OK, I will bite. I don't hunt with my Marlin GG 45/70, but I have hunted with my 22" Marlin 45/70. With a wide variety of hunting rifles to hunt with, the GG would never be my first or probably even second choice to take hunting. I bought my first one(I am on my second) as a bush carry rifle for hiking etc. over the summer and to spend nights in the tent when in bear country. But with that said I have shot and killed between 15 and 20 animals with a GG, Llamas to be exact. I think in the end we slaughtered about 50 of them, all with my rifles. But because this is a GG thread I will stick to that. What better way to test bullets than live animals.....
A friend of mine had over 200 Lamas at one point and was strictly feeding his family with them. I had the opportunity to do all the shooting of about 50 of these animals with what ever gun I chose and whatever way I chose(trying not to waste meat of course). This was done over a peiod of about two years. All the ones I did shoot with the GG were all one shot kills using 53-54g of 3031 behind a Reminton 405g bullet, the same load I use up to this day. Some were head shots, some were lung shots and a couple were facing straight on. All were shot at different ranges because most of the time they were far to hard to round up.
I didn't take pics, and even if I did I would never post them on the interweb. Slaughtering animals in a field in my opinion is not something to brag about, but it is a good bullet test.
Here is one of the ones I owned not long before he got lead to slaughter because of a bad infection in his jaw, he ended up as dog food. Most of the ones I shot for slaughter were much bigger than he is in the pic. I used a 255g hard cast 45 Colt on him at point blank range to the head.
The deer on the right in this pic was shot with my 22" Marlin 45/70 with the same load listed avove at about 50 yards. The one to the left of it was shot with the same model of rifle using the same load at about 125 yards, different shooter.
The deer on top was taken one year later with the second above mentioned rifle at 70 or so yards using the same load once again. I never shot it but I was standing right beside the shooter. I have also been witness to many other animals falling to this rifle all using the same load.
Since I had my first GG I have probably shot close to 2000 rounds of hand loaded 45/70 between all three rifles. Lots of target shooting, dead tree and stump shooting, wet and dry newspaper bundles and almost anything else that was around at the time.
These are the two I currently own.
My current bush carry rifle is a 20" 375 H&H and hopefully in a few weeks I will be testing it on black bears. I sure wish there was more slaughtering to do because I have some bullets for it I am just dieing to test on a live animal. I guess a bear will have to do.
), but there is actually some great information here from a few with actual field experience (read:very few
) on the 45-70 and GG.
