Florida Wildlife Commission Approves PCPs for Deer and Turkey!

My Flex can do more than 110fpe as is. If I drop in my Cothran valve, I could do a lot more. 

Which ones are doing under 48fpe? Any PCPs? We did purposely restrict deer and turkeys to PCPs so as to not allow the .30 Springers for deer. 

All the .30 PCPs I’m aware of start around 74fpe and go up from there. That’s shooting JSB 44s and Polymags in the middle 800s. When I’ve turned my Flex down to that level, I’ve been able to shoot clean thru 3/4” pine and clean thru gallon jugs filled with water both at 100 yards and with Polymags. I have no doubt a 74fpe .30 will double lung a whitetail at 50 yards or less. 

Now the .30 springers, on the other hand, may very well be sub 50fpe guns. Or maybe a short barreled pistol PCP. No offense to springer hunters. I know good and well a springer in the right hands can take whatever, but we felt that the best line to draw was between PCPs and all other types of airguns. As you stated, we want to err on the side of accessibility. We have some of the most permissive hunting laws in the country and we expect hunters to do their homework and use common sense. There’s no reason to ban capable weapons that our sister state has been having good results with. If a .30 pops up that isn’t up to snuff, its up to the hunter not to use it, just like its up to our hunters to not be using .17 centerfirs to lung shoot deer (while still giving them the freedom to brain shoot one with the same gun). 

Anything is debatable. The same argument against X or Y caliber as a mimimum is the same argument powderburner only shooters put against all big game airgun hunting. They would point out how much less energy a .45 airgun has compared to a .45 muzzleloader and you would respond that its not the energy that matters, its the hole in the lungs. You would point them to videos and accounts of people cleanly using .45s to kill deer and they would dismiss the evidence as cherry picked. Then you’re at an impass.

We allow bowhunting in virtually all jurisdictions that allow deer hunting. Its harder to but an arrow in the vitals than it is a pellet. Yet we still let hunters try it. Its on them to make sure they do it ethically. How many bow hunters lose deer every year? Probably thousands upon tens of thousands. Mostly due to bad shots. Sometimes due to the deers’ lungs clotting and reinflating on OK shots. I would bet that it will be easier for many hunters to make clean shots with .30 pellet guns than with bows at the same range, and I’d take a clean shot with a .30 to the lungs over a mediocre shot with a bow any day for odds of recovering the deer. 

In my mind, the real lowest threshold for deer hunting is .25. Some guns can do it, others can’t. I’d plug a Florida sized whitetail in the lungs all day long out to 50 yards with a jacked-up .25 Condor or Sumatra shooting a swaged HP. I would NOT attempt it with a factory .25 Marauder. .25 just isn’t quite big enough to stop clotting without major expansion of the projectile and even then the entry hole will always just be .25. The starting point for a .30 is in the top power spectrum for a magnum powered .25 and the smallest entry hole possible is already the size of an expanded .25 bullet. As it is, the .30 bullets I cast for my Flex expand to over .50 on impact. 

As far as the merits of videoing such kills, that’s the only way people will see it in action without trying it themselves. 

Florida has no seasonal bag limits at this time. We’re allowed to kill two a day every day of the season. I live on a blueberry farm that the deer treat like a giant food plot. I have deer like some people have rats in their barn. This year I barely hunted because I still had venison from last year. This coming season I’ll need to kill a bunch anyhow to restock my freezers. If I video enough of it, it will be clear that clean kills are the norm not the exception. 

And I understand where you’re coming from. We can either err on the side of restriction or permissiveness, with each having benefits and drawbacks. Its our way here to try to let hunters be as free as possible within reason. 

I’m confident .30 PCPs can do the trick so long as the hunter puts it in the lungs within a reasonable range. The lungs are the key. Not the shoulder, not the heart, not even the brain. The lungs. A .30 hole ripped thru them will put the animal down within a reasonable distance. 

"bowwild"Those who argue for the simple "hole in the lungs" is all that is the goal need to remember, without enough damage or hydrostatic shock, the animal will leave the spot where it was shot, usually very fast and quite far.

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The lungs can't function if they're punctured with big enough holes. The hole is the "damage." Lungs that are punctured enough collapse in a few seconds and the animal suffocates. What stops that from happening is when the holes are too small, allowing for them to clot. If they clot, the lungs can reinflate. Or, if the shot punctures one lung but not the other, the animal can live on with one lung. This is what most often happens with bad bow shots. One lung will get clipped but the other one will not. 

My experience has been that larger game animals take the pellet to the lungs, then after taking a few steps, they stand around and stare until they collapse. Or they run a short distance, then stop and collapse within view distance of the shot.

Larger animals seem to run further when they're shot with bullets over pellets. That's been my experience anyhow, and what videos I've seen also seems to bare that out. I believe the difference is that bullets hurt a lot more than pellets because an expanding airgun bullet is ripping as it goes, while the pellet is just making a clean puncture. That's the only way I can explain the way they often stand and stare after reacting to the initial hit. It has to be something other than just the quietness of the gun because bows are quiet and I have yet to see a mortally hit deer stand and stare after taking a bow shot. Something must feel different to the animal when the pellet goes thru than how a bullet or arrow feels. Mind you this is larger animals I'm talking about. Animals that weigh more than the FPE of the projectile. When it comes to small animals, they often run with pellets just as they do with bullets.