Bunnies & an M1 Carbine

[sixshot]

About a year ago an old friend down in Utah sold me a mint, in the wooden presentation box model 27 S&W. At the same time he told me he life long buddy had a mint, all original M1 Carbine he would sell me at a very good price along with some ammo. I had wanted one for a long time so I jumped on it just to have & for the grand kids to use on our Jackrabbit hunts.
The gun hadn't been fired in over 50 years & at some point he had sent it back to Inland & had them factory mount a scope on it. He gave me over 500 rounds of ammo along with 7 mags & a military canvas carrying case also.
I fired 8 rounds through the gun last year just to see if it would cycle & it ran great. Now, this last week I decided I would work up a cast load for it & take it on a bunny hunt yesterday since I was going to a high school game in that area anyway.
I've had a #311410 mould for years that weighs about 130 grs & is a plain base RN & has worked well in several Ruger Blackhawks so that was my choice. I prepped a bunch of brass & powder coated some bullets sized to .310" & ran to the range.
The little 3/4" scope is only a 2 3/4 power so I decided to zero for 50 yds out the window of the truck (cold) I wasn't very steady with the first 5 shots but they went into about 2", a bit high & a bit left but I couldn't get the scope to adjust in any direction.
I turned the box upside down & fired 3 more rounds after turning my truck a bit so I could get more steady. That worked, I had 3 shots in about 1" at 50 yds with a plain base powder coated cast bullet using 11 grs of 2400.
So I went home & loaded up 65 "bunny busters" & grabbed my 8 shot Blackhawk 327 & me & a buddy headed out yesterday to meet 2 of his brothers for some heavy duty Jackrabbit busting.
One little trick that I do with this RN style bullet when I'm sizing the powder coated bullets is, I use a different top punch so that it puts a little bit of a flat point on the bullet making it much better when shooting ground squirrels or rock chucks. It really makes a difference, you can see in the last photo a couple of the flat nose bullets with a round nose bullet in between.
The rabbits were really wild, we probably killed a little over 30 but I'm sure we seen well over 100, perhaps 150 but they were running hard on sight & you had about a 3 second window to get off a shot, it was crazy.
The 3 guys with me were shooting AR's with the 22 conversion's & 2 of them were shooting the lead Remington ammo & it was terrible, some of those Jacks ere taking 4-5-6 hits to stop. My 327 magnum shooting 118 gr HP's was blowing them up big time, yippee!!









Dick

[skeettx]

Nice, great post
Thank you
Mike

[Wolfer]

When I was young and newly married my fil and I hunted cottontails with beagles and 22 pistols. We were supposed to only take running shots but I caught him whistling one to a stop when he didn’t know I was around.
We always killed all we wanted to eat but on good days we would go through 100 rds apiece. It was a lot of fun.

[Larry Gibson]

As a fan of the 30 Carbine round in the M1 and the 32 H&R Magnum in a original Single Six I use the 313631 (105 gr SWC GC) in both. I cast them a bit soft, size at .309 and load them over H110 for 1950 fps out of my M1 Carbine "shooter". I also HP them with the Forster 1/8" HP tool after loading for busting 'bits.

Attachment 233490

Attachment 233491

[brewer12345]

sixshot, my buddy and I hunt jacks quite a bit, but we typically use duck loads in 12 gauge pumps. Exactly how do you manage to shoot jacks with a rifle or pistol? I assume that they take off like a bat out of heck for you like they do when we flush them.

[sixshot]

Corrected my mistake, it's an original Inland M1 carbine, not Universal, my mistake. The gun came with one magazine full of loads with a 110 gr RN cast that I sure would like to find the mould for. It's a plain base but I can't find a number for it, maybe Larry or some of you might recognize it. Thanks,



Dick

[Tripplebeards]

Nice! Took this one at a 136 yards the other day using my Ruger 77/44 and a ACCOWW devastor.

[MT Gianni]

I like the modification by top punch. That is a much better looking bullet for jacks.

[edp2k]

Where did you get the belted 30 carbine brass?

[sixshot]

You are right, they are up & running & that makes for a tough target but it's sure fun when you connect. As for the "belted" brass, the one mag that he had loaded up it looked like he didn't have the cases centered in the shell holder & some of them had a little belt about half way around. Funny thing though, all of them but 2 fired.
Here's a photo of the box I was shooting at, at 50 yds out the window of my truck. The bottom 5 were actually on top & I shot them first, so they were a bit high & left. Then I turned the box over & that's when I turned my truck just a bit so I could hook my right elbow into the steering wheel, that helped a bunch. Then I shot the last 3 test loads. I haven't measured them but they appear to be about 1". I will be changing to another scope.



Dick

[dale2242]

I hope you have plenty of carbine brass.
I`m sure you didn`t find most of what you shot in the snow and sage brush...dale

[Newtire]

Nice! Took this one at a 136 yards the other day using my Ruger 77/44 and a ACCOWW devastor.

https://imgur.com/vYaUdfo

Does that count as 2 towards a limit?

[sixshot]

I have lots of Carbine brass & also a brass catcher on my gun.

Dick

[rockshooter]

Brewer- the jacks I hunted in east Idaho would flush and beat feet for about 100 yards, then stop and look back- so the trick was to either use a shotgun or just wait until they stopped and get them with a pistol or rifle.
Loren

[MaLar]

Nice to see some old Idaho boys doing good on here!
Last time I went rabbit hunting only saw a few Jacks and no bunny's.
The Jack's were real skittish. This was north west of Aberdeen.

[brewer12345]

Brewer- the jacks I hunted in east Idaho would flush and beat feet for about 100 yards, then stop and look back- so the trick was to either use a shotgun or just wait until they stopped and get them with a pistol or rifle.
Loren

By me they seem to flush and either head for the next county or stop after 100 to 200 yards behind cover where you cannot see them to get a shot. I was really just wondering if OP was shooting them on the run with a handgun.

[sixshot]

I shoot "at" them on the run & I actually manage to hit a fair number of them if I'm using one of my S&W double action guns. Not too many years ago I was shooting a lot of USPSA matches with a lot of moving, swinging, turning, disappearing targets & I always shot Revolver Division. It's surprising how well you can do double action if you're tuned up from shooting many, many thousands of rounds in competition.
Doesn't mean I had a high hit average on the Jackrabbits but I've managed some pretty good days. I think my best run was 7 straight Jacks, all running & me shooting double action. Don't remember how many were on the first shot but all were taken before the gun ran dry. In 2005 I fired just over 54,000 rounds in competition & practicing & I could easily empty the gun in 1 1/2 seconds if I needed to.

Dick

[Three44s]

I have lots of Carbine brass & also a brass catcher on my gun.

Dick

Thanks for sharing!

I need to get one of those brass catchers for mine as well.

An employee showed up with a very trashy looking M1 carbine one day at our ranch. He had stuffed it the back of a closet and totally forgot about it UNTIL they were moving.

He dropped it off with me, a friend and member here on Boolits happened to have ammo, dies, brass boolits and magazines.

I started cleaning it up. I thought I was doing so to help the employee get to fire his long forgotten rifle. After some elbow grease I got it to the point where it was time to show and tell. I put one round in the chamber and fired it. It held together. I borrowed a magazine and put one in the basement and a second round in the chamber. It fired successfully and cycled the second round and fired it also without a hitch.

The next day we were out loading cattle feed and I told my employee/rifle owner what had transpired.

The news met him without much fanfair and he uttered that he ought to sell it .......

Not sounding to anxious I finnaly asked if he had a price in mind. He says “um, 150.” Being carefull not to fall down I ask if he is sure on that. He acknowledges, yes.

So I told him to think on that one more day and I would ask him again. The next day he reaffirmed his price.

In the meantime my friend/Boolits member dug out his blue book and we determined this 150 $ rifle I bought is an early Inland. I was shocked at what this rifle was worth even in rough shape and also what it shoots like. All the bad press would make one think you had to throw it at a barn to hit one. My rifle, ugly as it is hits golf balls at 30 yards easily.

I don’t shoot it much as chasing brass goes against my “reloader religion”. A catcher would solve that.

I can not fire on bunnies as my wife would not stand for that but I have tons of grey digger squirrels and no body has kind feelings for those around here.

Best regards

Three44s

[9.3X62AL]

Brewer- the jacks I hunted in east Idaho would flush and beat feet for about 100 yards, then stop and look back- so the trick was to either use a shotgun or just wait until they stopped and get them with a pistol or rifle.
Loren

That is the ticket, right there. Or they graze on fresh grass sprouts in the dry washes is Spring, sometimes 200+ yards out. Offhand shots with 223s and 22-250s are the rule. Too much fun!

[sixshot]

Funny thing, I tried mine on golf balls too but **** those guys get mad just as they're starting to putt!

Dick