Posted: 10/29/2012 11:12:01 AM EDT
Sorry guys. I couldn't help myself. I went coon hunting last night and had one up about 30 ft. I shot it with my Buckmark and Rem Golden bullet hollow points. He was all curled up so I had to plug it once to see some eyes then do the finishing shot. Much to my surprise this morning though, I went to skin it out and the wound channel from the first shot was absolutely nasty looking. It entered through the lower part of the rib cage and exited through the opposite shoulder. I would not have expected to see that much tissue damage, but it was definitely there. That coon would have died shortly if I didn't finish it promptly. Sorry, no pictures though. I threw the carcass in the manure spreader before the thought crossed my mind. If the SHTF though and you were to take a wound like that I would say with certainty that you would likely die in short order unless you knew a great doctor. I only really shoot squirrels and coons with .22 LR and just recently began to skin my own coons, so I had no previous experience with just how much damage they could do on a critter with more mass. |
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Internal ballistics are always somewhat surprising. Even the lowly .22LR can make a total mess. We used to use .22 Stingers on big northern snowshoe hares, but gave up because they were too messy. They'd anchor the hares quickly, but made cleaning them somewhat ugly....
There is a down side: Solid hits with regular .22 bulk packs simply would not stop the bunnies fast enough, and trying to track them down in thickets and swamps got old fast. We needed something with more stopping power (remington viper solids ended up working good). We simply couldn't always head shoot the hares, and a runnig rabbit can be hard to hit. regular bulk packs would kill, but wouldn't reliably anchor the furry little buggers. Heck,I shot a garden raiding little cottontail two nights ago and popped him squarely in the chest with a .22 rem golden bullet. At teh shot that little bugger jumped straight up about 3 feet, hit the ground running and went a good 25 yards before giving up the ghost. I've seen some critters take amazing damage and keep going. I've taken several good northern whitetails in the 195-200 lb class with a hornady 150 soft point out of a .308. In each case it was a solid boiler room hit, and the deer had a decent hole in the heart, lungs and/or both. All of them still managed a 70-100 yard run before calling it quits. And I've centered a decent coon at 12 feet with a 230 Speer Gold Dot out of a 1911. That bugger skipped off and made it 50 yards before expiring.... I've come to realize something: The lowly .22LR is a pretty good killer, but it is necessary to remember that there is a big difference between killing something and stopping something. The .22 will easily kill. However, you might have to trail it, shoot it again, or otherwise give it a significant amount of time before collecting it and throwing it in the pot. If you want it 'dead right there', you either need to be incredible precise with a .22, or you need a somewhat bigger firearm. Fro |
| I carry a NAA mini revolver with .22 Mag HP rounds at work and I would NOT want to be hit with one of them. Ive shot them at a few different things such as pumpkins and milk jugs full of water and they make a hell of a mess. FWIW some sniper teams use .22lr because its very easy to suppress and will dirt nap a bad guy quickly... |
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Quoted:
I carry a NAA mini revolver with .22 Mag HP rounds at work and I would NOT want to be hit with one of them. Ive shot them at a few different things such as pumpkins and milk jugs full of water and they make a hell of a mess. FWIW some sniper teams use .22lr because its very easy to suppress and will dirt nap a bad guy quickly... Just keep in mind that 22 Win Mag bears no resemblance to 22 LR, except that they are both rimfire. 22 Mag *should* do a lot mor damage - it's a substantially more powerful round than 22 LR. |
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The lowly Remington Golden Bullet Hollow Point has one of the largest hollow points in a long rifle cartridge that I've seen. Most others are pin pricks in comparison.
I buy the Golden Bullets HP's but stick to the bricks of boxed ammo not the milk cartons with the loose bullets, and I do mean loose bullets in their cases. To date with the boxed variety I've had no failures to fire like milk carton ammo. I shoot a fair amount of diseased and injured small animals all year long with them and they do pretty well. Rabid and distempered animals also don't die or show reaction like they should for what that's worth. |
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I've dis-assembled many whistle pigs with the Rem 36gr. Golden Bullet. The hollow point seems to perform well. It expands, and creates quite a large wound channel.
OTOH, the boxed of Golden Bullets I have bought recently have had more duds than I like. Almost all will fire when cycled again, which makes me believe theyh're just being cheap with their priming operation and leaving voids in the rim. When they fire, they're accurate and perform well. |