Help me decide

[Crawdaddy]

I bought a Contender and several barrels a couple of months back. It is now time to head to the lease in Texas for a Desert Mulie hunt and I am going to use the Contender.

The problem is, I can't decide on which cartridge or bullet.

I shoot all equally well. All shots will be less than 100 yards in relatively open ground. The one caveat is that a wounded animal could run into Palo Duro Canyon making tracking and retrieval tough.

My choices are

1) 45-70 with cast 430 gr boolits
2). 45-70 with 405 gr swaged boolits
3). 30-30 Ackley Improved with 160 boolits
4) 30-30 Ackley improved with 168 gr J words

All shoot and group well.

What would you use?

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[Grendel99]

Well if you are worried about tracking issues, I'd say go with the 45-70 and cast. Make a big hole and good blood trail in case they don't drop. Good luck!

[Jupiter7]

Based on profiles in your pic, the cast 45/70 seems like a clear choice.

[OnHoPr]

Well, crawdaddy if you use the 45-70 with the big meplat all we"ll get to see is a pic of the head.:kidding: 45-70 if you might have tuff tracking issues IMO. How much recoil is with that load/gun combo? If you're shooting good groups you must be able to handle the recoil though. Good luck

[starmac]

Either would work, but I would go with the 45/70. There are some nice sized mulies in that part of the world.