44mag

[Dogmann]

Where I hunt white tails- most of the shots are 75-100 yards. Will a 44mag-Scoped Contender witha 10inch or 14inch hunter barrel- have enough punch  with say Corbon HC or Garret HC to take a deer at that distance?

[Graybeard]

More than enough. But honestly you'd do better in my opinion with 240 XTPs. I've shot a bunch of deer with the .44 magnum in handguns and I prefer either the 240 XTP or the Nosler 240 JHP which reminds me of the older Hornady JHP before they became XTPs. In fact I'll be using the Hornady factory ammo with 240 XTP on an upcoming handgun deer hunt this fall. I usually use my own hand loads but the factory ammo is just as good, no better but just as good as my hand loads. I've killed a couple of bucks with my hand loads using the 240 XTP out around the 100 yard mark and a bunch closer up.

[Dogmann]

More than enough. But honestly you'd do better in my opinion with 240 XTPs. I've shot a bunch of deer with the .44 magnum in handguns and I prefer either the 240 XTP or the Nosler 240 JHP which reminds me of the older Hornady JHP before they became XTPs. In fact I'll be using the Hornady factory ammo with 240 XTP on an upcoming handgun deer hunt this fall. I usually use my own hand loads but the factory ammo is just as good, no better but just as good as my hand loads. I've killed a couple of bucks with my hand loads using the 240 XTP out around the 100 yard mark and a bunch closer up.

And it still has enough  energy at 100 yards....

[Gregory]

And it still has enough  energy at 100 yards....

Most 44 Mag loads will have 700-800 ft-lbs of energy at 100 yds.  More than enough.  You can't go by the 1000 ft-lb. recommendation most people think about for rifle cartridges.  Handguns are a different animal and can be very effective at lower ME levels.

[Redhawk1]

And it still has enough  energy at 100 yards....

Most 44 Mag loads will have 700-800 ft-lbs of energy at 100 yds.  More than enough.  You can't go by the 1000 ft-lb. recommendation most people think about for rifle cartridges.  Handguns are a different animal and can be very effective at lower ME levels.

I don't agree with your statement, could you please explain it to me?

[Graybeard]

And it still has enough  energy at 100 yards....

Energy...Smenergy...it's a paper number of no real value in hunting and for sure of zero value in straight wall cartridges with heavy bullets at low velocity. Some folks still haven't woke up and realized it's a meaningless number but it is.

So long as a large diameter heavy projectile has enough velocity remaining to penetrate and exit it has enough of this useless paper energy to do the job. Some folks will never truly understand this yet large bore guns will continue to kill effectively even with minimal amounts of that paper energy. Even many magazine writers these days are finally coming out of the closet and admitting it really isn't a magic number and that it has little to no meaning in the real world of killing game.

It has "enough" of it at 500 yards to kill game but the trajectory is such that hitting it that far out is next to impossible. But the bullet will fully penetrate and exit even that far off.

[Lloyd Smale]

I agree with everything greybeard has stated except for the fact that ill stand up for hardcast bullets. Not that jacketed wont kill deer but when i work up a deer load for a gun i expect it to do the job on pigs and bear too and ive seen jacketed bullets fail in a couple instances on both. Bottom line is a hardcast bullet will shoot lenghtwise through a deer at 44 mag velocities at 100 yards. I dont subscribe to the ft lbs of energy stuff either the only pound thing i look at is pounds in the freezer!! A hardcast bullet will reach the vitals almost any time at any angle and hit the vitals and the amimal dies! simple as that.

[Redhawk1]

I did not say it would not kill it, but energy does play a factor in it.
If I hit you with a sledgehammer that weights 10 pounds and I am going 100 fps with the swing and then hit you with a tack hammer with the same 100 fps, you are going to tell me the 10 pound sledgehammer would not do more damage???
That my friend is energy transfer. 

[Lloyd Smale]

not trying to argue you know me!! But id have to say that if that was the case a guy would want to shoot a 500 smith with a 250 grain jacketed bullet that would blow up inside the animal and transfere all its energy. Ive shot deer with a 458 mag and the deer didnt react any differnt with all those ft lbs of energy then it did hit by a 3030. I handgun kills by boring a hole through an animal not by shooking it. I give you that theres a slight difference in killing power due to a slightly bigger wound channel but not alot. What the big guns give you is a heavy bullet that has more momentum and will breakk bigger bones and make it to the vitals to shut them down. I doubt if theres a deer on earth that would react any differently hit by a 500 linebaugh or smith then it would if hit by a 44 special in the same spot. Thats why i agree with Bill in the fact that ft lbs of energy at least in a handgun means nothing. To back this up ill use this comparison. A 44 mag out of handgun has about the same amount of ft lbs of energy that that .223 or 22250 or even a 243 has. Now if a bear was comming at you which one would you rather shoot it with. I think that bear would about pick its teeth with that 55 grain bullet and its ft lbs of energy. Where id be about sure a 300 grain cast 44 bullet shot at one comming at you in the chest would kill it. Maybe not in time to save your but and probably no slower then a 50 caliber but Old miser bear would know he was hit! A handgun isnt a rifle and other then maybe a 454 or 460 stoked up with a jacketed bullet doesnt do much hydrostatic shock to an animal. Ive personaly shot a couple buffalo with the .500s and its an eye opener when you unleash what you think is a cannon with all kinds of ft lbs of energy and they keep on eating till they fall over dead.

[Dogmann]

Well I appreciate all of the input guys. I  think I'll try the CorBon HC & Penetrators along with Garrets offerings and  try to bag a deer at 100 yard with my 14inch contender. I got to believe there is enough energy in those hard casts to put that deer down.

[Redhawk1]

Lloyd Smale, I know you don't like to argue 

But I think we are saying the same thing but in a different way.
When you mentioned the 22-250 and 243 compared to the 44 Mag as energy goes, there is no difference in the energy, but the area affected by that energy will increase as the diameter of the projectile increases. Same thing applied to a sharp object such as a ice pick. Sure you can drive it right through but the is not much energy transfer as a larger diameter object.

That is why you and I like hard case flat nose bullets, a lot of damage occurs when the energy is transferred in the animal instead in the ground when a pointed projectile just passes right through. In order for energy to have effect, it has to have the proper bullets that will either expand to transfer that energy to cause the tissue damage or start out with a large frontal area that will transfer that energy right away.

[Redhawk1]

Well I appreciate all of the input guys. I  think I'll try the CorBon HC & Penetrators along with Garrets offerings and  try to bag a deer at 100 yard with my 14inch contender. I got to believe there is enough energy in those hard casts to put that deer down.

You will be just fine, a lot of deer have fallen to the 44 Mag at 100 yards.

[Lloyd Smale]

but thats kind of my point with my argument about handgun energy. About 75 percent of the energy thats delivered is delivered in the dirt at the far side of the animal. Thats why I believe energy ratings at least on hadgun cartridges and even on stopping rifles is a poor way to rate them. Momentum would be a better way to rate a gun shooting a heavy bullet then quoteing energy figures. Even a 50 caliber bullet has a very small surface area to transfer energy. Take for instance if your load developes 3000fps of energy on target. Now shoot a 600 lb animal with that and it surely wont knock him down. Now put a 3000 lb lead weight over its head a foot and drop that and it will knock the hell out of him. If ft lbs of energy was an accurate way to describe a bullet hitting an animal wed be lifting them off there feet. Even a jacketed bullet that stays inside of an animal and transfers all of its so called ft lbs of energy into the animal surely doesnt knock down a big animal. But take that sledgehammer you used in your earlier example and swing it hand enough to create 3000fps of energy and i about gurantee your going to knock it off its feet. Ill stick to the fact that to kill an animal cleanly you have to hit the vitals and to do that you have to have enough penetration to reach them and in my experience it takes alot of gun to give the penetration that is accomplished by even a 250 grain cast bullet at 1000fps. I guess thats why we go back and forth about the .454s and 460s I just havent seen where the wound channel a cast bullet produces at 1500 fps to be that much more then one at 1200fps. Both will shoot through any soft skinned game and as they do it create a long wound channel that compares to the shorter wider channel created by a jacketed bullet. But as far as buying much more dammage due to the greater velocity ive seen a bunch of animals shot with both and theres as much variation between wound channels of the same load as there is between the two loads.

[Lloyd Smale]

ill make lots of freinds here today as i dont buy into this comparison either. As the lager bullet at a slower speed will usually outpenetrate the smaller high speed bullet again do to momentum.

Redhawk1, I think what's being said is a person must think of handgun stopping power as in: a 4d fininshing nail driven at high speed compared to a 16d framing nail driven at a slower speed? The smaller nail is much easier to get penetration with but, the bigger nail will have more damaging effect, if it goes as deep as the smaller nail?

[Graybeard]

Yup Lloyd I sure agree on hard cast for the larger tougher stuff and it works just fine on deer. But I have a personal preference for JHPs on soft critters like deer. When hogs or bears or such come into the picture it's time to break out the cast bullets.

Guns and bullets ain't hammers or nails. The comparison is an apples to oranges comparison and has no validity here.

Nope for sure none of us would argue, notta chance. 

[Redhawk1]

Yup Lloyd I sure agree on hard cast for the larger tougher stuff and it works just fine on deer. But I have a personal preference for JHPs on soft critters like deer. When hogs or bears or such come into the picture it's time to break out the cast bullets.

Guns and bullets ain't hammers or nails. The comparison is an apples to oranges comparison and has no validity here.

Nope for sure none of us would argue, notta chance. 

Yea we always agree on everything, don't we GB...

[swampthing]

            Funny, GB & RH1, you are both partially right. Ask any of the bullet manufactures about the "required" velocity to expand a certain bullet and they will tell you. Then look at what that velocity equates to, for that bullet weight, in "kinetic" energy. That is also a part of the old axiom of: "800-1000 fpe minimum to kill a deer 1200-1500 fpe min for elk and moose." The people that said this gave others the benefit of the doubt, that, just becuase a 220 swift can churn up these energies... obviously doesn't mean it will penetrate deep enough in to the vitals with soft point ammo to reliably harvest medium to large game, but, that if you were using appropriate bullets from an appropriate caliber, these figures will let you know the maximum range at which your bullet will perform as it is intended to to make a clean humane kill.
           Funny I have seen countless deer shot perfectly with high power centerfire rifles and they just ran away, it takes lucky timing and approximately 2700-2800fps min to make "consistant", drop'em in tracks, "shock kills."
       My 12" .44mag dropped a charging 175lb hog with a measly 1200 fps load through the lungs, this was a LBT 280g WFN, and thats all the velocity "that" bullet needs to fully penetrate, stop, and kill a wounded ticked off boar. Hitting at 100 yds will be tougher than killing at 100 yds in this caliber. 

[Gregory]

And it still has enough  energy at 100 yards....

Most 44 Mag loads will have 700-800 ft-lbs of energy at 100 yds.  More than enough.  You can't go by the 1000 ft-lb. recommendation most people think about for rifle cartridges.  Handguns are a different animal and can be very effective at lower ME levels.

I don't agree with your statement, could you please explain it to me?

I think the Taylor KO factor explains it better than I can:  http://www.handloads.com/calc/quick.asp

The "Taylor KO formula" was developed by John Taylor. John Talyor was an extremely experienced African hunter, his formula was based on killing thousands of large game animals with nearly any caliber you can imagine. This formula is designed to give you a relative "killing power" number for a given caliber, the higher the number the better.

For example a 150 gr .308 bullet at 3000 fps has a ME of  2997 ft-lbs, a 44 cal at 1500 FPS has ME of 1198 ft-lbs.  But the 44 has a TKO of 22 compared to 19 for the .308.

 

[Graybeard]

Taylor designed his index around big bore stopping rifles for thick skinned dangerous game using solid bullets. It has been misapplied to about every thing since. It has no true application here.

[Lloyd Smale]

I agree Bill but it does come closer in actuall field results then the ft lb of energy deal does with handguns and cast.

Taylor designed his index around big bore stopping rifles for thick skinned dangerous game using solid bullets. It has been misapplied to about every thing since. It has no true application here.