buck shot

rhshooter said:
Based on this logic I think I will forgo firearms altogether and try to get my deer with a sleeper hold. If I can't achieve this then I will resort to ground and pound... If he overpowers me I guess I will use a sharp and pointy stick...

Seriously though, I have a lot of respect for you and your desire for a challenge but for me I want a deer. That's it. I want the meat and the hide and if they let me use a minigun I might give it a shot! If I was confident that I could take the buck at 400m I would do just that! I'll go with the slug (but only if they won't let me use a rifle)... I use the best steel axe I can afford even though a stone axe will cut wood too...

Jeff
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:rolleyes:

stating that you would use a minigun if legal paints a pretty clear picture here.

people use spears for wild boar when they could use a gun...
buckshot on deer when they could use a slug...
bows on large/dangerous game when they could use a rifle...
in some states people use handguns when they could use rifles...

going by your logic everyone should use the most powerful tool that is legal for the game they are pursuing which takes all of the challenge out of hunting. its each hunters personal choice when it comes to what tool they will use to take game (legally of course) and others shouldnt frown upon them.

that said, we appear to have totally different perspectives on hunting. you would like to use a machine gun to blast deer while i would rather use skill and technique to spot and stalk a deer with a bow. my closest so far was 12 yards ending with a double lung and heart shot with my crossbow. this year its going to be with a recurve :)
 
All I know about buck shot is that the bet shotgun shot I know came to the range one day to see how his Winchester Super X2 shot buck shot and was shocked.

At 25 yards the pattern was all over the place with few holes in the paper. It appears that in reality to hunt with buck shot you have to do a lot of experimenting with chokes and loads rather than just buying a box of buckshot and having at 'er.

I do know one more story. Back in the late 40s my father shot a deer with buckshot out of his old single shot and it went down but was still alive, but he had no knife nor more shells. He had to club the deer to death with the butt. I've still got that reminder in the basement held together with wood glue and screws.
 
blasted_saber said:
I use buckshot in one situation only. When im pushing deer through swamps. Sight lines are 15m or less. Behind the buckshot is a slug. Im using a 870 with 21in smooth bore rifle sighted barrel.

Ive patterned it out to 25 yards and see no reason why it shouldnt drop any deer
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When there are doggers in the field pushing deer towards me I will use buckshoot too!!!!!!

Just in case I shoot one of the doogers, with buckshot I KNOW he wont get hurt...........


lmao

Buckshot has its place, most people don't know where this place is....
 
It's illegal to hunt big game in Newfoundland with buckshot. Good thing too. There are enough wounded moose/caribou feeding the coyotes as it is.
 
cdngunner said:
When there are doggers in the field pushing deer towards me I will use buckshoot too!!!!!!

Just in case I shoot one of the doogers, with buckshot I KNOW he wont get hurt...........


lmao

Buckshot has its place, most people don't know where this place is....
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I dont get if you're trying to criticize me here or not?

Im in a swamp, absolutely alone. Their is NO chance of a shot hitting anyone, considering the amount of timber and/or hills in between me and anyone else.
 
I will chime in on this one as I have had to put down a number of deer on the side of the road after being clobbered in traffic. Remember, these are usually deer that have already been hit hard by a vehicle. I used to put these animals down with my 9mm duty pistol, but got tired of shooting them multiple times in the head to get them to stop kicking, so, I resorted to the use of a shotgun to speed up the process. When we used to be issued the old Imperial Special Long Range SSG buck, I used it very successfully. Usually I would shoot them from the edge of the road with this stuff - so they sometimes would be approx. 25 yards away - max. as they would have gotten across a ditch after being struck by a vehicle. The Imperial SSG was devestating. I believe that this is a very hot load that patterned very well, even out of cylinder bore 20" shotgun barrels. I never had to shoot a deer twice with this stuff. Messed up the animals really bad if shot within 10 yards or so.

We then switched to a low recoil 00 buck issue round and I found it to be the exact opposite to the SSG from Imperial. No matter what the range, the deer would seldom die from the first shot and often would hardly react to being hit. I think the blast damaged their hearing more than their wounded bodies. This was the factor that caused me to switch to dispatching deer with slugs.

First up was the Imperial Special Long Range 7/8 ounce slug. This hammered deer. Absolutely hammered them. Every animal that I have shot with this load (countless deer, reserve dogs, elk, and even a very large horse) went down with one shot - dead as a nail. Fantastic rounds. Saved my backside against a very, very large rotty one afternoon. They seemed to be very hot. These are now extinct and we are issued a neutered low recoil 1 ounce slug made by Winchester Ranger. Even though my 8 year old daughter could probably shoot these slugs left handed with aplomb, they still deck deer singlehandedly as far as I have had to shoot them.

Conclusions: Hot loaded buck has its place, but that is usually short range - shorter than most people will be responsibly be shooting at a deer. A lot of buck out there isn't fast enough to impress me.

Slugs seem to work no matter how fast you launch them. They are just big hunks of lead that make incredibly big holes. Faster slugs are dynamite. Slow ones still work. Hunting animals? I will take the slugs. CQB? Buckshot then comes into play.
 
To add to what was said above. The largest deer I ever shot, I had to track because it did not go down right away. Got my buddy to come towards me while I followed the deer. We found the deer. We were both about 25-35 yards away. I knew he had buckshot and suggest he should shoot because of the distance involved. Remember the deer already had one slug through it.

When he shot the deer with buckshot it sort of stop and gave him a " what the #### are you doing" look and proceeded to move on. I hit it with a slug. That sun of a ##### of a slug pretty much picked the thing up and slamed it down on its back. And that deer was about 300lb + .
 
yup got to say the guys I know who are in shot gun only zones in Ontario all have rifled barrels and shoot 3" sabot slugs.......I'm in southern Ontario and I can still use a rifle!
 
saskcop said:
First up was the Imperial Special Long Range 7/8 ounce slug. This hammered deer. Absolutely hammered them. Every animal that I have shot with this load (countless deer, reserve dogs, elk, and even a very large horse) went down with one shot - dead as a nail. Fantastic rounds. Saved my backside against a very, very large rotty one afternoon. They seemed to be very hot. These are now extinct .
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I'd be interested to hear more about some of those stories!

What ever happened to Imperial? Are they still manufacturing?
 
Never did get an answer on how often buck-shot hunters hit guts....
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Not once. A 3.5" buffered remington OOB in an 24" 870 put all 18 pellets inside of 5 inches centered on the chest. Put a huge 8 pointer on his a$$ like he was hit by a freight train. A lot of the time with wounded deer I head shoot them with buckshot as well. 4 buck works very well for head shots. Of course this is only WITHIN RANGE. Much like shooting steel shot on waterfowl, distance and proper shot placement are critical.
 
My cousin shot a nice 9 point one year and boy was he proud :) Once we opened up the deer we noticed that the whole hind half of the deer was just starting to rot because of someone who had peppered it in the ass with buckshot. That buck must have been a pretty strong one though because he was still walking like he didn't have a care in the world with a broken hind leg. My cousin said he even watched him jump a fence.

I'm not personally saying that buckshot is bad. I've seen what it'll do to a deer when shot in the wrong place though. As people have already stated in this thread, when used in the right conditions and by someone who knows what they're doing with it, it can be lethal. We used to use 00 and 000 buckshot but after seeing the damage that it can do when used improperly and since none of us are 100% crack shots, we stuck with slugs after that.
 
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