Modern hunters enjoy a challenge. The days when putting meat on the table for the evening meal was the focal point of hunters belong to a world we have lost, and as a result, today’s sportsmen have increasingly turned to approaches that demand the utmost from them in terms of stealth, woodsmanship, marksmanship, and similar qualities. That explains in large measure the exponential growth in the ranks of bow and black powder hunters, and there has been an appreciable upsurge in the numbers of handgun hunters as well. In this chapter, the increasingly popular sport of hunting with the handgun is presented as seen through the eyes of two real authorities: Jeff Cooper and Charles Askins, Sr.
Taken from Jack O’Connor’s Complete Book of Shooting (1965), this treatment by Jeff Cooper looks at the use of the handgun by the hunter in all types of hunting—from small game to big. Some sensible questions about certain types of big game are raised, and the author suggests that the answer to the question of whether such animals are suitable for handgun hunting is a “qualified yes.” Today that yes is no longer qualified, thanks to the development of better cartridges, the production of optical aids, and general technological advances.
Pistol hunting has been called a stunt, which it is, but hardly more so than any hunting which is not conducted strictly for meat. It has been called inhumane, but it is no more so than any other hunting if it is done with proper care. I have been told that, since the average hunter can’t hit his rifle, he should not be encouraged to go around wounding things with a handgun. But the average hunter wounds plenty of game with his rifle. With a pistol he is more likely to miss, to the benefit of the game. There is no practical way to keep the incompetent bungler out of the woods, and he can foul things up as well with one weapon as with another.
Actually, a proper pistol is both accurate enough and powerful enough for a great many types of hunting. It will not do for tiny targets, long ranges, or pachyderms. Neither should it be used on lions, tigers, or the great bears. But there is plenty of hunting which does not fall into the foregoing categories, and a lot of it can provide excellent sport for the handgunner who is willing to work for it.
The three requisites for sportsmanlike pistol hunting are short range, proper equipment, and superlative marksmanship. A good range for a pistol is about 35 yards. Fifty yards is a long field shot; 80 is marginal; and 100 to 125 is strictly big league. Naturally this depends upon the size of the game—but the essence of handgun hunting is cover. The handgun is a “brush gun,” and unless the cover is fairly thick it is not going to be the tool for the job. Certain game may be spotted from afar and then approached in cover—I’m thinking of the javelina—and this makes for good pistol situations, but the shot itself must always be a close one.
This range limitation is not, however, as serious as it might look. We do a lot of talking about those elegant 300-, 400-, and 500-yard shots but, if we’re honest, we know they are exceptional. Most game is engaged at under 50 yards. At that distance an expert field shot with a good pistol can hit within 3 inches of his point of aim even under pretty adverse conditions. This will anchor a lot of game. On a recent prowl into the backwoods of Guerrero, one of Mexico’s wilder regions, I had a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol available. In seven weeks’ time I fired the rifle three times, the shotgun seven times, and the pistol seventy-two times. This was thick country, and the largest game was small deer, a perfect setup for my old Super .38 and hollow-point ammunition. A .22 Jet would have been even better for the rabbits, birds, iguanas and pigs which constituted the main targets, but I needed something to serve a defensive mission as well, and I appreciated my cuatro cargadores.
Proper equipment for the pistol hunter includes a weapon of adequate power and accuracy, a carefully obtained zero, a fine trigger action, and the right bullets. These matters are discussed in the sections on hunting arms, but I note them here again for emphasis. You should not blunder afield with a gaspipe under the impression that refinement is needed only on the target range. In the woods you stand to lose more than a high score.
Fine marksmanship is the ultimate key to handgun hunting, for while a mediocre rifle shot can do very well on a hunting trip, a mediocre pistol shot won’t even get started. This corroborates the comparative efficiency of the two arms, for the master pistolero and the duffer with the rifle shoot just about in the same class—if you exclude such things as buck fever and mistaken targets, which will not bother the master. Theodore Roosevelt, who by his own admission was a very poor hand with a rifle, was a very successful hunter. I can’t say how his hitting ability with a rifle would have compared to that of Ray Chapman with a pistol, who now has a string of seven clean, one-shot kills on big game to his credit.
As to standards, if a man can fire 135 × 150 on the field course he is ready to go hunting. This is not too hard with a .22 but it’s a chore with a full-house .44. Which is why pistolmen should stick to small game until they have attained quite a high gloss with their magnums.
Obviously small game is the most common objective of the handgun hunter. There is more of it, more time to shoot it, it’s closer to home, and it’s practical with a .22. Tree squirrels and rabbits, both cottontail and jack, are the most common targets, and they all provide most excellent sport as well as fine meat for the table. And they’re not easy. One can easily be “skunked” in a whole day’s hunting in good territory, especially if he tries only for head shots, as he should.
The marmot family makes excellent pistol targets. I consider marmots small game rather than “varmints” because I like to eat them, and edibility seems to be the difference. Marmots seem to call for a little more steam than a .22 Long Rifle provides, and will often make it down a hole when hit squarely with a service-type medium-caliber pistol bullet. Most of my experience with them comes from the goldens of the high Rockies, and I find that a .38 Super needs an expanding bullet to anchor them.
Any animal that is ordinarily treed with hounds is probably best taken with a pistol, as any man who intends to follow a dog pack will do well to avoid the encumbrance of a long gun. The range is rarely over 30 feet, and at that distance a competent pistolero can hit a dime.
Treeable game in the U.S. includes the opossum, the raccoon, the bobcat, the cougar, and the lesser bears (Euarctos), and naturally the weapon used should be of adequate power for the game. Above all it must be loaded with proper ammunition. Brain shots are the most humane on a treed beast, but they are not always possible, and even the normally inoffensive black bear can work up a fair amount of justifiable indignation after being hazed to and fro across the countryside.
There are two major game animals which are often hunted with dogs but not into trees. These are the boar and the jaguar, and they are great prizes for the hand gunner. I confess to a certain reluctance to popping a treed quarry—the dimwitted possum, the charming and mischievous ‘coon, the lithe and elegant cougar, or the quaint and comical bruin—but a burly hog or a massive, cattle-killing tigre is something else. Both tend to “come on” when the hunter shows up, and then comes the big moment for the pistol shot. The shot must be delivered coldly but very quickly. The range is short—too short—but the bullet must be placed with surgical precision, for you can’t blast a furious, 300-pound beast to a standstill with pistol fire; you have to hit the central nervous system. Any man who has stopped a charging jaguar with his pistol rates a special feather in his war bonnet. This feat is to the pistol hunter as beating the drop is to the combat shot.
Varminting with a handgun is popular enough so that special weapons have been built for it; specifically the Remington XP-100 and the Ruger Hawkeye. The classical “varmints,” in this country, seem to be woodchucks and crows, and hunting either with a pistol is a fairly specialized activity. As I said, I regard woodchucks as game, but I don’t know about crows, as I have never eaten one. Both chucks and crows can get very cagey in regions where they are hunted extensively, and as a rule become essentially rifle targets, but in places where they are really pests they are fair game for a handgunner. A flat-shooting pistol is indicated, for distances can stretch out with either beast.
Rats are often found in large numbers in public dumps, and here is a really fine target for your .22. These repellant creatures are best jack-lighted at night, and can provide a lot of tricky shooting in the course of an evening. Of course one checks the local ordinances first, but quite often a rat-shooter has the blessing rather than the disapproval of the city fathers.
Game birds are excellent pistol targets, but, except for the wild turkey, they are banned to the pistol shooter in the U.S. I have hunted ducks with a pistol in both Mexico and the Yukon, and believe me it isn’t easy. One works to leeward along the shore, hoping to recover the birds as they wash up, and a slightly bobbing target flat on the water, with ripples intervening, calls for a fancy degree of elevation control. A hair high is an over, and a hair low is a short ricochet. You can try them on the wing, too, but don’t expect much unless conditions are just right.
The king of the upland birds, for the handgunner, is the pheasant. You’ll have to look pretty hard for a locality where it’s legal, but taking ringnecks over dogs from the holster is a sporting enough activity for anyone. The rule is to keep your hand off your gun until the bird rises, and then to draw and track him as he goes out. A brace taken this way with a heavy pistol is somewhat more of an achievement than the same taken with an ounce and a half of number fours. A load of 1000 f/s or less is indicated, to avoid meat spoilage.
Tirkeys are the exception to the general prohibition on taking birds with a pistol, and often offer good sport. A fine account of a .38 Special on turkey may be found as the lead piece in the marvelous little book Colt on the Trail, published some thirty years ago by the Colt people as an encouragement to the field use of the sidearm.
Of the medium-sized pistol quarries my favorite is the javelina of the Southwest and Latin America. Fast, excitable, diurnal, gregarious, and nearsighted, he is just right for the pistolero. When jumped, the flock is likely to explode in all directions, offering a series of difficult shots to several hunters at once. The .357 seems made to order for javelina.
However, when one thinks of American hunting one thinks of deer, and deer—whitetail, mule, or blacktail—are very satisfactory game for the handgunner. The best states are Alaska, Arizona, New Mexico, and Idaho; though Wyoming, Montana, and Florida are also good if you can get a positive ruling on pistol hunting out of their game departments.
One of the really fine deer parks for the pistolero is the Kaibab plateau of Arizona, a state that specifies the .357 and the .44 (and now, presumably, the .41) as legal deer cartridges. The Kaibab is a high, rolling timberland and one of the world’s most beautiful forests. It is inhabited by a carefully managed herd of big, handsome, well-fed mule deer that is hunted just hard enough to make it wary. The conifers and aspens provide enough cover for close shots without developing into a tangle, and each little draw has a jeep trail in its bed to permit easy hauling for your kill. You can camp out or hunt from a lodge, and packing and freezing facilities are only half an hour to the north on a paved highway. Altogether a fine spot, marred only by a one-to-a-customer limit that forces the handgunner to take the first thing offered rather than to wait for a trophy.
For when you hunt deer with a pistol you can’t be very selective about your animal unless you are prepared to risk total failure. Considering that a handgun is three times as hard to hit with as a rifle, and has only one-third its range, one must regard any full-grown deer as a prize, and take a trophy rack as a gift of the gods.
The deer hunter works the same way with pistol or rifle, except that he simply avoids terrain that opens out too much. Setting 100 yards as his limit (remember, only an expert should take the field) he prowls the timbered ridges, glasses the edges of clearings, and waits at saddles if the woods get too full of other hunters. Particularly effective is an upwind course just below the crest of a main ridge, crossing the tributary ridges at right angles and searching the small bay at the head of each draw, where deer like to lie up in the middle of the day.
Such matters are better covered in a book for deer hunters. The handgunner who hunts deer must simply remember to stick to close shots, to master his weapon, and to use the right ammunition; and he will do very well.
The deer cartridges are the .44 and the .41, though any big bore, properly loaded, will do the job up close. The trajectory of the magnums is their big advantage, for the hunter has enough problems without having to lob his shot at 75 yards.
The question must eventually arise as to whether the pistol may properly be used on game larger than deer. I confess to a lack of first-hand experience in this area, but I think the best answer is a qualified yes. After all, it isn’t so much the size of the target as the range at which it is shot. The .44, using the Norma bullet, will shoot right through both shoulders of a moose and out the other side. Not at 300 yards, but at pistol ranges. If the hunter insists on close shots, and passes up the foolish ones, he ought to be able to take fairly large animals with humane, one-shot kills. On big animals the .44 does not appear to deliver the instantaneous knockdown of a .30/06 on a deer, but for that matter few riflemen have ever seen a moose knocked off its feet by a rifle bullet either. As long as the quarry staggers and falls within 50 yards, the kill may be considered clean, and a .44 Magnum bullet, through the heart, will achieve this on animals quite a bit bigger than a deer. Thus I believe that elk and moose, together with the African antelope, may properly be taken with a handgun under special circumstances. By no means do I recommend this as a general pastime, but I hope I have made clear by now that pistol hunting is never a sport for the ordinary sportsman.
Since the pistol hunter is rather unusual to begin with, he has the advantage of being able to forget convention. Since he’s not after a Boone and Crockett head anyway, he can branch out. There are a number of beasts which are not game animals in the strict sense, but which, in these days of diminished conventional hunting, may offer fine sport to men in search of the unusual. Particularly I have in mind the crocodilians—alligators, crocodiles, caimans and gavials. These are big, rough, not uncommon in the right regions, and can be dangerous. They are scorned by the riflemen as they lie in mesozoic sloth on the sandbar, but how about tackling a 20-footer with your .44?
Experts claim there is only one good place for your bullet, and that is in the center of the short neck directly from the side. This will anchor, while anything else will let the beast make it to the water. It ought to be feasible to spot downriver, then land and make an inshore approach to a point just at the edge of cover. Then, if you can hit a half dollar at whatever distance you can close to, a 240-grain steel-jacketed soft-point should net you enough leather to fill a shoe store.
And keep in mind that these latter-day dinosaurs come in several degrees of impressiveness. The king is the saltwater crocodile (Crocodilus porosus) of Oceania. Up to 10 yards long, agile and aggressive, and notably fond of human flesh, a prime porusus, taken with a pistol, would be a trophy of which any hunter should be proud.
Just as the rifleman gleans the world for its best and finest trophies, the pistol hunter can endeavor to establish a set of grand prizes which could stand as testimony to the special qualities of the handgun as a sporting weapon. I don’t feel that it would be right simply to duplicate the rifleman’s list, for while it is technically possible to secure an argali, or a tiger, or a white bear, or even an elephant, with a handgun, it is not a sportsmanlike venture. I realize that sportsmanship is a matter of opinion, but in my opinion one can go too far in attempting to do a job with “an instrument singularly unsuited to the task,” as Mark Twain said of a golf club. It may be that any pistol is unsuited to the pursuit of big game, but I don’t believe this to be true. I think there is a compromise area, where rare, burly, beautiful, or dangerous animals are sought at short range under conditions that make them especially suitable as pistol targets. In preparing my own list of top pistol trophies I realized that I immediately pose a legal problem, for in many jurisdictions hunting with a handgun is not permitted. I do not suggest breaking the law, I simply suggest that laws, especially game laws, can be changed. You can’t win at Indianapolis without exceeding the speed limit. Likewise you’ll find it impossible to collect the grand prizes of the pistol without securing certain legal dispensations. This can probably be done.
The following, then, is my choice of the royal five for the pistolero, listed by continents. Naturally all specimens should be prime examples of the species, as near to the record as possible.
Eurasia—For this area I’ll pick the European wild boar (Sus scrofa), found from the Eastern Alps to the Tien Shan. He is a short-range target, rugged and quarrelsome, and he is quite capable of killing you. Taken with a pistol as you come up on the dogs, his 300 pounds must be stopped by the most careful use of the heavy handgun. Since most of his habitat is presently behind the Iron Curtain there are fairly difficult problems to be solved in getting at him. (Imagine trying to get a visa for your .45 auto!) But he has been imported into the U.S., so let’s accept an immigrant, especially if he is outstandingly big and bellicose.
Africa—Here again the current political situation is so unstable that it’s hard to say what the rules are or how they are enforced. In ex-English areas the pistol is probably still viewed with horror, but in the Portuguese colonies, east and west, people are more reasonable if they are approached politely. Skipping the giants and the traditional, I’ll choose the gorilla. You’ll need a museum permit to take him, but such can be had. If you threaten his group he will charge, and a charging gorilla is a fearful spectacle, to stand your ground with a handgun and flatten him at 15 feet is man’s work.
North America—Again I will bypass the traditional, because the big bears are not humanely taken with a pistol. For a creature that is large, wary, noble in aspect, and a lover of the deepest forests where the range is short, I’ll pick the Roosevelt elk (Cervus canadensis Occidentalis).Bigger in body, darker in color, and with shorter but heavier antlers than the better known Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus canadensis canadensis), he is a beast of the dense, dank, rain forests of the Pacific Coast. He must be hunted with great skill, for you have to move in on him like a ghost to escape detection by his marvelously sensitive ears. And if you succeed in this, his massive body calls for very precise use of your .44 if you are to secure a clean kill. As of this writing, it is practically impossible to get permission to hunt the Roosevelt elk with a pistol, but this may change as handgun hunting becomes more respectable.
South America—There is no argument here, as the jaguar takes the prize. Not just any jaguar, but a really prime cat of 250 pounds or more. Such are hard to come by, and though Mexico’s famed Enrique Job tells me that size is not a function of range, I feel the chances for a really massive tigre are best in the Mato Grosso and southward. Siemel, the spearman, has a photograph of one he took, the skin of which is so big that a tall man can just reach the ear when the hind legs touch the ground. This was Brazilian, but I understand that Paraguay, Bolivia, and Argentina claim some huge cats, too. Few English-speaking hunters penetrate the upper reaches of the Paraguay-Paraná river system, so there is not much written material available to us on the big cattle-killing jaguars, apart from rumor. This is one of the few remaining unspoiled hunting countries. Happily, there is no special problem about handgun hunting in Latin America, where the authorities seem more worried about rifles than pistols. If you can get a weapon permit at all, it is good for any sort of weapon.
Australia-Oceania—The warm waters of the Malay Archipelago and the north coast of Australia are the home of porosus, the aforementioned saltwater crocodile, and he is the last big prize. What with the Australians’ anti-pistol bias, and the Indonesians and Malaysians perpetually on the brink of war, there are plenty of technical difficulties here. Also, porosus does not appear to be common, to the relief of the indigenous population. Here is a project for a man with a sea-going yacht, plenty of time, and a .44 Magnum.
Charles Askins, Sr., did considerable hunting with handguns during the first half of the twentieth century, although Elmer Keith is rightly recognized as the gun writer who did the most to popularize this type of hunting. Here Askins offers his thoughts on the subject in an interesting and informative fashion. Some of the equipment-related limitations he addresses no longer exist, but his thoughts on approaches and choices of firearms retain their validity. This piece comes from The Pistol Shooter’s Book (1953).
There is a great deal of misconception in the minds of handgunners regarding the true killing power of the handgun. People who should have better judgment spin many dangerous yarns about shooting big game with the one-hand gun. There isn’t a pistol or revolver in existence that is fit to use on game the size of deer. A number of years ago one of our handgun manufacturers developed a new cartridge and a new revolver for the load and in order to give the development proper ballyhoo he proceeded to stalk and kill a very small moose, an equally small and unimpressive black bear and an elk. When his exploits were given the proper splash in all the outdoor magazines it served no better purpose than to encourage a good many handgunners to go afield and cripple big game.
I am an enthusiastic devotee of the hunting handgun. I enjoy nothing so much as to stalk and kill game with the pistol, however, I limit my hunting to the small things. The handgun will kill rabbits, squirrels, birds, foxes, javalina, wildcats and similar game, but it distinctly is not for such beasts as coyotes, wolves, deer, antelope and those species even larger.
I recently saw published in one of our midwestem hunting-and-fishing magazines a series of letters from three Californians who were attempting to kill deer with the .44 Special revolver. The firearms editor in publishing the series of letters was very laudatory of the purpose of the sportsmen (?). However, what was most revealing about the accounts of the two or three deer shot was that the game was running and hits had been luckily made in head or neck. How anyone could be so utterly devoid of sportsmanship as to shoot at a running buck with a handgun at distances of more than 100 yards (as these birds did) is beyond my understanding.
In 1929-30 I was a forest ranger in the northwest corner of New Mexico. On one side of me was the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation and on the other side was a goodly stretch of land in Public Domain. The Indians had a great many horses and these they permitted to run wild. Since only a part of my ranger district was fenced, these broomtails fed as much off my grass as off the Reservation. On the side which bordered the Public Domain I had little grazing problem save from nesters who wanted to slip a few head of stock onto the forest when my back was turned. The horse problem was the more serious. I estimated the Indians were running not less than 1400 head of worthless, runty, unbroken broncs on the forest land.
With the tacit approval of the forest supervisor, who was more than 100 miles away, at Taos, I declared war. Everywhere I rode, and for five months of the year I averaged 30 miles a day; I carried a six-shooter and a rifle and every time I came upon a band of broomtails I left dead horses in plentiful numbers. These animals were almost like deer. You could not ride up on them if the wind was in their favor. They would scent you and hightail it when you were a half mile away. I stalked them like a band of elk. I’d climb a hill and carefully survey the country ahead. If a band was in sight I’d get the wind in my favor approach on foot to within 50 yards, crawling the last couple of hundred yards, and then open up on them. At the first shot the band would take to its heels like antelope.
I killed several hundred horses and I used a variety of both handguns and rifles on them. I deliberately set out to prove all the larger calibers of pistols and revolvers. I used the .30 Luger, the 9 mm. Luger, the .38 Super Automatic, the .45 Auto, and even the .22 Woodsman. I also used the .38 revolver, the .38-40, .44-40, .44 Special and the .45 Colt. Unfortunately the .357 Magnum had not yet been developed. I believe it is the most powerful of all one-hand weapons and I would have enjoyed proving this contention.
As a result of my exhaustive experimenting on the Indian broomtails I hold a very low opinion of the pistol as a killer of any medium-size animal. These horses were not wild game, even though they were precious near to being so; they were born of domesticated mares. It can be safely assumed, for instance, that a runty three-year-old weighing 650 pounds could be killed more easily than a bull elk of the same poundage, or of a bear running about the same weight. Despite this, I could never kill these horses with any certainty. Many times the animal had to be finished with the rifle, which I also kept handy for that very purpose. I shot these animals everywhere, I shot them in the head, neck, shoulders, spine, through the heart, in the lungs and through the paunch. I shot them from directly in front and I shot them from behind. I had a pack of dogs that I ran lions with and so I butchered many of the jugheads for hound meat and traced the course of many of my shots.
Not only was penetration poor but the most disappointing thing was the lack of shock. This was apparent with all the calibers and with the high speed loads like the .30 Luger, 9 mm. Luger and .38 Super the lack of apparent blow was most noticeable. Of the several big calibered revolvers I liked the .38-40, .44-40 and .44 Special very much. I could see little difference in the performance of the three. It is now contended that the .44 Special can be souped up with heavy overloads so it is the best killer of them all. This is very probably true. With factory loads, which I was using, I couldn’t see that it was any better than either the .38-40 or the .44-40. The .45 Colt distinctly will not kill like these other big loads.
As a result of my vast amount of experimentation on the Apaches’ livestock I have a very poor opinion of the handgun as a killer of big game.
I eventually tired of living like a sheepherder and hearing some exciting stories about the gunfighting that was going on along the Mexican border between the newly organized Border Patrol and the “contrabandistas” I resigned from the Forest Service and accepted an appointment in the Patrol. My pardner, George Parker, was already in the outfit and was into and out of one gun fracas after another whetting my appetite for a taste of the excitement.
After a year in El Paso I was assigned to a desert outpost about 25 miles west of El Paso. The part of the International Line to be covered by my pardner and I was ample for even the most space-loving; we had a stretch ranging from the outskirts of El Paso to Deming, New Mexico, 120 miles west. We ranged this area on horseback but after a few years we put the caballos out to pasture and commenced to cruise in an old sedan equipped with giant sand tires. For a hunter like myself it was rich existence, for every day I was tracking game—big game—the most dangerous and therefore the most exciting of all. We had frequent brushes with the smugglers, and since tracking gangs in an old car was a sure invitation to ambush we were kept on our toes most of the time.
Among other dodges that we employed to track down the border crossers, was a pack of hounds. These kyoodles worked fairly well if we put them on a track immediately after a rain, otherwise the sand was so barren of moisture it would not hold the scent for any length of time. If however, our quarry decided to strike for the Rio Grande Valley the dogs worked marvelously, for the valley was under irrigation and there the scent remained very well. Feeding the pack was a problem.
The desert was alive with jackrabbits and I killed the long-eared denizens with my six-shooter. We rode horseback about 30 miles daily, and after changing to the car drove 50-75 miles each tour. We always came in with enough jacks to feed the pups their daily big meal.
The desert jack is an animal weighing about 812 pounds and he is as tough as the country itself. While his body appears soft and certainly is easily penetrated with any kind of a pistol bullet, getting the game to lie down and die peacefully after you have done a thorough ventilation job is quite another thing.
During the 5 years I was stationed on the desert I killed several thousand jackrabbits. I shot them with every caliber of handgun in the book, mostly however I used the big calibers, .38 Special and larger. Unless a jack was shot through the heart or spine (I couldn’t shoot well enough to hit head or neck except by sheer luck) he was dangerously apt to escape. A shot through the lungs or the paunch, or in one of the legs meant that he would run, if through the lungs not far, but if farther back he might get away entirely. One of the worst killers in this regard was the .45 ACP, a cartridge which I used in both the service automatic and in the S. & W. Model 1917 revolver. The 230 grain slug, heavily jacketed, would knock a rabbit down; he’d kick and twitch for perhaps 20 seconds and suddenly bound to his feet and be gone. I learned with this caliber that if I bowled the quarry over the thing to do was to drive in a following shot as quickly as I could.
Two of the best killers were the .44-40 and the .44 Special. When the .357 Magnum came along it killed jacks better than any of the others; the shock effect was noticeably greater. However, it left a great deal to be desired. While the gun has 1450 ft. seconds of muzzle velocity, the amount of upset to the slug when it encounters the soft flesh and flimsy bones of the western jack is insignificant. The .32-20, a low-powered rifle cartridge is infinitely better. After my many years of shooting rabbits observing as I have, the mediocre performance of even our most powerful handguns, it seems utter stupidity for anyone to consider shooting big game with six-shooter or auto pistol.
One year while returning from the National Matches I stopped off in Oklahoma and had a shoot-of-a-lifetime on bull frogs. I had with me two members of the Border Patrol pistol team and it was the first time either had ever shot frogs with the pistol. We used our regular match .22 automatics and match ammunition. We soon learned that although shooting distances were ridiculously short a high degree of precision was required in the placement of the shot. The bullet had to hit the brain or sever the spinal cord directly behind the brain. Otherwise the greenback would give one last convulsive leap and be lost. It was exciting and interesting sport.
Probably of more fun to me was an annual pilgrimage I used to make back to Oklahoma every year to visit my father. In the woods about his place were tiny fox squirrels and these I used to stalk using a Colt Shooting Master and wadcutter loads. It was the custom—and an ironbound one, believe me—that squirrels had to be shot in the head. If someone saw you bringing in a mess of squirrels shot anywhere except in the head you were “hurrahed,” to use the vernacular of the section. I therefore endeavored to drill my game through the head. The wadcutter bullet when I did connect with a sly red ear was worse than lightning. I was at that time firing away about 35,000 rounds of pistol ammunition annually and so the business of hitting a mark about 2¼ inches square at distances of 60 feet was not as difficult as it might seem.
For this shooting, the revolver I used was equipped with patridge type sights, but the front post was a red plastic made by King Gunsight Co. It loomed up in the woods beautifully; otherwise the gun was a standard target weapon.
During the years I was on the desert I lived in a tiny settlement where there were five American families and about one hundred Mexicans. About the water-pumping station (for the Southern Pacific R.R.) were a number of cottonwood trees. Here I used to shoot English sparrows. The sparrow, as everyone knows weighs about 3 ounces, maybe less, and offers a target about the size of the end of your thumb, an antimated, suspicious target never given to lingering long in any one place. I used to shoot sparrows daily and rich fun it was.
Tommy Box, a regular member of the Border Patrol pistol team, later killed in line of duty, came out one day and with my old tomcat, Pancho Villa, tagging at our heels we shot 17 sparrows. The cat ate them one by one and upon gulping down the last, I observed that the middle portions of the feline chassis were barely clearing the sand. Had someone not nearly so familiar with his nocturnal habits as myself seen him, they would most likely have immediately jumped to the conclusion that here was a pussy in the latter stages of feline pregnancy. Those 17 sparrows bulked up most startlingly and while Pancho did not die of tomcat indigestion the meal made a lasting impression on him. He never afterward could be persuaded to eat a single sparrow.
For this shooting, Box used his Woodsman .22 auto and I used a H. & R. .22 single shot furnished me by Walter Roper, who had designed the model for the Harrington and Richardson Co. The .22 was the only practical gun to use on the tiny marks.
Handguns for game shooting may be any caliber from .22 to .45, the caliber depends on the wild things hunted. The .22 performs very well on such targets as small birds, crows, the lesser hawks, squirrels, cottontail rabbits, snakes, frogs, gophers, chipmunks and like small game. For targets like jack rabbits, the larger hawks, owls, fox, wildcats, javalina, mountain lions when bayed by the hounds, and game similar to this, I favor the very heaviest calibers. The gun may be revolver or automatic but should be of good weight, at least 36 ounces, and should have a barrel length running at least 5 inches. Custom stocks are a great help just as they are on target guns.