I grew up on a farm with my grandparents. They made most of their money with the dairy cows that took up about half the acreage, and supplemented it with various crops, mostly corn and okra but occasionally others, grown on the rest and sold to local grocery stores or at the farmers market on the weekends. As a result my grandfather all but hated deer and coyotes, the deer because they ate the crops and the coyotes because they would kill calves and otherwise harass the cows, so he would shoot any of them he saw, though he did actually have depredation permits for the deer.
As far as I can remember every deer and coyote he shot, outside of when we would actually go hunting during deer season when he would mostly just bow hunt, he did so using an old Savage bolt action in 22 K Hornet with iron sights shooting a 45 grain cast bullet over a mild load of Unique. His reloading equipment consisted of a Lee Loader, a piece of 38 Special brass that he had soldered/brazed a handle made out of brazing rod to and filed down to the right volume, a two cavity bullet mold, and small dipper and old cast iron pot to melt the lead (he hand packed the bullet lube into the grooves) and I doubt that he ever chronographed any of those but one of the times I came back home while I was in the Marines, I found a few of those old bullets he had loaded and ran them over my other grandfather's chronograph and they were all right around 2000 fps.
If I had to guess he must have killed around 100 or so deer with it over the years, mostly he took head or neck shots but several were shot in the lungs if they were a bit further away, and I can't remember any of them ever not being recovered. When I got a bit older, around 9 or 10, he would have me do most of the shooting so I used it on around a dozen or so deer before he bought me a Marlin 22 WMR and NEF break action 223 when I was 11 or so and a Remington 700 in 22-250 a could years after that that I used up until he sold the farm (I wanted something with a scope as I didn't have perfect eyesight like him).
Sadly, he must have either sold that rifle or gave it to my mother or uncle, either of whom would have then promptly pawned it for alcohol or drug money, along with a few other guns he had when he was in the earlier stages of dementia but before my grandmother and I took all the guns out of the house when it became apparent that it was becoming dangerous for him to be around them.
As far as it being used for poaching, legally speaking most all of those deer he killed using those depredation permits would have been considered poached as despite him having permits to kill them all, he also would not waste the meat and knowing that there were several families in the area that would likely go hungry otherwise, he would always butcher those deer and take them the meat instead of "properly" disposing of the carcass. So technically it was poaching, but being that he was also the local Chief of Police meant that the Game Wardens either didn't ask any questions they didn't want to know the answer too or simply turned a blind eye to that technicality, or maybe they just respected that he actually took the time each year to request the permits and didn't really care what happened afterward.
As far as I can remember every deer and coyote he shot, outside of when we would actually go hunting during deer season when he would mostly just bow hunt, he did so using an old Savage bolt action in 22 K Hornet with iron sights shooting a 45 grain cast bullet over a mild load of Unique. His reloading equipment consisted of a Lee Loader, a piece of 38 Special brass that he had soldered/brazed a handle made out of brazing rod to and filed down to the right volume, a two cavity bullet mold, and small dipper and old cast iron pot to melt the lead (he hand packed the bullet lube into the grooves) and I doubt that he ever chronographed any of those but one of the times I came back home while I was in the Marines, I found a few of those old bullets he had loaded and ran them over my other grandfather's chronograph and they were all right around 2000 fps.
If I had to guess he must have killed around 100 or so deer with it over the years, mostly he took head or neck shots but several were shot in the lungs if they were a bit further away, and I can't remember any of them ever not being recovered. When I got a bit older, around 9 or 10, he would have me do most of the shooting so I used it on around a dozen or so deer before he bought me a Marlin 22 WMR and NEF break action 223 when I was 11 or so and a Remington 700 in 22-250 a could years after that that I used up until he sold the farm (I wanted something with a scope as I didn't have perfect eyesight like him).
Sadly, he must have either sold that rifle or gave it to my mother or uncle, either of whom would have then promptly pawned it for alcohol or drug money, along with a few other guns he had when he was in the earlier stages of dementia but before my grandmother and I took all the guns out of the house when it became apparent that it was becoming dangerous for him to be around them.
As far as it being used for poaching, legally speaking most all of those deer he killed using those depredation permits would have been considered poached as despite him having permits to kill them all, he also would not waste the meat and knowing that there were several families in the area that would likely go hungry otherwise, he would always butcher those deer and take them the meat instead of "properly" disposing of the carcass. So technically it was poaching, but being that he was also the local Chief of Police meant that the Game Wardens either didn't ask any questions they didn't want to know the answer too or simply turned a blind eye to that technicality, or maybe they just respected that he actually took the time each year to request the permits and didn't really care what happened afterward.
