead deer walking.  Two collapsed lungs is a dead critter.  Plain and simple.  The initial uncertainty of it is why I put 2 more in it.



I didn't say you almost lost it.  I said James Jordan almost lost his.


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## Rem 742

*.243 and up*

From my experience, deerfirearms should be limited to.243 or larger. No room for the .223 assault rifles.


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## bhdawgs

Highly unethical in my opinion.


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## misterpink

Well, I hit one with a van, goin' 55 miles an hour, with the headlights on and the horn blowin'!" Woo, that's an elusive little creature! 

- Ron White


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## Throwback

Rem 742 said:


> From my experience, deerfirearms should be limited to.243 or larger. No room for the .223 assault rifles.



I think the rem 742 should be illegal to use to hunt cause it's a jam-o-matic and pitifully inaccurate


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## kmckinnie

Throwback said:


> I think the rem 742 should be illegal to use to hunt cause it's a jam-o-matic and pitifully inaccurate



Sooooo.... U are saying a single shot rifle is not ethical.


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## NastyBruises11B

I don't understand why people don't just shoot EM in the head. Save all the meat you tore up with that poorly placed second shot.


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## Rich M

'cause people shoot their jaws off and they run around looking funny till they starve & die.  

That's why "you" would be unethical to shoot 'em in the head.


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## turkeyhunter835

NastyBruises11B said:


> I don't understand why people don't just shoot EM in the head. Save all the meat you tore up with that poorly placed second shot.



Uh oh

Using them words is like cussing around here.


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## Throwback

kmckinnie said:


> Sooooo.... U are saying a single shot rifle is not ethical.



You can't lay down covering fire with a single shot


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## Flaustin1

NastyBruises11B said:


> I don't understand why people don't just shoot EM in the head. Save all the meat you tore up with that poorly placed second shot.



Im with you on this man, I did it just to prove it could be done.  Everybody knows that a head shot will drop em.  Second shot wasn't poorly placed either, it just didn't have the gumption to make it to the goodies and I didn't loose any meat from it.


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## NastyBruises11B

Rich M said:


> 'cause people shoot their jaws off and they run around looking funny till they starve & die.
> 
> That's why "you" would be unethical to shoot 'em in the head.




Sounds like "people" need to spend more time at the range. I really don't understand how people don't hit what they aim at. My father in law calls it "buck fever"...he'll shake like a leaf in a hurricane. I don't understand that either. 

I definitely don't think it's "unethical" for me to shoot them in the head. I've never had a hog or a deer walk away from a head shot.


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## Barebowyer

Just a comment about the "wasted meat" pertaining to magnum calibers...It doesn't matter how big of a hole is blasted through the deer's ribs...is there any meat there anyway?  How about, Let's actually hit our intended target and not blast the shoulder, hams, etc with a poorly placed shot.  Sure, if you blast a shoulder with a magnum caliber you are going to get a mess.  hmm..........


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## spurrs and racks

*From my experience*

"From my experience, deer firearms should be limited to.243 or larger. No room for the .223 assault rifles."

x2

My first weapon was a .222 bolt from western auto, I know full well what it is and is not capable of.

3000 ft per sec and no less than 100 gr bullet weight for me.

s&r


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## Hornet22




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## Browning Slayer

Hornet22 said:


>


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## ryanh487

NastyBruises11B said:


> Sounds like "people" need to spend more time at the range. I really don't understand how people don't hit what they aim at. My father in law calls it "buck fever"...he'll shake like a leaf in a hurricane. I don't understand that either.
> 
> I definitely don't think it's "unethical" for me to shoot them in the head. I've never had a hog or a deer walk away from a head shot.



Deer move, distances aren't known for certain, and plenty of other unknown factors can weigh in on point of aim vs. ponit of impact on a live target. I can shoot a quarter at 100 yards all day long.  A lot of folks could.  But can you tell me what your POI is at 80 yards instead of 100? What about 34 yards vs 50?  or at 100 vs 110? not to mention the average deer rifle is a 1.5 MOA gun on a good day, so landing bullets within 3/4" of POA is an uncontrollable shift.  A fraction of an inch or a deer turning at just the right time is all the difference that it takes to make an instantly fatal head shot turn into a suffering jaw shot.


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