The Ideal Deer Rifle for States that Outlaw Deer Rifles by John Alexander, CBA President.
Part 1 of 4.
Part 1 of 4.
I am probably known in some circles as a Don Quixote like character engaged in a, so far, fruitless effort to prove that the ideal caliber for cast bullet competition is not the thirty caliber as widely believed but the lowly twenty two. So it may be a surprise to see my name on an article about something as fearsome sounding as the .635 Nitro Express.
No, I haven’t yet sniffed enough lead fumes to try competing with a sixty three caliber match rifle. Neither am I contemplating slaying six ton elephants with one mighty blast from my nineteenth century double rifle. Instead, this series of articles will report on a set of experiments that are somewhat parallel to my quest for the ideal cast bullet match caliber. I hope to demonstrate that yet another group of misguided shooters are using a caliber that is far bigger than ideal, causing poor performance as well as minor concussions and miscellaneous contusions and abrasions to various body parts.
I refer to the legions of deer hunters who hunt in states that require deer hunting be done with bows and arrows, muzzleloaders, pistols, shotguns, catapults, pointed sticks, or other types of equipment inferior to the rifle. Many of these misguided souls are running about in the woods unsupervised with a weapon that is generally inaccurate, costs more than an English double rifle to feed and inflicts excruciating, flinch inducing, pain when fired from any steady position required for accurate shot placement - the ubiquitous twelve gauge slug gun.
In smooth bore form this implement is so inaccurate that further discussion is unseemly for an audience of riflemen as sophisticated as the membership of the Cast Bullet Association. However, many deer hunters have equipped themselves with the bastard device of a rifled shotgun, an oxymoron if there ever was one. These rifled shotguns can be made to shoot accurately enough for deer hunting at normal woods ranges.
This strange hybrid gun should make a fairly satisfactory hunting arm if of a reasonable caliber to properly to match the intended game. I plan to report on a series of experiments designed to show that that the right size for such a weapon is the common twenty gauge, the gun for women and children. Since a twenty gauge rifled slug gun is really a .63 caliber rifle. I decided to give it a proper rifle name. I thought the .635 Nitro Express had a nice ring reminiscent of the Dark Continent.
Since Glenn is probably properly skeptical of how much of such a strange topic his readers can stand at one sitting, the report will involve more than one article. In addition to this introductory article, I plan short reports on shooting factory loads to determine state of the art reached by the manufactures of slug loads; and on handloading a variety of cast bullets in an effort to match or exceed the performance of the factory offerings. Handloading will involve a variety of reloading components used in, possibly unwise ways, never dreamed of by their manufacturers. The final report will be on trying to collect a deer humanely with the best handload developed by the time the deer shows up.
The problem with almost all of the rifled slug guns seen in the hunting field is too much power. Since twelve is the most popular gauge for shotguns, hunters and manufacturer alike have jumped to the conclusion that twelve is a reasonable gauge for a rifled slug gun. This is strange since a rifled slug gun is a rifle and no one in their right mind thinks that .73 is the right caliber for a deer rifle in states where real rifles are allowed. It is true that shotguns are designed for much lower pressures than modern rifles and thus require a bigger bore to transfer enough energy to the bullet to humanly kill a deer. Thus bore sizes somewhat bigger than conventional rifles are called for, but .73 caliber?
The question should be how big is big enough, not what is the common gauge of American shotguns. Bigger isn’t always better and size and power comes with disadvantages as owners of he-man sized SUVs and pick up trucks are slowly learning in this age of two dollar plus gas.
How much power is possible with a .73 caliber rifle loaded to shotshell pressures? A popular factory load by Remington for the twelve gauge slug gun launches an ounce and a quarter (547 grain) slug at 1550 ft. /sec., generating about 3,000 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle. Compare this to the similar big bullet, low velocity, load of a .45-70 shooting a 405 grain bullet at 1,330 ft. /sec.; a load Elmer Keith has assured us is just right for large ill tempered bears even if it has to plow through several dozen board feet of standing timber to reach the bear. This ordinary Remington slug load generates almost twice the 1,590 foot pounds claimed for the 45- 70. These numbers should arouse suspicion that there may be some noticeable recoil involved here.
To examine recoil more directly we can calculate the foot pounds of free recoil energy using the formula found on page 467 of the Lyman 47th Reloading Handbook and elsewhere. Using this approach, we find that the load mentioned above fired in an eight pound Remington 870 rifled slug gun delivers 46 foot pounds of free recoil energy. This compares to the 43 foot pounds available for enjoyment while shooting 300 grain factory 375 magnum loads in a nine pound Ruger Tropical rifle. Some of us wimps would call this serious recoil.
For a truly enlightening experience, one could fire that Remington shell in the five and a quarter pound NEF Tracker II slug gun carried by some folks. The load above fired in this light, handy gun produces 70 foot pounds of free recoil energy. This exceeds the 63 foot pounds generated when firing a 510 grain factory load from a nine pound 458 Winchester magnum and should make you forget that your feet have frozen while waiting for the deer to come into view.
Even in an eight pound gun, twelve gauge slug loads have punishing recoil. While it’s true that one seldom notices recoil while shooting at game, painful recoil makes practice less likely to happen, and may result in the rifle not being properly zeroed. On several occasions I have heard hunters say they fired a shot or two and the zero seemed to be close enough. Stopping a practice session to tend to the nose bleed is a natural reaction.
Not only are practice sessions and zeroing likely to be short changed, many hunters using twelve gauge slug guns don’t have a clue how accurate or inaccurate their gun and ammunition are because it hurts too much to fire enough shots to find out.
This isn’t an idle question. As I found out in my accuracy testing, some slug loads on the market won’t reliably hit a deer’s vital zone at normal woods ranges even if properly zeroed and fired.
Perhaps the worst disadvantage of an overly powerful gun is that it takes a very disciplined (or very numb) shooter to absorb the painful recoil and not develop a flinch. A fair percentage of hunters might be surprised to see that their eyes are closed when the gun goes off, not good for precision shot placement.
After looking at the energy numbers for twelve gauge slug loads and before buying a rifled slug gun, I developed an interest in the twenty gauge and even noticed how big a .410 shell looked compared to many rifle cartridges. One of Harry Callahan’s quotes is that "a man’s got to know his limitations” and I know that mine are somewhere considerably south of .375 H & H Magnum recoil levels.
The twenty gauge would clearly produce less punishing recoil and so should be easier to shoot well. But is it enough gun to humanely kill a deer at the woods ranges I expected to encounter them? The diameter of the bullet would be somewhere between 0.43” (.44 pistol bullet in a sabot) and 0.632” (the groove diameter of a twenty gauge rifled barrel.) so bullet expansion shouldn’t be necessary to make a substantial hole, but what about velocity?
I looked at the specifications for factory loads and found that some twenty gauge slug loads produce muzzle velocities of up to 1,900 ft. /sec. and energies of over 2,100 foot pounds. This is more than twenty five percent above the muzzle energy of the 405 grain .45-70 load. Given the known effectiveness of the .45-70, these twenty gauge loads should kill humanly out to maybe 100 yards if they could be made to shoot accurately enough. One hundred yards would cover almost all the chances I expected to get in the Indiana woods.
With this assurance that the twenty should provide enough power to humanely kill a deer I ordered an NEF Ultra Slug Hunter from my corner gun shop. The gun cost less than $200. I am only five foot six so I ordered the Youth Model with the 12.5” pull. If I was going to be seen in the woods with a gauge that would bring my manhood into question why not go for it and get a kid’s rifle that fits.
The Ultra Slug Hunter is a break open single shot with a heavy 22 inch barrel, muzzle diameter is 0.98 inch. The rifling twist is one turn in thirty inches. Total length of the gun is less than 36 inches, an inch shorter than the popular Marlin Guide gun. It comes with a Weaver type base, a nylon sling, and a ventilated recoil pad on what looks like a sycamore stock. Mine even has figure in the butt stock that would be called fiddleback if it were walnut. I mounted a BSA 1.5-4.5X scope which brought the weight to an even eight pounds, making a very satisfactory handling outfit.
The next installment will report on the accuracy of the various factory slug loads In the NEF rifle. The accuracy of the different factory loads fired in the NEF rifle ranged from better than some deer rifles to truly horrible. The accuracy and power of the best of these factory loads provides a benchmark I hope to duplicate or exceed with my cast bullet handloads.
No, I haven’t yet sniffed enough lead fumes to try competing with a sixty three caliber match rifle. Neither am I contemplating slaying six ton elephants with one mighty blast from my nineteenth century double rifle. Instead, this series of articles will report on a set of experiments that are somewhat parallel to my quest for the ideal cast bullet match caliber. I hope to demonstrate that yet another group of misguided shooters are using a caliber that is far bigger than ideal, causing poor performance as well as minor concussions and miscellaneous contusions and abrasions to various body parts.
I refer to the legions of deer hunters who hunt in states that require deer hunting be done with bows and arrows, muzzleloaders, pistols, shotguns, catapults, pointed sticks, or other types of equipment inferior to the rifle. Many of these misguided souls are running about in the woods unsupervised with a weapon that is generally inaccurate, costs more than an English double rifle to feed and inflicts excruciating, flinch inducing, pain when fired from any steady position required for accurate shot placement - the ubiquitous twelve gauge slug gun.
In smooth bore form this implement is so inaccurate that further discussion is unseemly for an audience of riflemen as sophisticated as the membership of the Cast Bullet Association. However, many deer hunters have equipped themselves with the bastard device of a rifled shotgun, an oxymoron if there ever was one. These rifled shotguns can be made to shoot accurately enough for deer hunting at normal woods ranges.
This strange hybrid gun should make a fairly satisfactory hunting arm if of a reasonable caliber to properly to match the intended game. I plan to report on a series of experiments designed to show that that the right size for such a weapon is the common twenty gauge, the gun for women and children. Since a twenty gauge rifled slug gun is really a .63 caliber rifle. I decided to give it a proper rifle name. I thought the .635 Nitro Express had a nice ring reminiscent of the Dark Continent.
Since Glenn is probably properly skeptical of how much of such a strange topic his readers can stand at one sitting, the report will involve more than one article. In addition to this introductory article, I plan short reports on shooting factory loads to determine state of the art reached by the manufactures of slug loads; and on handloading a variety of cast bullets in an effort to match or exceed the performance of the factory offerings. Handloading will involve a variety of reloading components used in, possibly unwise ways, never dreamed of by their manufacturers. The final report will be on trying to collect a deer humanely with the best handload developed by the time the deer shows up.
The problem with almost all of the rifled slug guns seen in the hunting field is too much power. Since twelve is the most popular gauge for shotguns, hunters and manufacturer alike have jumped to the conclusion that twelve is a reasonable gauge for a rifled slug gun. This is strange since a rifled slug gun is a rifle and no one in their right mind thinks that .73 is the right caliber for a deer rifle in states where real rifles are allowed. It is true that shotguns are designed for much lower pressures than modern rifles and thus require a bigger bore to transfer enough energy to the bullet to humanly kill a deer. Thus bore sizes somewhat bigger than conventional rifles are called for, but .73 caliber?
The question should be how big is big enough, not what is the common gauge of American shotguns. Bigger isn’t always better and size and power comes with disadvantages as owners of he-man sized SUVs and pick up trucks are slowly learning in this age of two dollar plus gas.
How much power is possible with a .73 caliber rifle loaded to shotshell pressures? A popular factory load by Remington for the twelve gauge slug gun launches an ounce and a quarter (547 grain) slug at 1550 ft. /sec., generating about 3,000 foot pounds of energy at the muzzle. Compare this to the similar big bullet, low velocity, load of a .45-70 shooting a 405 grain bullet at 1,330 ft. /sec.; a load Elmer Keith has assured us is just right for large ill tempered bears even if it has to plow through several dozen board feet of standing timber to reach the bear. This ordinary Remington slug load generates almost twice the 1,590 foot pounds claimed for the 45- 70. These numbers should arouse suspicion that there may be some noticeable recoil involved here.
To examine recoil more directly we can calculate the foot pounds of free recoil energy using the formula found on page 467 of the Lyman 47th Reloading Handbook and elsewhere. Using this approach, we find that the load mentioned above fired in an eight pound Remington 870 rifled slug gun delivers 46 foot pounds of free recoil energy. This compares to the 43 foot pounds available for enjoyment while shooting 300 grain factory 375 magnum loads in a nine pound Ruger Tropical rifle. Some of us wimps would call this serious recoil.
For a truly enlightening experience, one could fire that Remington shell in the five and a quarter pound NEF Tracker II slug gun carried by some folks. The load above fired in this light, handy gun produces 70 foot pounds of free recoil energy. This exceeds the 63 foot pounds generated when firing a 510 grain factory load from a nine pound 458 Winchester magnum and should make you forget that your feet have frozen while waiting for the deer to come into view.
Even in an eight pound gun, twelve gauge slug loads have punishing recoil. While it’s true that one seldom notices recoil while shooting at game, painful recoil makes practice less likely to happen, and may result in the rifle not being properly zeroed. On several occasions I have heard hunters say they fired a shot or two and the zero seemed to be close enough. Stopping a practice session to tend to the nose bleed is a natural reaction.
Not only are practice sessions and zeroing likely to be short changed, many hunters using twelve gauge slug guns don’t have a clue how accurate or inaccurate their gun and ammunition are because it hurts too much to fire enough shots to find out.
This isn’t an idle question. As I found out in my accuracy testing, some slug loads on the market won’t reliably hit a deer’s vital zone at normal woods ranges even if properly zeroed and fired.
Perhaps the worst disadvantage of an overly powerful gun is that it takes a very disciplined (or very numb) shooter to absorb the painful recoil and not develop a flinch. A fair percentage of hunters might be surprised to see that their eyes are closed when the gun goes off, not good for precision shot placement.
After looking at the energy numbers for twelve gauge slug loads and before buying a rifled slug gun, I developed an interest in the twenty gauge and even noticed how big a .410 shell looked compared to many rifle cartridges. One of Harry Callahan’s quotes is that "a man’s got to know his limitations” and I know that mine are somewhere considerably south of .375 H & H Magnum recoil levels.
The twenty gauge would clearly produce less punishing recoil and so should be easier to shoot well. But is it enough gun to humanely kill a deer at the woods ranges I expected to encounter them? The diameter of the bullet would be somewhere between 0.43” (.44 pistol bullet in a sabot) and 0.632” (the groove diameter of a twenty gauge rifled barrel.) so bullet expansion shouldn’t be necessary to make a substantial hole, but what about velocity?
I looked at the specifications for factory loads and found that some twenty gauge slug loads produce muzzle velocities of up to 1,900 ft. /sec. and energies of over 2,100 foot pounds. This is more than twenty five percent above the muzzle energy of the 405 grain .45-70 load. Given the known effectiveness of the .45-70, these twenty gauge loads should kill humanly out to maybe 100 yards if they could be made to shoot accurately enough. One hundred yards would cover almost all the chances I expected to get in the Indiana woods.
With this assurance that the twenty should provide enough power to humanely kill a deer I ordered an NEF Ultra Slug Hunter from my corner gun shop. The gun cost less than $200. I am only five foot six so I ordered the Youth Model with the 12.5” pull. If I was going to be seen in the woods with a gauge that would bring my manhood into question why not go for it and get a kid’s rifle that fits.
The Ultra Slug Hunter is a break open single shot with a heavy 22 inch barrel, muzzle diameter is 0.98 inch. The rifling twist is one turn in thirty inches. Total length of the gun is less than 36 inches, an inch shorter than the popular Marlin Guide gun. It comes with a Weaver type base, a nylon sling, and a ventilated recoil pad on what looks like a sycamore stock. Mine even has figure in the butt stock that would be called fiddleback if it were walnut. I mounted a BSA 1.5-4.5X scope which brought the weight to an even eight pounds, making a very satisfactory handling outfit.
The next installment will report on the accuracy of the various factory slug loads In the NEF rifle. The accuracy of the different factory loads fired in the NEF rifle ranged from better than some deer rifles to truly horrible. The accuracy and power of the best of these factory loads provides a benchmark I hope to duplicate or exceed with my cast bullet handloads.