32-40 for deer?

[DonMountain]

I am planning to use my John Wayne Commerative Winchester 94 short barreled lever action for deer this year and loaded up some converted 30-30 brass with an RCBS 32-170 Flat Nosed, gas checked boolet over 26.5 grains of IMR-3031 and a WLR primer. I don't know what the velocity is, but it is plenty accurate enough for woods hunting. Now all of my friends are telling me the 32-40 is way too slow to kill a deer and I better practice shooting like the "Rifleman" so I can get at least 4 or 5 rounds in a deer to kill it. Or just shoot if I can get a good head shot. What do you all think? Am I way under-gunned here in Mid-Missouri?

[dk17hmr]

Depending on your alloy I bet it's going to kill a deer just fine.

[Rufus Krile]

You're probably pushing 1700fps real close and with the 170gr gas check you will have to shoot him length-ways to recover a bullet. You have enough gun.

[Outpost75]

The key with using lower-velocity, black powder era cartridges effectively in the field is using a suitable alloy which will give normal expansion with good weight retention at the velocities attainable. I use a .30-30 with 170-grain, flatnosed, cast bullets of shape almost identical to your RCBS bullet, cast from 1:30 tin-lead alloy from Roto Metals with a very similar load to yours, except that I use 4895, 4064, RL15 or Varget in similar charge weights. I use Lee 50-50 Alox-beeswax lube and insert a 1 grain tuft of Dacron fiber over the powder charge to take up the free airspace in the case. Velocity is about 1800 fps in a 20" barrel.

Accuracy is stellar, and at woods ranges within 50 yards or so it kills the deer dead. I have used it as far as 100 yards and it also worked fine, but shots here are close.

[WebMonkey]

The average white tail here will go down just fine with what you have.
:)
I'm going slower with a .309 170 fn gc and have no concerns.

[DonMountain]

Depending on your alloy I bet it's going to kill a deer just fine.

I am using old Wheel Weight lead that I collected 15 or 20 years ago when I first got into casting my own boolets. I have no idea what the mixture is but a 520 grain 45/70 boolet killed one once. So, do I need to get a special alloy to kill a deer with it? And where would I get this alloy since wheel weights aren't made of lead anymore?

[Shawlerbrook]

Your friends are wrong. I and many have killed Whitetails with the 25 35 . The 32 40 is fine as long as your pick your shots.

[rking22]

Have killed several(5 or 6) deer with a 173FN 30cal bullet very much like yours at likely lower velocity from 30-30 and 30 Rem. More to the point none required a 2nd shot and several did not take a step. All were hi shoulder shots with the bullet hitting within an inch or so of planned location. Distances were 20 to 85 or so yards. Your 32-40 will kill deer today just as effectively as it did 100 years ago. Your gun is fine ,keep it and hunt with it, velocity is overrated if you hunt close or are a good judge of range. Your friends ,, well you'll have to decide on keeping them around :)

Wheelweights are fine , many use them aircooled. I like to cut them 50% with plain lead + a little tin for fillout.

[jlchucker]

Why not? Back in the 1950's, I was a kid in grade school in a rural Vemont town. There were a few kids in my school whose fathers used 32-40 leverguns as the one and only deer rifle in their homes. 38-40's were common, and now and then someone whould haul in a deer that had been killed with a 38-55 to be weighed at the town clerk's office. I don't ever recall anyone during that time talking about hunting with a 44-40, though. My own Dad used a 30-30 Marlin model 1936, and my mom's brother, Uncle Art, regularly killed his deer with a Marlin in 35 Remington. A 32-40 wouldn't be my own first choice, but if it's all I had I wouldn't hesitate to use one.

[quail4jake]

I'd take a good .32-40, well handloaded, any day! Here in rural PA there were probably as many deer killed with .32-40s as any other at one time. I really think the only reason we don't see as many now is lack of commercial ammo but handloading with attention to detail makes these old rifles all that one needs to kill deer at a reasonable range. Load it like Outpost describes, shoot, shoot, shoot and enjoy hunting like folks did in 1880!

[dk17hmr]

I am using old Wheel Weight lead that I collected 15 or 20 years ago when I first got into casting my own boolets. I have no idea what the mixture is but a 520 grain 45/70 boolet killed one once. So, do I need to get a special alloy to kill a deer with it? And where would I get this alloy since wheel weights aren't made of lead anymore?


WW will work I personally like a little pure in there to help expansion something along the lines of a 50/50 mix but I'm not a big cast bullet hunter either. As long as your not running something like straight Linotype or other hard alloy I wouldn't be worried.

[DonMountain]

Wheelweights are fine , many use them aircooled. I like to cut them 50% with plain lead + a little tin for fillout.

These old wheelweight boolets fill out just fine with the RCBS mold, so I don't need any tin for fillout. I am probably running the temperature pretty hot and get slightly frosted boolets but the RCBS molds are made out of iron and I feel they will take the high temperatures. I particularly like those iron molds from RCBS and Lyman as compared to the aluminum ones from Lee that I have tried. Even the old Ideal molds I bought from ebay make some real good boolets and size and shoot very well. Or maybe the older wheel weights already have some tin in them to help fillout?

[rking22]

Have to admit , the reason I cut my wheel weights is as much frugality as performance :) I have LOTS more plain lead than wheelweight lead! If fillout is good then your good to go. All about placement, I need the wheelweight to get my bullets to group well at the 1700ish vel I wanted but 50/50 was as good as 100% accuracy wise. So there you go, I outed myself as a cheapskate :)

[Mk42gunner]

The .32-40 loaded as you describe should work well for our local Whitetail deer; as long as you don't set up on the edge of a four hundred yard wide field and expect to shoot deer on the other side.

I used to hunt deer pretty hard around here, and I think I could have killed 99% of the ones I got with your gun. I know a lot of times at the end of the day I was wishing I had a lighter rifle than the one I had in my hands.

Robert

[richhodg66]

I killed a small doe last season with a .32 Special loaded to about the ballistics you're describing. In fact, of the five I have killed with "smallbore" cast in the past several years, the .32 Special had to best terminal performance of all of them, the exit hole indicated good expansion, deer didn't make it 25 yards, but the blood trail would have been easy to follow.

Id you're confident in your ability to place those shots where they need to, go hunting.

[runfiverun]

change it to 32 win. and a bit faster powder.
and your close to what I'm doing.
make sure there ain't another deer behind the one you shoot.

[DonMountain]

change it to 32 win. and a bit faster powder.
and your close to what I'm doing.
make sure there ain't another deer behind the one you shoot.

Before I started loading the 32-40, I researched a lot of loads given in this web site and others. It seemed that all the target shooters were using much faster powders, and rifles with much longer barrels and getting velocities way too slow for deer hunting. So I looked for loads that would give me a higher velocity in a short barreled rifle and started with the slowest powder I thought might work. I use a lot of IMR-4895 in all of the military bottleneck cartridges and it seems to be optimum for those larger cases. So I moved down the list of recommended powders to the slightly faster ones, and IMR-3031 was where I started. I was also going to try Reloader 7 and IMR-4198. In working up loads of the IMR-3031, I started at about 20 grains and worked up from there. As I approached 26.5 grains the 8" pattern condensed to 2" group at 100 yards, so I stopped there. The case was almost full and it shot to the sites, so I didn't try upping the load to maybe 28.0 grains that probably would have fit in the case. But its getting close to deer season and I am not sure I should keep experimenting with loads?

[justashooter]

Use what you've got, Dan. Put one thru the boiler and it'll take them down.

[quail4jake]

2" @ 100yds...iron sights? shoot, shoot, shoot and go kill a deer!

Before I started loading the 32-40, I researched a lot of loads given in this web site and others. It seemed that all the target shooters were using much faster powders, and rifles with much longer barrels and getting velocities way too slow for deer hunting. So I looked for loads that would give me a higher velocity in a short barreled rifle and started with the slowest powder I thought might work. I use a lot of IMR-4895 in all of the military bottleneck cartridges and it seems to be optimum for those larger cases. So I moved down the list of recommended powders to the slightly faster ones, and IMR-3031 was where I started. I was also going to try Reloader 7 and IMR-4198. In working up loads of the IMR-3031, I started at about 20 grains and worked up from there. As I approached 26.5 grains the 8" pattern condensed to 2" group at 100 yards, so I stopped there. The case was almost full and it shot to the sites, so I didn't try upping the load to maybe 28.0 grains that probably would have fit in the case. But its getting close to deer season and I am not sure I should keep experimenting with loads?

[opus]

I have taken several deer with Winchester 94 in 32-40. Keep the range down, place the shot right and you will be eating venison.

[Scorpion8]

Our fore-fathers didn't suffer from latest-gun-craze-itis, and the .32-40 killed many deer back then just fine. In fact, if magnumitis wasn't so infectious, there are so many vintage calibers out there that are just fine if you can resist the sales hype on the new stuff. There's also something earthy about actually using your skill to stalk and hunt instead of relying on "shock value" of hypervelocity cartridges.

[seaboltm]

I bet they are thinking of the 32-20, which would indeed be marginal.

[merlin101]

I bet they are thinking of the 32-20, which would indeed be marginal.
I was kinda thinking that the too. I'm in the process of picking up a 32-20 more or less to plink with but would love to find an older (and affordable) lever in a older caliber. Just for fun because I can

[Dan Cash]

I bet they are thinking of the 32-20, which would indeed be marginal.

.32-20 will make meat inside a hundred yards and, unless you hit it end on, you probably won't recover a bullet.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

If you were using a grossly inadequate cartridge, I think a number of successive hits are far less effective than a theoretically similar impact and tissue damage with buckshot. Maybe the pressure waves from simultaneous missiles collide with one another in the tissues - or maybe it is just on the same principle as a full-auto .223 delivering enough recoil energy to knock you silly if it was one of the cannons we sometimes see people presenting on the boards.

But the .32-40, even at traditional velocities, is as effective as practically everybody here is saying. The test of cartridges, like generals, isn't the best they can do, but the worst.

I don't believe wheelweights are the idea alloy, though they should be perfectly adequate. When Lyman devised their #2 alloy, with less antimony and more tin, they knew what they were about. High-antimony alloys break up more easily - into about three big pieces, mostly, and no big disaster on an animal as lightly boned as a deer, but could be on something larger and dangerous.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Now all of my friends are telling me the 32-40 is way too slow to kill a deer and I better practice shooting like the "Rifleman" so I can get at least 4 or 5 rounds in a deer to kill it. Or just shoot if I can get a good head shot.

That carbine, especially with iron sights, limits the usable range of a cartridge which already isn't a long-range one. Don't panic, or you could make the lever-action less effective than a single-shot, even one which it can equal on the range. I'd want a very, very good opportunity before risking a head shot, and then only with undergrowth etc, ruling out the heart and lung area. The latter gives you a lot more leeway than would send the poor beast off with a shattered jaw when a head shot goes wrong.

[Jedman]

I have killed several deer ,whitetails and mule deer and a antelope with a 300 blk out that is probably a little less powerful than a 32-40. All were shot thru the lungs, none went far.
As always it's where you put the bullet. Count me with the others who say it will be just fine.

Jedman

[TXGunNut]

No experience with the 32-40 but considering it was one of the original chamberings for the 1894 Winchester I'm thinking you're on pretty firm ground. Those old BP cartridges got things done before 1895 and some of them are still getting it done today. This year I'll be hunting with the other original cartridge for the 1894, the 38-55. It's a bit less horsepower than the 35 Whelen I was dabbling with last year but I don't think my boolits will bounce off anything I'll be shooting. Pretty sure I won't have to resort to a magazine dump either...unless a large group of piggies wanders by, of course. ;-)

[Mohawk Daddy]

My brother in law received a new JW commemorative in 32-40 as a Christmas bonus from an employer about 35 years ago. I've tried repeatedly to get him to shoot it, but he's a man of principle: won't shoot it, won't sell it, won't trade it. Sigh. His has perhaps the finest wood I've ever seen on a firearm. But being a Philistine, I'd shoot it and take it to the woods too.

[tdoyka]

i use a 30-40 krag with a 165gr ranch dog with h4198(25.5gr) and it goes roughly 1800fps. it kills deer. i guess that yours will kill one too. of course, it might bounce off the deer because yours is 100fps less than mine:kidding:!!!

[rking22]

Mohawk daddy,, it is so nice to sit in the fall woods and look down to gaze at a beautiful piece of wood on a hunting rifle! I'm with you, they are made to hunt with, pretty wood is a bonus. I don't understand the "might scratch it" thoughts, I hunt with some guns that have AAA wood, just don't throw them around. If one gets scratched, it will remind me of that day in the field every time I notice the scratch, no big deal. Wish I had me a 32-40 lever with pretty wood, oh well the 375 is bettern average :)

[Bigslug]

.32-20 will make meat inside a hundred yards and, unless you hit it end on, you probably won't recover a bullet.

THIS.

177901
While my .32-20 is not strictly a .32-20 (case blown out from the original .314" to take a custom .320" slug for a rechambered Martini Cadet), the above bullets were light fireformers of a 130 grain LBT at about 1250fps. The soft bullet (20-1) on the right took three milk jugs to stop. The hard bullet on the left (WQWW) took NINE.

The hard bullet is now doing just shy of 1600fps, so essentially .357 magnum territory. No, I wouldn't shoot elk across canyons with it, but deer to 100Y, sure.

I submit that the OP has been infected - as many of us latter-half-of-20th-Century children were - with a touch of Weatherbyism: the notion that a bullet must be the weight of an Acme Cartoon Anvil and be moving at the speed of an SR-71 Blackbird in order to stand a 50% chance of killing a brown field mouse with one shot. We grew up in an era of jacketed bullets of often dubious durability and the resulting conventional wisdom was that we needed heavier to stay together and reach vitals. Seeing what cast and solid copper Barnes slugs will do on both jugs and deer has cured me of this notion.

.32-40 is not only good to go, but REALLY good to go!

[sharpshooter3040]

Who ever told you that is living in an over kill world. It is still plenty of deer gun. It's every bit is good as a 30-30 or 32 special using cast boolits. You don't need an ear split em loud and boomer magnum to kill a deer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[dubber123]

I had to check to see if I had posted on this one, guess not.. Anyhoo, one of the biggest deer gotten in my area last year, right around 200# dressed fell to great grampas 32-40, (former co-worker was the hunter). The distance it travelled after the shot was 0.0 yards. Don't shoot them in the foot or tail and you are just fine.

[DonMountain]

Our fore-fathers didn't suffer from latest-gun-craze-itis, and the .32-40 killed many deer back then just fine. In fact, if magnumitis wasn't so infectious, there are so many vintage calibers out there that are just fine if you can resist the sales hype on the new stuff. There's also something earthy about actually using your skill to stalk and hunt instead of relying on "shock value" of hypervelocity cartridges.

What do you mean "skill to stalk and hunt"? I don't use no skill to stalk and hunt! I just take my rifle, thermos of coffee, and chocolet bars out in the woods before the sun comes up and climb up in the deer stand and set there drinking coffee and eating that chocolet bar waiting for a deer to walk by. When one or two of them get close enough I just ease up the rifle and shoot them? Ain't no skill to it at all! Except maybe opening those chocolet bars without making any noise?

[rodwha]

Most of the places here I've hunted in Texas don't allow stalking as there are many other guns on the land. Instead, for safety and respect, you get a blind to hunt from. Stalking could get you accidentally shot (or you shooting through another blind further down) or create tension by ruining your neighbor's hunting.

[TXGunNut]

Most of the places here I've hunted in don't allow stalking as there are many other guns on the land. Instead, for safety and respect, you get a blind to hunt from. Stalking could get you accidentally shot (or you shooting through another blind further down) or create tension by ruining your neighbor's hunting.

That's quite true, folks from other states sometimes look down on blind hunting but for some situations it is the best method. A blind also lets you observe many species and activities that most folks never see. Different strokes, indeed.

[TXGunNut]

My brother in law received a new JW commemorative in 32-40 as a Christmas bonus from an employer about 35 years ago. I've tried repeatedly to get him to shoot it, but he's a man of principle: won't shoot it, won't sell it, won't trade it. Sigh. His has perhaps the finest wood I've ever seen on a firearm. But being a Philistine, I'd shoot it and take it to the woods too.


One story I read about the JW commemorative was that Michael Wayne chose the 32-40 because it was an "obsolete" cartridge. Apparently he'd been spending time with the Hollywood elite and he didn't want anyone shot with a gun commemorating his dad. I only have one commemorative rifle. Like your BIL's rifle the wood and fit & finish is remarkable. Yes I shoot it, with BP no less. Bought it NIB for "shooter" prices.

[Mohawk Daddy]

TXGunNut: Thx for a bit of history on the John Wayne commemoratives. They're a bit too spendy for me to choose one for a shooter, but some of the other Winchester commemoratives, the "less desirable" examples or those produced in larger numbers are sometimes affordable. Shoot em if ya got em is my belief. And "obsolete" calibers makes it even better.

[TXGunNut]

Shooting "obsolete" cartridges is a huge benefit of loading and casting your own. There's no way I would be able to shoot many of the guns I own if I had to buy ammo.
Not sure I'm liking this thread much. ;-) Every time I visit the 32-40 moves up a notch or two on my "want" list. It seems a natural addition to my 32WCF, 30WCF, 38WCF, 38-40, 38WCF and 32 Spcl family but adding cartridges is sometimes as expensive as adding a rifle. Sure is an interesting cartridge, maybe someday.