First deer hunting with an air gun I've hunted with strictly a muzzleloader for years and years and retrieve 99.9% of my gear that I shoot I'm only getting 50% with my Texan definitely unacceptable The first two deer I shot with a 200 grain hollowpoint recovered one lost the other so I went to a larger bullet a 250 grain hollowpoint same results recovered one lost the other i'm positive I'm not trying to stretch the range too much as all four shots were between 60 and 75 yards two of which drop in their tracks i've yet to have a pass-through shot on any of them so you have a single hole in the deer is filling up DOS not a very good blood trail The general consensus is to go larger but not everyone some people are saying that's plenty of lead looking for more input thanks
Is it the gun or the bullets??
- Thread starter Texan
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When you consider a big bore airgun for hunting, you need to think in terms of power that are on par with a standard revolver load in a 4" barrel. That is, you are dealing with .38 special, or maybe up to .44 special power levels.
The Hollow points, in my opinion, are not what you want to use. Hollow points are designed to expand and thus reduce penetration. With the relatively low velocity and low sectional density, you really should consider a Kieth style semi wadcutter (after Elmer Kieth one of the pioneers of handgun big game hunting.)
The blunt nose of the semi wadcutter will give you substantially more penetration and still have quite a bit of tissue disruption.
The Hollow points, in my opinion, are not what you want to use. Hollow points are designed to expand and thus reduce penetration. With the relatively low velocity and low sectional density, you really should consider a Kieth style semi wadcutter (after Elmer Kieth one of the pioneers of handgun big game hunting.)
The blunt nose of the semi wadcutter will give you substantially more penetration and still have quite a bit of tissue disruption.
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How do you know you didn't get a pass thru on the deer you lost?
I'm convinced the deadliest airgun lung kills are the ones with double lung penetration but no pass thru.
I'm convinced the deadliest airgun lung kills are the ones with double lung penetration but no pass thru.
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Well I hunt very open fields & I watched them for over 200 yrds leaving the field and a pass through(2 holes) always leaves more blood
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That may not be a correction assumption. I regularly get pass thrus with arrows with no blood trail. Montec broadheads are very bad about causing pass thrus with the body cavity filling up.
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Two hundred yards with a good hit? That sounds unlikely. Any hard hit deer will lay down as soon as they make it to cover if you just leave them alone long enough for them to actually do that. Any deer, no matter how hard hit, will continue to try to run as long as it believes it has not evaded the threat. Surely you know that and you are not pressing them immediately after the shot?
Blood trail is important yes, but general tracking skills are important also. Tracking in West Texas can be difficult but you should be able to read other sign than just blood trail. And if you are tracking then you should give them time to lie down before you start out on that track.
What caliber are you shooting? What velocities are you getting? If you were getting pass through with your ML rifles and not with this air rifle, maybe you are working with substantially less energy? If that is the case you might need to adjust your shooting range/hunting style?
No intent to insult, just good advice, you probably have heard before anyway...
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Don't want to hijack the thread but why would no pass through be "more deadly" than a pass through. Suppose both bullets traveled the same path and one stopped just under the skin on the off side, why would it be more deadly? I don't think it would be more deadly. Which is more deadly one sucking chest wound or two sucking chest wounds? With the pass through you get two sucking chest wounds. Anyway that's likely off topic and I probably should have left it alone.
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I think its on topic.
A pellet or bullet that gets caught in the animal deposits all of its energy into the animal. The bullet that passes thru deposits very little energy unless there is expansion of the round as it passes thru. Although the energy of airguns doesn't compare to the energy of a firearm for the purposes of hydrostatic shock, air guns still often generate more energy than the weight of the animal. A Texan is depositing up to two times more energy that the weight of the whitetail. Make the deer's body catch more energy than it weighs and you're going to do more damage to it than a hole that passes thru but deposits little energy. The way you accomplish making the deer take the energy is to either have the round not pass thru at all (if its a non-expanding round) or have the round pass thru only after massive expansion. I suspect that if shot placement isn't the problem the original poster is having, his problem is complete pass thrus with little or no expansion. Some airgun bullets can be made too rigid as to not expand properly. I'd want my hollowpoint airgun bullets to be soft and flimsy.
I've killed many thin-skinned varmints such as coyotes, turkeys, coons, and possums, with high powered firearms. The consistent pattern is that deer-killer type rounds (which are made to expand after some penetration into a deer's vitals) usually punch straight thru the smaller varmints and birds at close range without expanding, causing them to run off. If you stretch the range out a bit so that the bullet loses velocity, the bullet has a tendency to expand correctly, dump its energy, and frag the animal where it stands without passing thru. In Florida its legal to hunt turkeys with rifles. I have a .204 that is a great 100 yard turkey gun but a terrible 20 yard turkey gun. At 100 yards, the fragmenting rounds will explode in the turkey's lungs and kill it. No pass thru. At 20 yards, that same round punches thru with no expansion and often requires a half-a-day tracking job in which you only find your turkey when you accidentally step on it. The .20 hole punched thru the turkey ought to kill it fast and clean. It doesn't. And you would think the round that won't expand at 20 yards shouldn't perform differently at 100. But it does.
Specifically as it relates to airguns, I bought a .357 Evanix a while ago that turned out to be too much gun for coons. It would consistently shoot thru them, causing them to run off and dying where I often couldn't find them. The only rounds I had access to that it would shoot consistently were non-expanding JSBs so that's what I hunted with. The .357 performed exactly the same on coons in terms of killing power as my .270 deer rifle. My .25 Marauder kills coons cleaner behind the shoulder than either my .357 Evanix or my .270 firearm. Yet I could shoot the same JSB into a larger animal (100lb+) that it wouldn't pass thru and it would the animal clean, even though the pellet didn't expand. It seems like airguns follow the same patterns as firearms in spite of the significantly lower energies air guns generate. Deposit the energy, kill the animal closer to where you shot it. Punch thru the animal and fail to deposit the energy, expect the animal to die further away.
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He wasn't shooting at 200 yards he was able to watch the deer run away at over 200 yards please read the post before attacking he stated he is shooting a Texan so I am going to assume it's a 45. That being said Texan I do hope your not hunting in Texas as deer hunting with an air rifle in Texas is not legal.
Texan you didn't say what type of shot your taking but I glean from your thread you are shooting a boiler plate shot
I would agree that a 200 to 250 grain wad cutter might be your best bet for a side rib double lung it allows for a rib strike and will tumble once in the cavity. I would suggest aim for heart shot as a air rifle will not give you a hydroshock soft tissue damage like a muzzleloader will Your other choice is a spine or head shot
Keep in mind 45 cal rounds fly like bricks they hit hard but fall off fast.
He wasn't shooting at 200 yards he was able to watch the deer run away at over 200 yards please read the post before attacking he stated he is shooting a Texan so I am going to assume it's a 45. That being said Texan I do hope your not hunting in Texas as deer hunting with an air rifle in Texas is not legal.
Texan you didn't say what type of shot your taking but I glean from your thread you are shooting a boiler plate shot
I would agree that a 200 to 250 grain wad cutter might be your best bet for a side rib double lung it allows for a rib strike and will tumble once in the cavity. I would suggest aim for heart shot as a air rifle will not give you a hydroshock soft tissue damage like a muzzleloader will Your other choice is a spine or head shot
Keep in mind 45 cal rounds fly like bricks they hit hard but fall off fast.
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You and I are on the same page as far as the pass-through in the no pass-through issue I'm sure the deer that went to hundred yards and I lost there was no pass-through you don't blow through a deer have a go to hundred yards and not find a good blood trail it just doesn't happen one whole the deer filling up that is likely the case and no I didn't push the deer I let them lay for at least an hour before I begin tracking and of the two I recovered I only blew through one of those that was a piece of the neck shot that I blew through the other was a good size 8. I shot it quartering to me and I shot it at the base of the neck also dropping it in its tracks over Lotta people say I got to go to a bigger bullet I'm just hesitant of never been a big bullet fan and I really think this 250 grains is sufficient yes it is a 45 caliber Texan and I'm only shooting out to 75 yards which I'm sure the gun will kill way beyond that as in target practice I'm shooting through two 2 x 4's crew together at 100 yards with the 250 grain bullet
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I'm getting about 868 70 out of the 200s in 830s are the 250s I think I'm going to go away from the hollow points and try to something solid to get more penetration because like you said and that's the same way I've always felt a double pass-through is always better than a single whole single hole but has to fill up to that point to come back out a pass-through he can go through both sides and you get to sucking chest wound is not one as someone mentioned and I've change my hunting strategy dramatically using his air gun versus using my muzzleloader I'm Hutton much closer and being just that much more conscience of shot placement
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Thanks for your patience with me and MERRY CHRISTMAS brother. You know those velocities are a bit less than you would expect with ML rifles. You might be delivering less energy to the target than you are used to doing with your BP rifles. That 250 gr bullet is only leaving the muzzle with 382 FPE and the 200 gr bullet is only 334 FPE. I can't find my Lyman BP manual but it seems to me like you would be shooting over a thousand with those weights in something like a .45 cal BP rifle. Also (and this is a BIG one) your BC on a .45 cal bullet at 250 grains isn't very high. You could be loosing a lot of velocity down range. Have you looked at the sabot bullets? You might get a higher BC bullet in a smaller caliber at the same weight. You aren't going to get expansion, even of a hollow point with those kinds of velocities, even with dead soft lead. I'm going with not enough energy for the shots you are taking and again that is not intended to offend. Those big bore AGs just do not deliver the kinds of energies that a BP rifle can deliver. I was a round ball shooter in my BP days so we can have a quick look at that. A .45 cal round ball weighs ~125gr with a 70gr charge under it it will leave the muzzle somewhere around 1400 fps that is going to yield 544 fpe a 250 gr bullet on the same charge will likely deliver around 750 FPE at around 1150 fps. So *loads* more than a big bore AG. It would be arriving at the target with more energy than your air rifle has at the muzzle. That would explain the failure to get pass through and the problem with having them go down and stay down. I hope this helps and again Merry Christmas brother. Good hunting.
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Yeah it's Christmas so...
I didn't say he shot at 200 yards. I quoted the text to which I was responding, why would I do that and not read it?
My post makes it immediately clear that "any hard hit deer will lay down as soon as they reach cover" so my read on what I wrote seems to indicate that I understood his point and was addressing his point.
Your use of the word "attacking" suggests that you failed to read my response to him. Clearly his response to me makes it very clear that he DID read my response and he APPARENTLY did not think I was "attacking" him... Maybe that is because I TRIED to make it clear that that was the least of my intention.
Mama always said, "When you point your finger there are always three pointing back at you."
Anyway, Merry Christmas...
Regarding AG laws in Texas, I think all bets may be off on private hunting preserves when hunting exotics but (and this is a big but) I haven't hunted in Texas in more than 20 years so... that is just guess and doesn't even qualify as an opinion.
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I edited out a lot of your post and don't want you to think it was because I did not read it. I did read it.
I agree with your observations. Different bullets, as you have observed, do different things in different critters and at different velocities. No doubt about that.
If I may rephrase what you have said here, I think you will agree with it. It is true that a bullet which does not pass through an animal leaves all it's energy in that animal but a BB will not kill an elephant. So something else is also operating here and you pointed it out. A bullet designed for an elephant will likely do a much poorer job of killing a racoon or a deer than it will of killing said elephant and for exactly the reason you state. It passes through having done little but make a nice round hole, it may well have delivered more energy in passing through than something smaller would have delivered.
Your argument isn't for a shoot through vice no shoot through. You are saying that you have to use the right bullet for the game you are hunting. I am saying that a pass through is preferable because it opens two holes which allow air to enter the body cavity (causing lung collapse) and blood to exit the body cavity (leaving a better blood trail).
Anyway, Merry Christmas!!!
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