First .45 Colt whitetail

[Ernest]

Any deer taken with a hand gun is a true TROPHY congratulations!

[Jedman]

hc18flyer, Congrats on your handgun deer ! I know how you feel. Back about 30 + years ago my home state of Ohio added certain handguns to the legal weapons list for our deer " gun season "
and I took a small buck with a Ruger security six revolver I owned in 357 mag with a 173 gr. Cast bullet. Thanks for telling us of your hunt.

Jedman

[taco650]

Congrats! What grips are those?

[hc18flyer]

Congrats! What grips are those?

Those are Herrett's m# RR. They work fine for my big paws. I would like to try a finger groove style? Tom

[Kylongrifle32]

Congratulations Sir on a fine shot and getting it done with a handgun.

[canuck4570]

how big was your hollow point
pics if possible

[Ramjet-SS]

Congrats fantastic job. Great caliber nice load and well placed shot.

[hc18flyer]

how big was your hollow point
pics if possible

It was MiHec's small hollow point. Pressure canned 22#s this am. 60#s of meat total. Butterfly steaks, canned, summer sausage, and pepperoni sticks for the Grandkids. Later, hc18flyer

[DougGuy]

hc18flyer, not steering or hijacking your thread, just adding my first 45 Colt deer to it if that's alright...

My first ever 45 Colt deer was quite the surprise.. It was my birthday, I had scouted a tree that looked like it was the center of a wheel where numerous trails came from the thickets right to that tree. I got in my climber and got up 24' which is my normal hunting height for a treestand.

Just about dusk, just about the time the light starts playing tricks on your eyes, here they came towards my tree. I thought there was a spike or a forkhorn in the lead, I could see white just in front of it's ears, so I raised up the already cocked blue and color case 4 5/8" Vaquero, and trained it on the shoulder of the lead deer and fired. The load was a 300gr XTP over 22.5gr W296 (this was years before I started shooting only cast). At the shot, the big deer that was in the lead pitched over sideways and started thrashing in the brush, hind legs down on the ground and motionless. But wait! There was another deer down in the trail behind this one, the others ran over in front of my buddy, and just about the time he was going to shoot I hollered for him to come help me drag hide.

He got all indignant about me hollering and I explained to him that anybody that kills two with one shot on their birthday can holler all they want to! Well, he didn't like that nary a bit but by the time I got down out of my tree, the big deer had started thrashing even more violently with the back legs this time, front half laid down and unresponsive. I was thoroughly confused by now, did I break it's spine? Or not? I had to finish it off with a head shot.

There was no hair, no blood, no visible wound (other than the obvious head shot), I have NO idea where I hit that deer, we skinned it's cape all the way to it's nose and never saw a bruise or any kind of sigh that a bullet had hit. Wherever it hit, soaked up a LOT of energy from the XTP, as I recovered it from the second and much smaller deer, it had hit in the ear, gave it a brain hemorrhage, went just under the skin around behind it's neck and stopped there. I made a tiny slit with my knife and recovered the bullet.

Still do not know where I hit the big doe, we never found not one shred of evidence that would point to an impact.

Here is the bullet that was recovered:

[hc18flyer]

WOW! What a birthday! Thanks for sharing your story. Initially I was sure I needed a 300 grain + bullet, but the more I read and shot heavier loads, I decided a 255-270 grain boolet @ 1050+ fps was plenty at >40 yard range I wanted. Honestly, the crossed sticks really helped, I should have practiced with them. hc18flyer

[koger]

Awesome story and shot, thanks for sharing.