Brush Guns*, Big Woods Rifles, Whatever you call them..

Got to be calm, cool. Can’t let the emotion of the hunt throw you off.
That's one of the reasons I always try
to wear a watch when hunting.
If a deer gets it's feet and runs
a bit, I stay put and quiet ( no
war cries or victory yells) and time
myself before I go looking for a
spot of bl**d where the deer was
standing at the shot. That's giving
me time to safely reload, nock
another arrow, give thanks, etc.
and not bump a down deer and
let it get that adrenaline shot.
I've only followed up immediately,
and that was because it was pouring
rain. I found the first sign and marked
it and waited a bit longer
 
That's one of the reasons I always try
to wear a watch when hunting.
If a deer gets it's feet and runs
a bit, I stay put and quiet ( no
war cries or victory yells) and time
myself before I go looking for a
spot of bl**d where the deer was
standing at the shot. That's giving
me time to safely reload, nock
another arrow, give thanks, etc.
and not bump a down deer and
let it get that adrenaline shot.
I've only followed up immediately,
and that was because it was pouring
rain. I found the first sign and marked
it and waited a bit longer
Your post brought a big smile and a fond memory, Ranger99. Dad wore a wristwatch but watching it to tell how much time to wait before following up on a deer he'd hit was not what he taught me to do. As strange as this sounds nowadays, Dad told me to sit down and smoke a cigarette before trying to follow an animal I thought I might have hit, and it ran off anyway. :D
 
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I was taught to wait 30 minutes by my
eldet relatives as a teen, but a shotgun
with buckshot was the standard deer
firearm back then, and a lot of the
hits were less than optimal.
From my decades of rifle shooting,
if I can't follow up in 5-10-15, I
probably missed altogether if
there's no sign where it initially stood.
I'll mark the hoofprints do a few
circles looking for blood, hair, tissue
etc. but I never blow it off and NOT
look like some I've known over the years
Your post brought a big smile and a fond memory, Ranger99. Dad wore a wristwatch but watching it to tell how much time to wait before following up on a deer he'd hit was not what he taught me to do. As strange as this sounds nowadays, Dad told me to sit down and smoke a cigarette before trying to follow an animal I thought I might have hit, and it ran off anyway. :D
 
375 H&H on deer is a bit much. But along those lines just use a 105 and be done with it.
have you ever shot a deer with a .375? You'd be surprised. I use mine specifically for deer because its extremely capable and does surprisingly little peripheral damage compared to lighter/smaller rounds. There are benefits to trading a little velocity for a lot of extra mass, and surprising things happen when you drop a few hundred FPS and double your bullet weight.
The saying goes with the .375,
You can eat right up to the hole.
I hung up the 7mm mag and got the .375 after I shot a smallish buck with the 7mm at 75 yards, hit him in the shoulder joint, deflected 90 degrees and blew a dinner plate size hole in his chest on the way out.
I lost about 1/4 of the meat on that deer including the backstraps and tenderloins from bullet/bone fragments and bloodshot.
After that I was done with the 7mm magnum.
 
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375 H&H on deer is a bit much. But along those lines just use a 105 and be done with it.
I've taken smaller mule deer with my 375 and it left a clean thumb sized hole with very little meat damage or blood shock. You could quite literally eat up to the hole, had it not been in the ribs... I was using 270gr Barnes TSX. It was kind of neat, the petals of the bullet shaved the hair nearly down to the skin on the off side as the bullet exited.
 
have you ever shot a deer with a .375? You'd be surprised. I use mine specifically for deer because its extremely capable and does surprisingly little peripheral damage compared to lighter/smaller rounds. There are benefits to trading a little velocity for a lot of extra mass, and surprising things happen when you drop a few hundred FPS and double your bullet weight.
The saying goes with the .375,
You can eat right up to the hole.
I hung up the 7mm mag and got the .375 after I shot a smallish buck with the 7mm at 75 yards, hit him in the shoulder joint, deflected 90 degrees and blew a dinner plate size hole in his chest on the way out.
I lost about 1/4 of the meat on that deer including the backstraps and tenderloins from bullet/bone fragments and bloodshot.
After that I was done with the 7mm magnum.
Dont use speer 270s btsps at 2800+ lol, its more hamburger than hole at that point.....tho at 2600 they were great.
 
I was taught to wait 30 minutes by my
eldet relatives as a teen, but a shotgun
with buckshot was the standard deer
firearm back then, and a lot of the
hits were less than optimal
Yeah, "deer hunting" for me has always been mule deer hunting in fairly open country, and I've always used a rifle. My first "deer rifle" was/is a .308 Winchester, Model 100 Winchester.
Even at that, the first deer I shot with it, an average sized mule deer doe, ran uphill about a hundred yards after she was well hit (through the ribs) while I put 3 more bullets through her - and you could have covered all 4 entry holes with one hand. Of course, the other side of her ribs was a different story - what a mess! o_O
The thing was, I'd heard far too many stories from "old" guys telling me my .308 Winchester would "knock em down," and as a 15-year-old kid shooting my first deer, I was too inexperienced to know that I'd hit that deer good with my first shot, so I kept shooting until she fell down.
I'm 76 now (one of those "old" guys), and I learned a l-o-n-g time ago that sometimes deer "look like" they're "knocked down," and sometimes they run a ways even after they're well hit. Dad taught me to wait a while before trying to follow a deer that's been hit. As I said, he told me to sit down and smoke a cigarette - give the deer time to lay down and die.
Oh BTW, - I've never been a cigarette smoker, and I gave up my pipe in 2005. So, "Sit down and smoke a cigarette" has always been a kind of metaphor for "wait awhile" to me. ;)
 
IIRC, it was Finn Aagard that constructed a “test box” to try to simulate shooting through brush, in order to determine exactly what would “buck brush”.
Finn was an immigrant from Southern Africa. I believe it was Namibia or Kenya when they outlawed big game hunting.
Irregardless, he settled in the Texas hill country. He had ideas about what would work shooting through the mesquite…
He tried an assortment of things but what stuck with me was that a LONG bullet with a high sectional density and FAST TWIST, ie: high rotational momentum gave the best results.

There is a lot of difference between shooting through brush and shooting through limbs. If you watched the videos I posted on the first page the test done by Iraqveteran8888 showed that most bullets did OK going through brush but even the 30-30 that put two of its shots on target through brush was thrown off on the third shot when the bullet center punched a thumb sized limb. And in the test the bigger heavier bullets did better than light weight high speed bullets.

I have hunted a lot and most of it in some fairly dense brush. One thing I have learned is that if the brush is so thick you think you have to have a stubby gun to hunt it you probably aren't going to see any deer anyway. You may find their fresh tracks where you pushed them out of their beds and cover but no deer is going to sit still for you to push your way through thick brush. In the videos I posted he used a 30-06 with 220gr bullets. That gun with a 22" barrel and the heavy for caliber bullets made as good a brush gun as any other gun. And it blew right through the brush. Had it of hit a limb the story may have been different.
 
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I in no way diminished what you said, or the video, I was adding to it. In the 40+yr old article I referenced, Finn used several layers of 3/8” hardwood dowels such that the bullet could not pass without impacting a dowel. He shot at several distances and angles and various distances between the box and targets.
You affirmed what he found. Not contradicted.

Where I hunt, after the first week of deer season, you seldom see a deer in the open during daylight hours. Most shots are under 50yds, and through some kind of cover. The challenge is verifying it’s a legal deer. Spikes and others with less than 4pts on one side or less than a 16” outside spread aren’t legal. I’ve had to pass up shooting three times in the past 2weeks because I couldn’t see enough points.
So yeah, deer do hang out in the thick stuff. You have to be careful, quiet, still , and control your scent. Mostly hunting from elevated stands with cut shooting lanes.
 
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I have never thought that "brush gun" meant a gun that could shoot through brush impacting twigs, leaves, limbs, squirrels and squirrel hunters along the way. I always thought it mean a short, fast to action, relatively light rifle that could be brought to aim on game appearing from no where in thick brush and woods where there is often only narrow windows of opportunity for brief moments.
 
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I have never thought that "brush gun" meant a gun that could shot through brush impacting twigs, leaves, limbs, squirrels and squirrel hunters along the way. I always thought it mean a short, fast to action, relatively light rifle that could be brought to aim on game appearing from no where in thick brush and woods where there is often only narrow windows of opportunity for brief moments.
That’s how I view it. Carbine type easy to carry through the thick.
While heavy for caliber bullets may fair better through thick brush, it is my opinion that any bullet can be deflected from brush, and move off target. I feel I owe it to the animal I’m hunting to not depend on a bullet busting through brush.
That is my opinion, others may vary.
 
Go ahead and get the laugh out of the way.

View attachment 1232527

Only reason I took that picture, was the shot was a good one. Sounder crashing through the woods, the trail we were on only had a ~12-15 ft wide lane visibility wise and that little one popped into the open at a later learned 88yds, running full speed and DRT rolling into the other side of the trail with one shot. Was lucky enough to not have just one witness but two.
Hey, baby back ribs.
 
I in no way diminished what you said, or the video, I was adding to it. In the 40+yr old article I referenced, Finn used several layers of 3/8” hardwood dowels such that the bullet could not pass without impacting a dowel. He shot at several distances and angles and various distances between the box and targets.
You affirmed what he found. Not contradicted.

Where I hunt, after the first week of deer season, you seldom see a deer in the open during daylight hours. Most shots are under 50yds, and through some kind of cover. The challenge is verifying it’s a legal deer. Spikes and others with less than 4pts on one side or less than a 16” outside spread aren’t legal. I’ve had to pass up shooting three times in the past 2weeks because I couldn’t see enough points.
So yeah, deer do hang out in the thick stuff. You have to be careful, quiet, still , and control your scent. Mostly hunting from elevated stands with cut shooting lanes.

Hey Goose no problem. We are just two guys having a conversation about guns. I agreed with what you said and I remember the article. I didn't remember it being Finn Aagaard who wrote it but it WAS a long time ago. And its dumb to try and shoot through limbs no matter what caliber you are using. Even shooting through brush has its risk in that you might misidentify your target and shoot another hunter. And you don't have to agree with everything I say. Everyone has different experiences and if yours is different than mine please post it. Thats how we all learn. I consider everything someone else post because I don't know it all. I am always learning something new.

I am lucky to be able to hunt on my buds land. Its just he and I who hunt there and I can go all I want. Every single day if I want to so I don't have to take any risky shots. There is always tomorrow to try again if I need to.

I have never thought that "brush gun" meant a gun that could shoot through brush impacting twigs, leaves, limbs, squirrels and squirrel hunters along the way. I always thought it mean a short, fast to action, relatively light rifle that could be brought to aim on game appearing from no where in thick brush and woods where there is often only narrow windows of opportunity for brief moments.

"Brush Guns" mean different to to different people. Keep in mind that early Americans and pilgrims hunted the Eastern woods to near extinction with Flint Lock rifles that measured 50+ inches long in the 1700s. To me a brush gun is what ever gun I happen to be carrying when hunting in the woods. Maybe my best short and heavy bullet gun is my Marlin 1894 in 44 mag. Its short, light and with a 240gr bullet should do fine shooting through a screen of brush. The 44 mag was tested in the videos I posted and it drove right through the brush. No limbs were encountered so there's that.
 
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"Brush Guns" mean different to to different people. Keep in mind that early Americans and pilgrims hunted the Eastern woods to near extinction with Flint Lock rifles that measured 50+ inches long in the 1700s. To me a brush gun is what ever gun I happen to be carrying when hunting in the woods. Maybe my best short and heavy bullet gun is my Marlin 1894 in 44 mag. Its short, light and with a 240gr bullet should do fine shooting through a screen of brush. The 44 mag was tested in the videos I posted and it drove right through the brush. No limbs were encountered so there's that.

I suspect if somebody had handed the early Americans a modern Marlin 1895 or a Rossi .44 Magnum they would have dropped that flintlock like a hot potato and never looked back. Just because something was done does not make that something ideal, it is just what they had. And they were probably hungry a lot of the time. Why did not Henry Ford just build the modern F150 (well, okay, the slightly less than modern one that I could still afford and ran on petroleum products) instead of a Model T?
 
I have never thought that "brush gun" meant a gun that could shoot through brush impacting twigs, leaves, limbs, squirrels and squirrel hunters along the way. I always thought it mean a short, fast to action, relatively light rifle that could be brought to aim on game appearing from no where in thick brush and woods where there is often only narrow windows of opportunity for brief moments.
Unfortunately, many do think a "brush gun" CAN shoot though brush, twigs, limbs, etc. The OP included "big woods" in the definition. But if it isn't relatively handy (i.e short and light), no one but a kid, who has yet to experience real fatigue, will call it a "big woods" rifle. I'm sure there are folks on here that at 60 y/o can do 8-12 miles a day (all uphill, of course) on their hind feet with a 10# 375, but it ain't me. :)
 
Why did not Henry Ford just build the modern F150 (well, okay, the slightly less than modern one that I could still afford and ran on petroleum products) instead of a Model T?

For the roads at the time the Model T was a better vehicle. The large size wagon wheels it had on it let it go places a modern truck couldn't navigate. And as a bonus the rear wheel of the Model T could be removed and a pulley added and the MT used to power a saw mill or other tool that may have previously been powered by a steam engine. Don't turn your nose up at old technology. Some of it was right for the time.

And people didn't abandon their flint locks just because cap locks came out or even metallic cartridges. Flint locks were still being made after the end of the civil war. And some still carried their cap lock revolvers even after self contained rounds were invented. Lose powder and ball could keep flinters and cap lock guns firing when self contained rounds couldn't be found or afforded.
 
A good food prep knife ? anyone have one? I am curios

For the roads at the time the Model T was a better vehicle. The large size wagon wheels it had on it let it go places a modern truck couldn't navigate. And as a bonus the rear wheel of the Model T could be removed and a pulley added and the MT used to power a saw mill or other tool that may have previously been powered by a steam engine. Don't turn your nose up at old technology. Some of it was right for the time.
Yeah
The old ag tractors we used to use
had a big wide belt pulley on the
side for using a wide thick leather
belt to power a sawmill, hay packer,
thresher, grain mill, water pumps,
generators, etc. etc.
Lots of old machinery was powered
by big thick leather belts until they
started building self powered combines,
PTO hay balers, etc.
Most old factories were water wheel
powered driving a large main shaft,
and the machinery used a leather
belt to take it's power from the main
driving shaft overhead
 
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