The Challenge Of Handgun Deer Hunting

The mood crept up on me like a thief in the night. All of a sudden, there it was. A new and different way to hunt deer, and admittedly, I'd fallen into the rut of just bow, muzzleloading or rifle hunting for deer. I needed a change of pace, a break for a year from these more traditional hunting methods.
Handgunning for whitetails isn't all that different except a hunter  must be, within reason, close enough to kill the animal with a bullet large enough to effectively do the job.
At the time I had three handguns that would do the job nicely. One was a Thompson/Center Contender with two different barrels that offered me a choice. One barrel was a .30-30 and the other was a .44 Magnum.

Making a choice between handguns

I also had a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, and I was a pretty good shot with it. I thought about putting a scope on it, and decided I'd rather use iron sights and keep any shots within 50 yards.
The T/C Contender was a single-shot pistol. The hammer had to be manually cocked, and it's true I could have used a scope on it but doing so didn't make me feel quite right. I had time to practice shooting at 50 yards but chose not to put a scope on either handgun.
A .44 Magnum is a powerful handgun, and with a 240-grain hollow-point bullet, it would do the job. The recoil when shooting this revolver is substantial but I'd had it ported by Mag-na-Port of Mt. Clemens, Michigan, and that tamed it down considerably.
I could shoot a dozen rounds a day, and eventually got to where I could put five rounds into a two-inch circle with iron sights. It was plenty good enough if I had time to cock the hammer, aim and squeeze off a controlled shot.
The .30-30 was a different story. Shooting it was a far sight different than shooting the .44 Magnum revolver. The revolver had also been ported, which helped reduce felt recoil and eliminate some of the muzzle jump.

Getting used to heavy recoil

The .30-30 was another story. The recoil from this cartridge came back more into the palm of my hand rather than back and up, and 10 shots of practice each day was all I wanted to handle. In fact, it was more recoil than I was comfortable with.
I found myself much more accurate with the .30-30 at 50 yards although the felt recoil seemed much more punishing. It took several weeks to get used to it. A pair of thin leather gloves helped ease the felt recoil.
The practice continued through the summer, and the more I shot, the better I became. My eyes were good back in those days, and if I could spot a buck at 50 yards, I knew that killing the animal would be easy.
Shooting the T/C Contender for three months enabled me to condition myself to the felt recoil of the 30-30, which still seemed to be much more than with the .44 Magnum. The Nov. 15 firearm opener should be a snap if everything went as planned.
Opening day came that year with some snow on the ground and partly cloudy skies. My stand was well positioned 40 yards downwind of where three active deer trails came through a tag alder swale, spread out, and gradually came back together to neck down into a funnel between two heavy patches of thick cover.
It was a coin flip as to which handgun I'd use, and finally settled on the T/C Contender with the .30-30 barrel for the opening day. I had two extra cartridges in my pocket, but a single-shot handgun doesn't offer fast reloading. One shot means taking enough time to get the right shot and then nailing it.
I'd been setting on stand for two hours. It wasn't a cold day, and dozens of does had trickled past but I wanted a buck with the handgun. It didn't have to be a wall-hanger because the area I was hunting didn't produce many big deer.

Here comes my buck

Soon a young buck was seen easing through the cover. He came down one of the deer trails, and it gradually merged with the other two at 40 yards. The buck stopped where all three deer trails came together, turned broadside and looked back over his off-side shoulder at some other deer.
Satisfied, he turned and took one step. The sight picture looked perfect, and I took up the last ounce or two of trigger slackl with the sights behind his front shoulder and shot.
The shot seemed excessively loud that morning but my eyes continued to track the animal. I could see the red stain behind his front shoulder, and after 50 yards he crashed to the ground.
Later,  I shot another buck with the .44 magnum revolver, and also shot a wild boar with the T/C and the .30-30 barrel, and a javelina with a 9 mm pistol. I once shot a black bear with the .44 Magnum revolve. It's not that I don't enjoy hunting with a handgun, but now I basically just shoot paper holes to maintain some form of consistent practice.
Can handgun hunting be a challenge for you? Of course it can, and I know a number of people who hunt all the time with a handgun. Who knows, I may go back to it again one of these years. If Michigan hunters plan to hunt deer with a handgun this season, they had better start  practising.
But, for me, I'm still locked into hunting with a bow, centerfire rifle or muzzleloader during those respective seasons. And, although handguns are fully capable of killing game far beyond my 50-yard capabilities, long-range handgun shooting is not for me.
It may be your cup of tea, and if so, I know why you enjoy it. But after a lifetime of bow hunting, it still gives me a big kick to have game within 20 yards when a shot is taken. Up close and personal is what bow hunting has always meant to me.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors