Hot Cartridges

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Gimpy

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I was wondering what was one most Gruesome cartridge I saw my buddy shoot a chuck with a 243wssm with 55gr ballistic tip at 4100fps it exploded. I wanted one right away anyone know which cartridge would create explosive results on small varmints or which loads who be recommended.

Currently looking at 25-06 75gr 223wssm with 30gr reloads.

Thanks.

-Gimpy
 
Posts like this make me believe that our message is not being fully understood.

If your looking for distruction about any fast moving bullet with a thin jacket will dump enough energy into a small animal to create a big mess. But about the only time you would actually want that sort of thing to happen is whenyou are hunting varmint type pest animals. There can be little doubt that hitting an animal in the way that you describe as "Gruesome" is also fairly painless. We are not trying to bring pain to the animals that we hunt like this. However generally the "Gruesome" bullet should be avoided.

As for the M80, I understand that it was probably a joke, but not funny, not funny at all.
 
Rest assured, I did not intend it to be funny.

I am new to this board and there are a lot of good, decent hunters that have a wealth of information to share as well as just a good place to visit.

I also see a lot of people, which as you said are not getting the message. Posting graphic pictures of destroyed game and talking about really making a mess of an animal makes me sick. I have killed untold numbers of jack rabbits with pretty much every caliber imaginable, everyone here knows what that looks like. I think we are missing something if we go on the world wide web and talk about it. Our goal as hunters is to find a good load that does a good job of cleanly killing game at whatever range we are shooting, NOT finding a load to see how much damage it will do.

I also am pretty tired of all the posts about the terrible Coyote. After all it eats up all the "Good Game" kills stock, transmitts diseases and is probably soley responsible for the war we are now fighting in Iraq. Bull, the coyote is just another animal in the ecosystem, yes it can cause damage and needs to be controlled just as deer do, but it does not give people the right to kill every animal they see. If you call someone on it, you always get the same response, I am doing ADC work or the coyotes are killing all the game, if you need to tell yourself that to sleep at night after killing a wet bitch in the summer so that the pups can die in the den of dehydration, rock on. If the coyotes are being a problem to a stock owner then it is a regretable thing that has to be done, but you won't find me on the web bragging about it.

I am a dedicated varmint hunter and have been for a good number of years, and these are my beliefs. I did not write this post to offend, just maybe to make someone think. I did write the post about the cat to offend, and was out of line, and apologize. I think we might need to think about what our goal as varmint hunter is and insure that there is a future to this sport. We don't need the state to institute seasons or make any other changes we are fully able to police our selves. Good hunting, Chris.
 
Chris - Your writing style is very familier, but I digress .....

Occasionally in the past year or so we've had a disturbing number of "I want to blow critters up" & "Whats the best bullet to destroy an animal" type posts. While some of the questions were actually lagitimate, others left a very poor taste in my mouth.

As far as hunting coyotes is concerned. Well this is a coyote hunting board and hunting the coyote is legal in most states 12 months out of the year. While the thought of leaving pups to die in the den disturbs me to no end it is difficult to condemn those that persue coyotes att year as long as they are doing it in a legal fashion. I view the coyote as an honorable adversary, others view them as a big time pest that needs to be controled 24/7. I can sort of understand this logic if I view it from another angle. If you have a rat problem in your house and use a trap to remove it do you worry about the young rats in the den/nest? Few of us do, rats are ugly, they spread disease, they don't look like the family dog, who cares about the lowly rat. But is it less painful for rat babies to starve to death than it is for a coyote pup to starve? I throw that out for something to ponder on ..........
 
---NOT finding a load to see how much damage it will do.---

Heck, I have whole, expensive, custom rifles built, and tune loads for them, just exactly for that reason. I like seeing chucks fly.

- DAA
 
I bet a groundhog or chuck or rabbit or whatever that is getting hit with an extremely fast bullet, that "explodes" them, feels a lot less pain than lets say, a 200lb buck shot with an arrow. Just throwing that one out there for you to think about.

TONY
 
Very Well said CW! I share the same beliefs! The ethical hunter that makes clean kills is a lot more decent looking to the non-hunting community than ones that strives to blow a ground hog into as many pieces as possible. I am also very big on keeping the pelt and only shooting prime animals, not spring or summer dogs with young.

As for the comment about bow hunting being more painful than guns, this is very true, but the bow hunter gives his pray a MUCH greater chance, bows have a way shorter effective range, and can't be shot rapidly. And any ethical bow hunter would only make a shot that he is sure is a quick clean kill for the animal, so the odds are usaully stacked in the animals favour. This greater chance of surivival for the herd is worth the 10 seconds extra of pain an arrow shot animal feels as opposed to one shot with a bullet.

I have nothing against making quick kills, but a .17Rem will kill P-dogs just as dead and as quickly as 30-06. There is no need for using excesivly large bullets on game, this is only done by those who strive for carnage, which is a very sick and sad thing!

Sorry if I've offended anyone but this is how I feel and it is the same way most of the non-hunting community that gets to choose weather or not hunting will still be around in 50 years from now feels! So think before you speak you could turn a normal person who doesn't hunt, but isn't against it into the new leader of PETA.
 
It doesn't hurt my feelings any more, coming from you guys, than it does coming from PETA. Which is to say, it doesn't hurt my feelings at all. To each his own. I do like seeing vermin fly, and do strive to make them die in as spectacular a fashion as possible. I'm talking vermin here, rats, and the like, not "game". And, just as an aside, with the smaller colony varmints like p-dogs, it's not the size that matters as much as the velocity and bullet construction - it doesn't take a big cannon to get big air out of them. I use a .22BR, more than any other round, but you can bet your bippy the load was tuned first for accuracy, and second for extreme terminal effect!

But, you guys believe what you want. What you think or believe is your business, not mine. If you think I'm "sick and sad", that's your right, and I don't hold it against you. But, I don't give it any consideration, either. What you see as sick, I see as clean, wholesome fun for the whole family. And that's my business, not yours.

Hope all of you, and your families, have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

- DAA
 
Sorry DAA, your right we are all intitled to our own opinions. I appologize, its just that I have some friends who are also new to hunting that got turned away from PM because of some posts like this. I was out of line to call you "sad and sick" and I am truely sorry for it. We shouldn't fight amongst ourselves, this is exactly what the anti's want.

Happy Thanksgiving to you too. (I already had mine in October).
 
Michael,
I am glad my style is familiar it means my wife is wrong and I have some style /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

On the serious side, I know that this is a coyote board thats whay I am here, I hunt coyotes with a passion. I just get really tired of all the talk of the villanous coyote. I am sure that there are a lot of honest people, but I have hard time believing all the people that say they are killing coyotes because of problems with live stock, they are full of it. Most of the coyotes I hunt, I am quite sure, have never seen a cow. I hunt coyotes because I enjoy hunting coyotes which is a good enough reason. I don't have any problem with people hunting anything, as long as their sole purpose is not some bloodlust to watch something explode, or to leave as many rotting carcass's in the field as possible. As far as game predation goes I am sure domestic dogs and cats account for a whole bunch of game animals, not feral pets,but fido and fifi.

Your analogy with rats is a good one and I agree totally. Coyotes that are killing stock have to be killed no matter the time of the year or how its accomplished, its regretable but has to be done. Killing rats is not hunting and neither is killing stock killing coyotes.

DAA, instead of shooting animals, why don't you shoot beer cans full of water, they explode real nice, if that is all your after. But its not all, you like the blood and guts, more power to you, but don't tell the world or post pictures about it, because there are a lot of people, even hunters, that might think you have a screw loose.

T, I think that there is no doubt that those animals feel no pain, hell they are vaporized. I have a .25 caliber daystate air rifle that my hunting buddy has nicknamed cyclops because of the boring regularity of it shooting rabbits eyes out. I can promise those rabbits feel no pain either, and the best part is I have rabbit dumplings for supper, not a milli seconds thrill of watching it explode through my scope. Elmer Keith once said use enough gun and I believe that, but I don't think it means shooting ground squirrels with a .338. Speaking of ground squirrels, I am going to Idaho this spring to shoot ground squirrels off of an rural airport and a golf course I am taking my CZ 452 22lr, my CZ 527 in 223, and my air rifle. and will use the correct tool for the particular application, my 223 is going to splatter them, I know, but if I have to shoot 2 or 3 hundred yards there is no way around it. I am going to enjoy myself, see some new country, get in some good shooting with friends and clean out some squirrels.
what I am not going to do is splatter something all over creation, take pictures, and come back and brag to people I don't even know about the damage my rifle does.

I have been long winded and will shut up and not say anything else about this matter. I don't think it will do any good or change anyone. Good hunting, Chris
 
Gimpy,
I was not aware that factory .243 WSSM rifles were out on the shelves to the public yet?? Does your friend have a custom rifle?? What action is it and who did the work for him??
 
Anyone get try the speer tnt 125gr in a 30-378 weatherby mag pushed to 4250fps? Btw its stainless a-bolt he ordered from our local gun store from the manager with the ffl licence.

-Gimpy
 
As a new member here I was at first hesitant to reply but then decided to throw my 2 cents in on this one.

In these times of political correctness we all seem to be under the impression that every word, written or spoken is going to be used as ammo against the hunting community, as well it may. But we all accomplish the same goal in this and all other aspects of hunting. We kill animals. Period.There's no catch and release in hunting. You can sugar coat it all you want but it's not a perfect world with every shot the perfect shot. I don't know of anyone that hasn't wished at one time or another that they could get a "do over" on a shot. I know I have.

As far as the "vivid" descriptions of kills people have made, it doesn't matter what one writes here or anywhere else. Heck, why should anyone bother with the text version of it when there are so many videos available for sale . Like they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words" so a video should be priceless. But the way I see it, what ever floats your boat. Who am I to judge. Just another hunter killing the prey I pursue with the tools I choose whether an air rifle, shotgun, or a shovel in the henhouse. Dead is dead and you can't sugar coat that fact.

The non hunting community? I don't think they cruise hunting sites looking for this stuff.They're not interested. That's left up to the extremists, and I don't care what kind of decent, clean kill you make and with what tool, you're still a killer. Period.

And as to the analogy of a painless gun kill as opposed to a painful death by arrow, I was curious as to how many bow kills either of the two posters have made. I've been bowhunting since the late 70's and have seen animals "walk" off after a good shot with no indication of anything, dead on their feet. Some are startled at the sound of the shot and may run off but not due to undue suffering. I have also witnessed poor gun shots where the animal suffered needlessly so I was very distressed to see the statements of "painful" bow kills. Of course, there are exceptions to both and we as hunters owe it to ourselves and our prey to make sure that any undue suffering is as little as possible. I have taught my kids the importance of one shot one kill and to pass if you have to. Good things come to those who wait.

We are all hunters, like it or not, with different opinions on what may be tasteful or not. Each to his or her own.
Can't we all get along? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Sorry if I rambled, insulted or offended anyone. Just my 2 cents.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Cro-mag
 
While I'm fairly new to posting here, I have been "lurking" on some of these boards for some time now. This type of debate on "ethics" comes up from time to time. I have come to the conclusion that we are to some extent trying to draw a line where none really exists in order to make ourselves appear more PC. We need to do what is right to make as quick and "clean" a kill as possible. If the animal dies instantly, what difference does it make how much "more dead" we make it? The bunny huggers are against killing animals in the first place, and against animals suffering from poor shots, improper bullet selection, etc in the second.
For those who advocate against trying to find the caliber/bullet that "does the most damage", exacly how many pieces is it acceptable to blow a prarie dog into? Is blowing it in half OK, but turning it into "red mist" is excessive? I think DAA's point is that for animals that we are not going to save the pelt or meat, a bullet that does the most damage is also the bullet that has less change of just wounding the animal with a marginal hit. So in this case, the bullet that does the most "damage" is actually also the most "humane" bullet. Do you really think it matters to the prarie dog, rock chuck, etc. if his parts are blown into a 10 foot radius instead of a 5 foot radius? I would not advocate using a 30-338 for prarie dogs simply because it is wasteful. It is wasteful of powder, more expesive bullets, wear on the rifle, a lot of unessecary recoil, etc. The fact that it makes a bigger poof out of the prarie dog than a .223 has nothing to do with it.
When I first started hunting, the fact that I was killing an animal bothered me a little. But as my experience grew, I came to realize that is part of the natural world. Not the Utopian nature that the Anti's and Disney movies portray. Ever seen a pack of wolve take down a deer, moose, buffalo? I've even seen film of a pack of wolves killing a coyote. Not pretty. The difference between shooting a varmint with a .223 vs. a .257 Whetherby mag. is only a diffence in perception on our part, not the varmints. In the millisecond between the bullet strike and him exploding, all he knows (maybe) is he's dead. Don't matter to him how many peices it is.
 
I think my posts have been misunderstood, I am a varmit hunter, I shoot frangible bullets at high speeds, I, along with everyone else that does this, know what it does to small, furry, woodland creatures. My problem is with fellow hunters that dwell on the terminal effects, and people that are specific about wanting a gun and or load that has the most splatter effect. Come on, 30-378 125gr nosler bt at 4000 plus, a 25-06 with a 75 grain v-max for chucks. I am starting to really regret the post about the cat, I think this guy really would enjoy it.

Some people have commented about being "PC" and we do what we do and damn the torpedos. I look at what I do on a varmint shoot kinda like sex, I do it as much as I can and really enjoy it. But I don't talk about details in open places or, lord forbid, post pictures, I am not ashamed about anything, just don't think I need to shout from a rooftop.

With that last statement I can hear the sniper's keyboards warming up /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

By all means lets continue what we do and enjoy doing it, but when one of our own starts drifting into the splatter crowd. I think they need a gentle, or maybe not so gentle rebuke. Good hunting, Chris
 
Chris is not trying to offend anyone guys, he's trying to help! Take his advice, he's right on this one. Now like I said earlier lets not fight, it does no good, to no one!
 
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