I shot a deer deader then dead with a 9mm JRC loaded with 124gr WASP munitions HPs. The catch being it was a noggin shot. And for those critics out there that are about to ask.... i used the PCC only cus it was the only rifle i had in the truck. Given the choice between only the 2, id rather take a deer with buckshot.
9mm compared to buckshot for deer hunting - thoughts?
- Thread starter GerardSamija
- Start date
What are your expectations for what will happen when the top of the heart is hit?
My experience with small cartridges on animals is farm animals, and in a couple of cases, putting injured deer (one had a leg mangled beyond recognition by jumping though a fence and getting tangled in it for example) out of their misery. I've used .22 LR, .22magnum, and 9mm. I went for head shots in all cases. I used them because that's what I had, or, in the case of farm animals, it's what's not going to bother the neighbours.
I would never take a body shot with any of these. Simply too marginal. I would only use any of these if nothing else was available, and I had to take the shot. I would use my PCC for grouse, instead of the .22 I normally use, if it what I had at the time, but I wouldn't choose one to use it on anything larger.
Get an appropriate tool.
I would never take a body shot with any of these. Simply too marginal. I would only use any of these if nothing else was available, and I had to take the shot. I would use my PCC for grouse, instead of the .22 I normally use, if it what I had at the time, but I wouldn't choose one to use it on anything larger.
Get an appropriate tool.
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I was responding specifically to mcpiper's statement:
mcpiper said:
In that context it seemed to me the relatively vague mention of putting a fast, heavy bullet through a deer's "chest" needed clarification, especially considering his direct challenge regarding my lack of deer hunting experience. Anatomy is anatomy. A deer isn't anything special or magical, just another mammal with the same basic setup as the rest of us. Hit the main pump, blood pressure drops, loss of consciousness then death ensue shortly thereafter.
You said this to him:
So I will ask you this- What do you think often happens between Hit the main pump and death ensue shortly thereafter ?
Hunting is pretty dynamic. Sometimes you find urself in a decent position to shoot for specific regions on the game, other times, not so much. Sometimes u fail to hit the region u aimed for.
What Gatehouse mentioned earlier about animals taking hits differently then other animals of the same species is oh so true!
U can shoot a deer one year thru both lungs with a 7mmWSM and it runs 200m before drowning. Then a different deer in another year with a 30-30 in the same spot and the thing only makes it 50m...
U can aim for organs, shoulder plates, spins or brains... but generally, more times then not, ull find urself in a snap situation where ur basically aiming for the middle of the boiler room and hoping for the best. Its in those same situations where the fella firing the .300WM is probably going to fair better then the dude shooting 9mm haha
What Gatehouse mentioned earlier about animals taking hits differently then other animals of the same species is oh so true!
U can shoot a deer one year thru both lungs with a 7mmWSM and it runs 200m before drowning. Then a different deer in another year with a 30-30 in the same spot and the thing only makes it 50m...
U can aim for organs, shoulder plates, spins or brains... but generally, more times then not, ull find urself in a snap situation where ur basically aiming for the middle of the boiler room and hoping for the best. Its in those same situations where the fella firing the .300WM is probably going to fair better then the dude shooting 9mm haha
What I'd hope for is as short a duration of dying as possible. Hence my initial post regarding the obvious inefficiency of using buckshot, especially at ranges greater than 20 yards. With 30 yard patterns opening up to between 12" and 24" depending on the choke or lack thereof, and with only 8 or 9 pellets randomly scattering in that general area, chances of shutting it down in an efficient manner seem negligible to moderate. A single, well-placed shot with a bullet capable of adequate penetration and tissue damage seems obviously superior. My question was, and remains, is a JHP 147gr projectile moving at about 1100fps at the target (close to 400fps, a bit more or less depending on where the shot falls in the range I've described) is adequate for such a purpose. It seems not terribly relevant to me whether this is a 9mm projectile or some other bullet of similar mass and velocity, does that sound right? Or are we talking about some unknown magic to do with the dimension of 9mm, alongside the magic of deer anatomy being somehow exceptional among mammals?
The last deer I saw shot was by a hunting partner shooting a .35 Remington. Both front legs broken up, and the Top of the heart taken off. It jumped across a ditch and ran into the bush. Took me a while to find it because the blood trail ended a good 50' away in thick brush. As in, it ran out of blood 50' from where it died. After it jumped a ditch and ran with no bones connecting it's front legs.
Deer can be tough.
Again, get the right tool.
Deer can be tough.
Again, get the right tool.
]
So, no real answer on what you think happens, just what you hope for?
If this is your actual goal, then perhaps you should look at using a cartridge other than the bare minimum that might achieve this goal when everything goes perfectly correct, and look at a cartridge that will achieve this goal with certainty, even when the situation is imperfect.
So, no real answer on what you think happens, just what you hope for?
If this is your actual goal, then perhaps you should look at using a cartridge other than the bare minimum that might achieve this goal when everything goes perfectly correct, and look at a cartridge that will achieve this goal with certainty, even when the situation is imperfect.
A 9mm would not be on my list of deer hunting cartridges. One thing to keep in mind with any lower velocity pistol caliber cartridge there is not enough velocity to produce much hydrostatic shock, so the deepest/largest wound channel kills the quickest with slow bullets and usually that is accomplished best with a hard cast semi wad cutter bullet.
That's right. I don't have any 'real answer' so far, which is why I'm asking questions. Specifically the questions posed in the first post of this thread.
So... buckshot it is then? With it's inferior per-pellet energy delivery over shorter distances, its absolutely randomized patterning which changes with every shot, with fingers crossed that my one shot within 30 yards or less will hit one or two important organs?
Again, this is my question. Many, many hunters have hunted deer with buckshot, hence the name, buckshot. It's not rabbitshot nor crowshot, not pigeonshot nor snakeshot. It's buckshot, as in deer, the male kind specifically, probably because doeshot sounds too much like killing Bambi's mom and buckshot sounds more manly. Marketing type stuff.
With buckshot we have:
- outside practical range of maybe 30 yards, 50 yards if using a choke and knowing your shotgun very well, and basically counting on wounding or entirely missing the animal at any range significantly beyond this
- pattern entropy with a small number of projectiles striking the deer unpredictably within that pattern, sometimes killing the animal
- individual pellets delivering 160fpe or less every time, basically equivalent to CCI Stinger .22lr
Compare this to 9mm:
- practical range for delivering an accurate shot without significant bullet drop of about 70 yards
- pattern entropy equivalent, or group size, varying with the quality of the rifle and skill of the shooter, but generally within a 2" group over its effective range
- bullet delivering between 350fpe and 450fpe depending on distance within the effective range
I'm seeing a lot of what has happened pretty well every time someone is so audacious as to bring up this very subject. Somehow the conversations around 9mm and deer inspire a flood of irrelevant comments about more powerful cartridges. Which is not to say more powerful cartridges are not relevant in deer hunting, as obviously they are, but rather to point out that this is stepping outside the parameters of the discussion I've set up. Of course everyone is welcome to go on about their favourite deer cartridge... but there are loads and loads of other threads covering that, right? I raised this specific subject, asking about the use of what seems a randomly inaccurate, apparently grossly under-powered load, buckshot, and asked about opinions and experiences around why buckshot would be so widely used for deer hunting while 9mm seems so close to universally dismissed from the whole discussion.
My conclusion generally as I've seen this hashed over in a number of forums is that objections are primarily based on something like fudd logic. Hit the deer with the biggest stick possible and it's more likely to fall down dead, right? Hence the shotgun and buckshot load. A shotgun makes a loud boom, sends a cloud of death in the general direction of the target deer, and gives the shooter a big boost of confidence that all that power must be doing something right considering how loud and scary it was. Similar logic for a .30-06, though with some crossover, as that is an inherently accurate round, at least in a decent barrel. Ultimately, why not use a .50BMG for deer hunting? That way even if you graze the foreleg it'll drop dead, right? Why practice accurate shooting when you can vapourize the animal and be sure? Or heck, nuke it from orbit!
You get the idea, I hope? I'm asking about a somewhat subtle bit of basic math: which is superior, anything from 1 to maybe if you're lucky 5 small pellets hitting the deer in the right organs to kill it, or a single heavier projectile delivered with reasonable precision to a known-good location for accomplishing the desired result? If that question seems too difficult or if it triggers you, there are always hundreds of other discussions on CGN to take part in. Move along. It's not like any deer are in imminent danger of me rushing out and shooting at them with my PCC, as I made ABUNDANTLY CLEAR in the first post. I've not even challenged the CORE exam yet, though I read through all the study materials, twice, before taking my RPAL/PAL exams, just so as to be clear on relevant information. I found the migratory bird part especially enchanting. So complex! So many rules! Such subtle distinctions to observe when deciding what's fair game and what's illegal! So take a deep breath, relax, and decide whether you're interested in contributing to resolving my question. I'm perfectly happy to be ignored if there really isn't any knowledge out there to help resolve this. I'll be doing my own field testing at least a few times on practical simulated targets, as I also hinted at earlier.
This hydrostatic shock?
Wikipedia said:
excerpted from this article, which talks about the controversial nature of the hydrostatic shock theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_shock
I've seen a number of other accounts which demonstrate with physical media how ballistics gel testing and slow motion capture of cavitation is an extremely poor facimile for actual living tissue. I'm not arguing for a moment that there isn't a profoundly damaging effect from certain impacts of higher power bullets. Only suggesting that such damage is neither inevitable (see above post regarding a 300gr projectile from a high powered rifle passing right through a deer, only to have the deer run off some considerable distance) nor particularly useful information, as shot placement is generally more relevant. For example, back to 9mm and human beings surviving such bullets as someone else pointed out - how many cases are there with humans being hit by a 9mm bullet in the heart? In the brain? Generally survival is related to peripheral impacts or non-critical organ damage which is repaired within a short time by trauma surgeons. Modern bullet wound survival is a very different thing compared to historical bullet wound survival rates, primarily due to surgical skill development and antibiotics. Neither being relevant in deer hunting, of course. Precision shooting skill and anatomical knowledge seem to be the primary factors there.
Wow. Putting the above together with what you said in your TNW ASR review video about not being a particularly good shooter, while shooting 4MOA to 5MOA groups from a full rifle rest... I worry a bit for any game you may be hunting. Wounding seems altogether too likely with what seems a rather lax attitude about accuracy, depending more on luck from year to year, hunt to hunt, over training for a higher level of skill as a shooter. My ASR is a heck of a lot more accurate than that, from a bipod. Never put it in a rifle rest, as I don't see the relevance of such shooting. Any gun I have not delivering 2MOA or better just isn't interesting to me so I won't own it long, certainly wouldn't use it on game of any size.
I answered your question regarding buckshot vs 9mm in post#22.
Neither of them are as good killers as a rifle cartridge. I would pick a 223 over both of them for hunting every time.
But people should hunt with what they like, so take your 9mm if it pleases you. You might want to get some practical first hand experience with the performance of different firearm platforms and ammunition performance in actual media so you can make an informed decision that isn’t based on other people’s YouTube videos.
