OZARK HANDGUNNING
by Jim Taylor
The alarm woke me up early. Too early it seemed. I had been deer hunting for three days previoiusly and this was the fourth. It felt like morning was coming earlier each day. In the time I had been out hunting I had seen nothing. A friend had shot at a buck opening day, but had missed. I hadn't even seen a deer to miss!
The area I was hunting was farmland and woods, and several hundred acres of virgin prairie land. The prairie consisted of rolling hills crossed at several points by small tracts of trees and brush in the bottoms. From the sign it was evident the deer were using the bottoms to at least cross the land. I had staked out an area in one of the more well-traveled bottoms and sat on it for several days but without seeing anything other than a lone coyote. By the end of the third day of hunting I had decided to try something different the next morning - sitting in a tree stand. This was different for me, as I just do not enjoy sitting in tree stands. I would much rather be stalking as silently as I could or else be on the ground in a "hide" of some kind.
And so on this fourth morning of the hunt I arose and was on a tree stand by 6AM - well before light. The wind was coming out of the south at a brisk clip and in the 38 degree temperature it felt much colder. As I said, I do not like sitting in tree stands, and by 7 AM I was frozen which only helped reinforce my dislike for sitting in tree stands! I figured if I stayed much longer someone would find my frozen corpse come Spring, so I climbed down. After warming up a bit I began moving as quietly as I could through the woods. I walked south for about a half mile, in woods bordering an alfalfa field, but saw nothing. I waited a bit on a hillside where I could see most of the approaches, but nothing was moving. After a while I moved on back the way I had come to see if anything had moved in behind me, but to no avail.
I decided to go out across the prairie to a spot where some mineral had been put out for the deer to lick. Moving slowly across the hills I kept my eyes open but did not see anything. At the mineral lick there were no signs that any deer had visited the area in weeks. I decided to go back along the trees in the direction I had just come from on the slim chance that a deer may have tried to move in behind me. Moving slowly and stopping to watch quite often, all of a sudden through the trees I saw a deer coming my way! I stopped and held real still, watching the buck move cautiously toward me. By this time I had my pistol up in a two-hand hold and the hammer back. I had the sights lined up fairly close on a small hole through the brush and trees. The buck was wary, seeming to know that I was somewhere around but not sure just where. Soon the deer stepped ahead and stopped . Through the hole in the trees I had a clear shot at his left front leg and shoulder. He looked to be 30 or 40 yards away, standing sideways to me, and remembering that the gun was sighted in 2 1/2" high at 100 yards I held low on the shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
At the shot several things happened. One was that I did not hear the muzzle blast or feel the recoil of the 300 gr. bullet. The other was that I saw the deer jump and kick with his back legs, then limp out away from the trees. It turned, going out on the prairie away from me, and after running maybe 50 feet it collapsed. It was then I got excited and start to shake a bit. (As a footnote, if I EVER lose that, I will quit hunting!).
The gun was a fixed-sight .454 Casull with a 7 1/2" barrel. The ammo I used was factory loaded by Black Hills Ammunition, using a Hornady 300 gr. XTP. While I am an advocate of cast bullets, I wanted to try out the Black Hills ammo on live game. I had already proven it's accuracy in pre-season firing. Shooting from a sitting position, resting the gun across my knees, at 110 yards I had fired several nice 3-shot groups, the best of which measured 3 9/16" when measured from center to center of the holes. I cannot see open sights any better than that, even with a rifle, so I had real confidence in the gun and load. (Unfortunately Black Hills no longer offers this load.)
Sighting-in and knowing where your gun hits at various ranges before the season is extremely important. I had to make a tight shot through the brush, but I was confident that I could do it. And I put the bullet right where I wanted it. The bullet went in the left shoulder, through the heart and lungs destroying the top 1/4 of the heart, and exited the right shoulder leaving a good sized exit wound. And while the 300 gr. load provided more power than was needed for deer, it gave the kind of accuracy I enjoy. The result was venison on the family table.