Straight Wall Cartridges for Deer

[danimalw]

Hi all,

I’m developing loads for this deer season and I have both .357 and .41 mag lever guns. Have any of you tried either of these on deer yet?

In the .357 I was going to use 180gr xtp’s and 210 Remington jsp’s or xtp’s.

Thanks!

K

Last season I took an 8pt w/ 41 mag Ruger SBH hunter using 210gr xtp over a charge of w296 and m.v. of 1250-1275 fps. I'd imagine that in a lever gun would would be even better.

Fwiw I tried some underwood 210jhp and in same SBH, chrono'd at 1525fps.

 

[boule]

It is still a safety improvement, even if it isn't the difference between "extremely safe" and "horribly unsafe". Look at the ballistics of most straight wall cartridges and you have a maximum range if you shot it out at a 45 degree angle of around 1.5-2 miles. A .30-06 shot at a 45 degree angle goes, what? About 6 miles?

Just shot at a 100yd target, with a 100yd zero, on flat ground, a .30-06 from man height won't hit the ground until around 400-500yds. A typical round from a .357, .44 magnum, .450 BM, etc. are all going to hit the ground at around 250-300yds. It gets a lot worse if you miss a bit high on that 100yd target. That .30-06 can easily go 800-1000yds. That straight wall cartridge is likely to only travel around 400-500yds.

What you are currently talking about is not really "safety" but rather "statistical probability" to hit someone when you miss your target.
But first things first - you accidentally fire a shot at 45° or close to it into the air. It will be dangerous when it drops but the terminal trajectory will be similar on both straight wall and modern cartridges - both will be coming down at 45° or thereabout creating a danger zone that is actually pretty small. It is not the often qouted miles and miles of range that will be in danger at a long range - most of the time the bullet is actually arcing way over any potential targets but rather a strech of 30yds somewhere way out back.
You are right that with close shots the trajectory of a bottleneck cartridge will give it a longer point blank range and potential to hit something head on but those flat trajectories have a bigger issue - richochets. Play any youtube-vid of someone firing tracers and watch where they are going:


The main issue is, once your bullet travels out of bounds, you are in deep sh.... It can either be by shooting into the air or by having a ricochet but both times, you are playing a statistics game of how likely there is going to be an empty plot of land where the bullet impacts. Whether that plot is 800 yds away just behind a hill or in the next county is not really relevant if you lucked out.

So, when it comes to best practice with firearms, have an appropriate backstop when hunting for any modern weapon can fire further than you can usually observe. Anything else is just a numbers game (hitting a tree in the forest or an empty spot in the flatlands) that can always bite you in the posterior.

 

[lazarus]

What you are currently talking about is not really "safety" but rather "statistical probability" to hit someone when you miss your target.
But first things first - you accidentally fire a shot at 45° or close to it into the air. It will be dangerous when it drops but the terminal trajectory will be similar on both straight wall and modern cartridges - both will be coming down at 45° or thereabout creating a danger zone that is actually pretty small. It is not the often qouted miles and miles of range that will be in danger at a long range - most of the time the bullet is actually arcing way over any potential targets but rather a strech of 30yds somewhere way out back.
You are right that with close shots the trajectory of a bottleneck cartridge will give it a longer point blank range and potential to hit something head on but those flat trajectories have a bigger issue - richochets. Play any youtube-vid of someone firing tracers and watch where they are going:


The main issue is, once your bullet travels out of bounds, you are in deep sh.... It can either be by shooting into the air or by having a ricochet but both times, you are playing a statistics game of how likely there is going to be an empty plot of land where the bullet impacts. Whether that plot is 800 yds away just behind a hill or in the next county is not really relevant if you lucked out.

So, when it comes to best practice with firearms, have an appropriate backstop when hunting for any modern weapon can fire further than you can usually observe. Anything else is just a numbers game (hitting a tree in the forest or an empty spot in the flatlands) that can always bite you in the posterior.

True.

Though generally bottleneck cartridges also use bullets that have a higher ballistic coefficient. So absent the bullet tumbling (which is likely if fired straight up. Not likely fired at a high angle), still more dangerous. which at that point it is dangerous, but incredibly unlikely to be lethal if it tumbles. See cop who got hit from a pistol bullet on the 4th from some gunfire in the air that out a hole in his hat and hit his shoulder. From the reports I saw “was injured”, but not hospitalized. So I assume he got a bruise.

A bullet with a BC of .500 is going to have roughly 2x the energy of one with a BC of .250 (not twice the velocity, but twice the energy). Plus it’s going to have a higher sectional density. So it’ll penetrate deeper too.

I don’t want to get hit with any bullets, but a 180gr .308 launched at a 45 degree angle is likely to hurt you a lot worse than a 240gr .44 magnum launched at a 45 degree angle.