In a 1929 article by Elmer Keith in Arms and Ammunition/Outdoor Life, Keith is introduced by Col. Townsend Whelen. Whelen introduces Keith in this article as a cowboy from the Northwest. Whelen states...."But the thing that interests me about Mr. Keith is that he is a dead shot with both revolver and rifle. He has done a large amount of experimenting......and has proved these experiments in his practical work on his ranch and in the game fields."

Keith had articles published by Whelen since 1924 but now he was becoming a regular contributor and shooting editor (at the age of 29) for the magazine. Keith in this article speaks of the westerners using heavy handguns to hunt with...where as the easterners didn’t even think of hunting with a handgun. Even in this article, long before the magnum handguns...even before the 38/44...the precursor to the 357 magnum...Keith talks of the everyday ability to take large game with handguns. He is near 30 and is at the transition point in his life where he has had a few .45 Colt single actions come apart from his loads, so he is switching to the 44 special. Because the 44 specials were more modern guns, with much closer tolerances, and greater strength. His .45 Colt loads were heavy cast slugs at around 1000 fps and his 44 special loads started at 1100 fps but with the later advent of 2400 powder he went to 1200 plus feet per second.

Keith hunted with many non magnum handguns (except for the 357), from his teens until he was 56 years old in 1955, and the dream of his life the 44 magnum, was introduced. Probably from his teens, Keith went thru 35 to 40 years of hunting with non magnum handguns...he states at early ages he had taken deer and larger game with single actions, the earliest datable instance by his writings of very large game, is when he was 17 years old in 1916...when he finished an elk with a 38-40 sixgun, after wounding it with a 30-06.

It was a novelty back then for Whelen and the magazine to have articles by someone who was truthful and experienced in hunting large game with handguns. Today that is not so...many hunt with handguns and handguns themselves have gone through a grand revolution in change....to service the handgun hunter and shooter. But I still feel in comparison to the seventeen plus million rifle hunters, that take to the field each year for large game in this country...the handgun is a distinct minority. Our ranks are growing, but they are still small...some states still have some absurd laws against handgun hunting...or restrictions on what you can hunt with...changes come slowly. One thing we need to thank Keith’s memory for...is not just what he is known for most, the father of the 44 magnum....but the actual awakening of the U.S. populas to handgun hunting of large game. Which I feel is more important.

I’m not saying, there was no one else doing it in those early days...I’m saying he was the spokesman for the sport, and he paid a price. In old outdoor and shooting articles right thru the 1950s, when attitudes finally began to change, Keith was soundly berated by many national gun writers in print! For hunting big game with handguns. But his strong will...or stubbornness..which ever you want to call it, prevailed. Thankfully for us, today’s handgun hunters. Like Keith I have hunted extensively with other guns than just handguns. Both bolt action and leveraction rifles. Mainly leverguns of all descriptions, makes, custom gunsmithed, and custom built. But the quest and lure of the handgun has always been there. Like Keith I started in my teens...and in my late teens it wasn’t an elk, but a zebra that taught me the power of a handgun.

While in my single years I had access to a small S&W hand ejector 32-20. I was taught to reload it with black powder...my Grandfather feeling I really couldn’t get in trouble with the old charcoal dust in such a small cartridge case. Of course my first trip to town and a pound of ‘Bulls-eye’ as it was printed in those days on the squat squarish container, came home with me. And my load was a 22RF fired case full under a nondescript 100gr. cast bullet. That was around 4.5 grains of Bullseye. Also in those days there was two different commercial power loads for the 32-20...one for rifles and one for handguns. The one for rifles was not to be fired in handguns...said so right on the boxes. We got reloadable brass back then by buying loaded ammo and firing that up first. Of course we kids used the rifle 32-20 commercial loads in the handguns.

The S&W though small didn’t have a problem with the rifle loads..even the Colt SAs in that caliber, that were black powder era guns...were so strong, (the 32-20 was cut on the full size .45 Colt revolver), they had no problems either. Though there were some top break revolvers that probably had some problems with the rifle loads...but I never ran into one. My partner in crime at the time, another gun crazy youngster like me, lived just a short way from my Grandfather’s farm in upstate New York...and he had a single action Colt in 32-20. We terrorized the small game population, and the varmint population, ground hogs were every where and considered the worst of the varmints because of what they would do to fields of beans and such. I was born and raised in New York City, but spent my summers with my grand folks....I lived for summers.

I can still see in my mind’s eye the day I stood in a field and took a shot at an old porcelain pot sitting out about 80 yards...knowing that handguns weren’t made to hit objects that far away. The sound of that 32-20 bullet striking that pot came floating back...and the long range handgunner was born...I was nine years old. It has been a long 51 additional years since that hot, muggy, but wonderful day. And handguns have been an absolutely critical part of my life over those years....from a little farm in upstate New York, to the fields of Africa, to the hostilities in a strange S.E. Asian land, to the hostilities in the streets of American cities, and the hunting fields everywhere I’ve gone. Handguns have been with me...they have feed me and mine...kept us safe...saved my life...and the lives of many others. But mostly it’s the hunting and the shooting for sport and fun that I remember.....Like friend John Taffin says...loading and reloading...experimenting and testing of loads and guns...it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.

I was thirteen during one deer season, and had left my father and the rest of my hunting party on the east side of a heavily forested mountain side. We were hunting New York white tail deer...it was October, I didn’t much like stand hunting and was still hunting thru the logging roads. I heard something above me running hard, coming down the rough slope thru the heavy trees. From the sound I knew it would cross the lumber road I was on, it was the hard taping of hooves deer make when they are running...and it would be close. Taking a solid position so I could see it crossing but it wouldn’t see me, I raised the Ruger 44 magnum autoloading rifle. A very large doe crossed me...she was tired and slipped trying to keep her feet as she ran. Something was chasing her and hard....I waited...didn’t have a doe permit....I could see two ugly dogs on her trail also running hard. I shot the second dog first and immeadiately turned the rifle on the startled first dog and slammed him. The doe went on to live another day. Both dogs were big, both had collars...hunting with dogs wasn’t done in that part of the state then. These dogs were on their own, it was pure blood lust on their part. It was the first time I saved the life of any living creature. And they were my first two large varmint kills.

I had hunted deer with the above mentioned 44 mag/Ruger autoloading rifle, with 30-30s and 32 Specials up until I was sixteen, but never turned a handgun on large game. I bought a 45 Colt SA at around seventeen and it went to Africa with me several years later. And the zebra was the first large game to go down to a handgun for me. When all of my overseas assignments in Africa and S.E. Asia were over I was stationed in Texas. And my handgun hunting took off. As I have said before Texans love guns, Lone Star beer and women....top priority of the three is left up to time and circumstance....

Hunting turtles...if you have ever seen a one legged duck and wonder what happened, it’s turtles. You won’t see a ‘no legged duck’, because they starve to death. A duck will be swimming along and a turtle will come up under it and snap a leg right off for lunch...When I saw what turtles do, back on the ponds in Virginia in the 1970s, they were placed in prominent priority on my hit list. Using long barreled rifles...leverguns...heavy cast bullets for the caliber, and small amounts of fast powder, you can get almost silent loads. You need them with turtles...one normal shot and all the sunning turtles on a pond are gone! They know what gunfire does...

We dropped a live and large snapping turtle into a 5 gallon pail once. That nasty thing reached up and snapped the heavy gage handle right off of it. There is a picture of him in my book. So we are not talking about some poor creature that is being put upon...besides crippling my ducks, they were too prolific. We would thin out the populations, but it wouldn’t last. There was always a new crop of the critters showing up. And they make great handgun targets. Mud turtles are just as dangerous to ducks as the snapping variety.

On the front page of an article in Outdoor Life magazine dated Dec. 1931 is a picture of a deer that was taken by Keith with a 32-20 handgun. Neither Keith or I recommend that light a cartridge for deer. But if that is all you have at the time opportunity presents itself...and you are a good shot...and the 32-20 is heavy loaded...etc...etc... Especially out of a rifle, the 32-20 sure can take deer cleanly. Jim Taylor has a 32-20 Marlin and I think he has taken deer with it. We need to get a word from him about it. He also drills holes in his house walls to run telephone lines with his Marlin 32-20...but I leave that to him to explain...

While in Texas in the 1960s I traded into an original Winchester leveraction 92 in 32-20. It had been a custom rifle made in the 1930s by Winchester. It was by far the most beautiful leveraction I have ever owned..it sadly was lost in a car fire with a number of other guns...they were in the trunk when the gas tank went and took them and the car with it. While I had it, this rifle took everything Texas had to offer from armadillos to black bear, and a coupla’big cats. My load in those days was 14/2400/115 gr. cast bullet. It was the Ideal 3118. I used the same bullet and load in my Colt 32-20. I had purchased the Colt in NRA excellent shape...all my gunny friends thought I was crazy to pay the highly exorbitant price of $47.50 for an "old cowboy gun".

Because of the strength of having a small cartridge chambering in a forty five framed single action...top loads were no problem in this gun along with the Win. 92. The military didn’t pay much in those days...and I had a number of good guys working for me, enlisted career men with families. And they sure made good use of the game meat. I’m not sure about now, but in those years Texas had a lot of deer....we did a lot of hunting.

In 1983 I was in Louisiana on an investigation of a smuggling gang and a sea going tug boat called the Bulldog....while there I got a unique opportunity. Even though at the time the alligator was on the protected list under certain circumstances he could be taken...there is a picture of the one I took in my photo file. I had just gotten a 357 Maxi Ruger and was using a load of 180 grain hard cast bullets at around 1500 fps. At 10 yards I shot this leviathan behind the right eye. He put on quiet a show at the shot....rolling and twisting. Finally when he was dead and we could get close...as you will see from the photo his eyes are crossed...a last statement on his part? Believe me they are dangerous, but as dumb dead as they are alive....cunning but dumb.

I learned a few things about ‘gator hunting. They are big and heavy, even the ones only around 7 or eight feet. Mine was around 10 feet (357s don’t really cut it...I was testing the Maxi). The bigger the caliber the better...and you never shoot them in the body...because they will always get away to water and you loose them. They have a very small brain right behind the eyes, and they are dangerous to a fault. They drag their prey into the water and drown it and then put it in their den till it begins to rot...even with all those teeth you see, they don’t chew their food as such...just swallow. They are the world’s best opportunists. They will grab anything including children...for food. When they were put on the Federal endangered list...as usual the federals screwed up because of the tree huggers..."ALL" ‘gators were put on the list, even privately owned, no exceptions...stupid!

So the alligator farms at the time breeding them, had to release their animals into the wild. And they were NOT endangered. One man I spoke to back then released over 10,000! And he was only one farmer of these animals, that had to release them. We have more ’gators now in the U.S. than we did in the 1700s. They are finally off the list...and you can now hunt them. The south eastern states like Louisiana hold hunts for them...if you ever get the chance take it.

Ever shot fish? I have. Do you believe that nonsense that a bullet slows down in just a few feet of water? Don’t. I once fired a 44 magnum into a swimming pool to catch the bullet...fired it down into the deep end...it went 10 feet down and cracked the bottom of the big pool. We had to put a pressure patch on where it struck the bottom. I learned to then shoot from the shallow end towards the deep end...twenty plus feet seemed to do the trick. Keith talks of shooting sharks...we used to shoot gar and anything else we would spot in the water...you have to shot under the fish because of the light refraction. You also get very wet doing it but it sure is fun. A 45 Colt slug will sure kill a fish but it will send a lot of water back up at you....

Wild pigs/Feral hogs/Russians....all about the same. The biggest hog I ever shot was a feral pig in Virginia in the 1970s. Back in the 1930s the pig farmers in the southeast had released their pigs into the wild so the banks couldn’t get them when they foreclosed on the farms...because of the great depression. Pigs do very well in the wild. He is an intelligent animal...one of the highest IQ’s of the animal kingdom, and they are prolific.

The pig I shot first was in my wilderness garden munching on my newly planted tomato plants. The darn thing weighed out at just over 400 lbs...it was a monster. The biggest I ever shot..I have it’s tusks..they are 5 inches and 5 and 1/4 inches long. Picture of the head in my book. I like pig hunting. They are mini tanks, and they will take a lot of shooting if you screw up the first shot. They have no bacon, where that is usually is a kind of hardened muscle/cartilage plate over the ribs. Small bore handguns need not volunteer. And do they sometimes make noise when you shoot them. I shot an old sow one time in Tennessee (borders Virginia) I hit her hard, but she ran and screamed and screamed and ran and kept running...but she was running constantly to her left making a large circle around me in an open field. It was like a shooting gallery..I’d shoot her she’d fall down get up run some more...I’d shoot her she drop get up...that went on for three shots!

I shot a shoat that was about 50 lbs once. That was the best tasting pork we have ever eaten. One of my friends in Virginia owned a farm about a half mile from our place. He raised pigs. One time a black bear figured he would climb in one of this gentleman’s pig pens and get himself lunch on one of the young pigs I guess. Bears are not too bright...and this one had to be one of the ones lower on the bear scale of intelligence. My friend said it sounded like World War Three...with all the squealing and screaming and grunting and growling and such. He grabbed his shotgun and ran out of the house to the pens...but that bear was at that point only trying to fight his way back out of the pen. The old sow and her half grown shoats were trying to rip the bear a new brain pan in the seat of his pants as it were. Manley my friend, said when he got there the sight was so funny, the only shot he could get because of the laughter was no where near the now exiting bear. He said he saw the bear come straight up out of the pen without even touching the fences around it, with two of the shoats ripping at it’s back side....said bear took the farm road back to the forest, at about the speed of a new Chevy.

My dogs once treed two young brownish black bears, in the same tree. It was an easy two shots...and lights out for them. Bears are what they eat...you can tell by the smell when you skin them..garbage eaters are garbage. They tell me the bears of the great north when feeding on fish, are not worth eating...unless you like your game meat fishy. A spring bear that is feeding on berries and grass and such is a treat...but once they go to eating meat, I stay away from eating them. The same with the big cats. Some people eat big cat meat, it’s considered a delicacy in some countries...they can have it, animals that eat meat carry pathogenians. The big cats like puma...mountain lion, will fall to any caliber if placed right. Usually shot out of trees after the dogs have put them there. The only problem is the dogs.

Use enough gun...because when that cat hits the ground it best be dead...or it will take your dogs with it. If you don’t want to head shoot it...then a heavy caliber like a 44 or 45 Colt through the shoulders is a must. I think the new 475 Linebaugh with moderate loads would be excellent. Though my heavy loaded 454s and 45 Colt Rugers do real well.

African game when I was there in the late 1950s was different in there character then it is today. People I dearly trust tell me that the range generally is a lot greater than it was when I was hunting there. Several things...hunting with handguns in Africa when I was there was unheard of. Not that animals weren’t shot on occasion with a handgun for one reason or another, I’m sure they were...but no one went out to hunt with them. Even I didn’t do a great deal of it. I had a Mauser in 9.3mm caliber, much like our 35 Whelen...and I used that extensively. But to the wonderment of the Africans both white and black...I did take some game with the handgun. The zebra was of course, a dead shot across a water hole...like a large pond. One shot directly into the chest with a commercial Remington 255 grain load.

We once shot an eland from a jeep with a 45 ACP...directly into the lungs twice with hardball military ammo, and had to chase it with the jeep for a long ways before it went down. The meat went to a starving village. Birds! Goodness Africa has all kinds of birds. And many of them are very tasty. I shot a lot of birds with handguns....the 45 ACP was very effective with hardball without tearing up a lot of meat.

The last elk I shot was with the 454 FA single action. It was a nice doe....I used the Freedom Arms loaded ammo with the 260 grain soft nose jacketed round. I have always found this load to be superb for everything from medium game like deer and black bear up to elk. FA’s boxes were marked 260 gr. JFP . Winchester has taken over loading this ammo now from FA...but I haven’t yet seen a Winchester load to match this superb FA load. Winchesters 300 grain loading looks good but I haven’t harvested anything with it yet...but their lighter load looks like it was designed for deer. I’m not going to use it on anything larger...the bullet cores are a lot softer then FA’s core were. I like shoulder shots with elk...break’s them down very fast. I like the 454 because it will usually take out both shoulders if I do my part. That take’s the chase out of the hunt.

Out to about 100 yards a heavy loaded handgun will do as well as some rifles at the same range. Certainly the 30-30 class and the 44s and 45s heavy loaded kill as well as each other. Sometimes the large bore size of the bullet from the 40s will have an even faster kill rate then the 30s and 32s at these ranges. The heavy loaded 357s, like my load for the large frame revolvers...15 grains or so of 2400 under a 180 grain jacketed soft or hollow pointed flat nose bullet...like the XTP. Will in cool hands dispatch deer and black bear, very well. But the 40 calibers are much better.