Large-bore centerfire small game

[robg]

a friend uses his 458 win mag on rabbits to get tuned up for African hunting trips .

[Larry Gibson]

Handgun, primarily, but rifle is still interesting.

Handgun, primarily, but rifle is still interesting.

Thinking about it I recalled many years ago I would still hunt snowshoe hares with my 44 magnum and 45 AR revolvers. I cast up some nifty WCs by put old Lyman non-crimp GC in a forward drive band of the mould cavity [429421 and 454424]. They were loaded backwards if I left the GC on but mostly the GC flicked off easily so I loaded them base first. I used small charges of Bullseye to get 800 fps +/- which proved very deadly on the rabbit/hares w/o damaging too much meat. Mostly I used head shots which were very effective.

I also did the same with the 38/357 and 41 magnum cartridges. I use the old Hornady thin tin lid from their GC tins with the GCs in them sitting on the top edge of the Lyman furnace to keep them hot.
Then tweezers are used to insert the hot GC into the very hot mould. Not as hard as it sounds. Certainly not for mass production but it doesn't take much time to cast a hundred or so which was plenty for one season of rabbit/hare hunting.

Attachment 265361

Here's some moulds with the GC in them.

[Sam]

I regularly shoot small game with my 35 Whelan.
148 DEWC and 7 gr Unique with a fluff of Dacron
Not excessive at all. Certainly more effective than a 22 but hardly a shredder

[brewer12345]

I bought a lyman single shot percussion pistol from a member here. I am going to try to get an accurate 50 cal round ball load with a modest powder charge and try it on small game and/or blue grouse.

[45 hunter]

brewer12345, Let us know what you come up with! That could be a lot of fun!

[JWFilips]

My 29.5" barrel GEW 8 MM shoots the NOE 326-130 gr FN great with 3 grain of Red Dot It is a wieldy weapon but works great to 50 yards on small critters

[M-Tecs]

I've shot a lot of rabbits with 357 Mag and 45 Colt revolver. They work well be ricochets tend to be an issue with the larger slugs.

[Texas by God]

I bought a lyman single shot percussion pistol from a member here. I am going to try to get an accurate 50 cal round ball load with a modest powder charge and try it on small game and/or blue grouse.

I have done just that. It pokes a 1/2” hole right through squirrels and cottontails and that works.

[fcvan]

45 Colt rifle, HR 20" Classic Carbine single shot, .454 pure lead RB over 3 gr of Bullseye, 900 fps at muzzle. Deadly accurate at 100 yards. I shot a grading stake at 100 and it just exploded and splintered. Quiet like a 22 lr, probably one of my most fun plinking loads. The RB through my 4 5/8" OM Vaquero also shoots quite well. I tumble lubed the RBs with liquid alox, next loads will be ASBBPCd, and the RBs thrown in the tumbler to round out the sprue cuts, maybe roll them between steel plates.

[Tripplebeards]

I load A .452 lee 255 grain boolit with 5.2 grains of trailboss for my Ruger new vaquero. I can hit shotgun casings every shot at 25 yards with it free handed. It kicks similar to a 22wrm or a hair more.

[jaysouth]

Not to be a wet blanket, but check your state's game laws before using centerfire cartridges to hunt small game. Illegal in TN and LA.

[KCSO]

Many years ago if you could own one gun you were about average and that one gun had to do it all. Hence adapters and small game loads for many rifles. One of my favorites is a round ball over a dab of powder in the 30-30 or the 30-40. Accurate to 20 yards and almost silent. Many a rabbit or squirrel has met its maker from one of these.

[justashooter]

What boolits(and what velocities) tend to be favored for use on bunnies and similar sized fare. I'm just curious, especially in the larger calibers.

i used 150 LRN castings in a remington 600 at about 900 fps with unique that printed close to POA at 25 yards when sighted for 225 yards for 165 grain spitzer at 2600 fps with scope about 1.5" above bore. getting a co-printing between full velocity and reduced load can be challenging.

[Buckeyeguy]

I have shot quite a few squirrels withA Ruger Blackhawk with 38 special cases loaded with dewc loads at 800 FPS, nice round holes with very little meat damaged if your shot was placed well.

[Shawlerbrook]

I’ll go the other direction. I once shot a coyote with a small 380 auto.

[HawgBonz]

Very interesting thread here. I'm just gettin into casting, been reloading for years, tho'. Lookin forward to experimenting with these light loads in a "non suppressed" way. 'Bout the closest I've come to doing this is I shot a squirrel with a 38 snubby I had with me one time out deer hunting. Clean hole, dead snack.
Also shot a squirrel with a 44 C&B revolver. Same thing. Plug-n-thud. Hardly any meat ruined.
What's old is new-ish again re: old western movies when they said stuff like they'd "need their rifle for squirrels-n-such". d;^)

[curiousgeorge]

Jaysouth makes a good point. For about 4 or 5 yrs Kentucky allowed centerfire for small game hunting. I took about a quart jar of cracked mouth 38 special casings and trimmed them back to 38 s&w length. Loaded a 358480 135 gr swc over 2.5 grs bullseye and shot the out of my H&R 357 max rifle. The best squirrel and rabbit getter I ever used. Was at local country store bragging to the local game warden (and anyone else I cold get to listen) abouthow accurate and deadly a combo it was and the squirrels I had shot the Saturday before. When I finished he looked up at me and asked "Didn't you know they changed the law back to rimfire only this year?".
Wrote me a warning citation. Too many people listening to not do anything. I was EMBARRASSED.

[44magLeo]

When I first got into casting and fooling with loads I used the Lyman 429421 I had.
I cast that boolit in pure lead and loads so light I could watch the boolit in flight.
After a few years of fooling around I settled on two loads. The light load was that boolit over 8.5 grs of Unique for somewhere around 900-1000 fps out of the 7.5 " SBH. A bit more out of the Marlin 1894.
Heavy load was the same boolit over 17.5 grs of 2400. Somewhere around 1250 fps in the SBH. A bit more in the Marlin.
For bunnie busting the light load worked well for head shots out to around 75 yards. No wasted meat that way. The marlin wasn't quite as accurate, had to limit that to about 50 yards.
Leo

[Jedman]

curiousgeorge, I am in OH and we don’t have any restrictions on rifle calibers for squirrel that I know of.
Seems strange it took forever to get to use straight walled centerfire cartridges for deer hunting here but for squirrel hunting where you are generally aiming above ground level that it’s legal to use any caliber you want.

Jedman

[richhodg66]

Jaysouth makes a good point. For about 4 or 5 yrs Kentucky allowed centerfire for small game hunting. I took about a quart jar of cracked mouth 38 special casings and trimmed them back to 38 s&w length. Loaded a 358480 135 gr swc over 2.5 grs bullseye and shot the out of my H&R 357 max rifle. The best squirrel and rabbit getter I ever used. Was at local country store bragging to the local game warden (and anyone else I cold get to listen) abouthow accurate and deadly a combo it was and the squirrels I had shot the Saturday before. When I finished he looked up at me and asked "Didn't you know they changed the law back to rimfire only this year?".
Wrote me a warning citation. Too many people listening to not do anything. I was EMBARRASSED.

If laws are so silly and convoluted that a guy can break it through simple ignorance, then there's a problem. In reality, your light .38 loads would be much safer than say a .22 WMR which would have been legal (I have to assume the reason for the law is to not have bullets traveling a long way past what the target was and hitting unintended things). Kansas deer hunting rules were this way for a long time, seemed like the craziest laws and worse, they changed significantly almost every year. Thankfully, they have become more straightforward the past few years.

Interesting idea about using split mouth brass that way, I might have to try that sometime.