I shot a buffalo this morning...from seven yards.
The father of a shooting friend of mine is a ranch butcher. For a fee, he'll come to your ranch and butcher your cow, pig or even buffalo if you pay him enough. He usually does a few animals every morning and then takes the rest of the day off. He makes it look easy but he's been doing it for many years.
Anyway, he was hired for three bison that were somehow raised as pets here in Northern California. The problem was that they had a habit of jumping over fences and being very unruly when you wanted them to do something...aka, stand still and get shot. Eventually he and his son (my shooting friend) came up with idea to shoot all three at the same time so that they wouldn't try to escape...and this is where I came into the fold.
I was invited to tag along and be a trigger man due to the fact that I own a large bore rifle; an 1895 Winchester chambered in .405 Winchester to be exact.
I had some full power loads loaded up so I grabbed a few and went to their place this morning. The guns were my .405, a Rem 700 in .375 H&H and a Marlin in .22 WMR. Obviously the Marlin was assigned the smallest animal and my friend and I flipped for the largest one. I won and took the big animal with my .405. Now you may think that a .22 WMR is ridiculous for an 700 pound animal, but I can assure you, he brings down large cows with it on a regular basis.
We walked up to the pen where they were kept. They immediately walked toward us and stopped at about 10 yards. Slowly they moved towards us and within a few seconds all of us were prepared to shoot. On the count of three all of us fired and they collapsed to the ground in a heap of dust. All shots were frontal head shots right above the eyes. On the good side of things, there weren't any problems and all of them died very quickly. On the other side of things, the real work has just begun.
The load used in the .375 was a Barnes 270 grain Triple Shock over 71 grains of IMR 4064 and Federal Large Rifle Magnum primers all put together in Winchester brass with an estimated velocity of 2650 fps. My .405 Winchester was using a Hornady 300 grain jacketed soft point over 55 grains of IMR 4895 and Winchester Large Rifle primers and Hornady brass. I estimated my velocity to be around 2200 fps.
Neither of us put our bullets between the eyes. I was a bit high and left and my friend was a bit low and right. Either way, both animals dropped DRT. Once the heads were removed, we skinned them and examined the bullet entrance holes and the back of the skull area. As you can see from the pic, the different types of bullets made significantly different entrance wounds.
There was a lot more bloodshot flesh around the soft point entrance compared to the Barnes bullet and its straight punch effect.
Penetration of the Barnes bullet was also a lot deeper than the Hornady bullet. We estimated the penetration to be almost 32" with the bullet path terminating almost equal to the shoulder in depth. The Hornady penetrated approximately 22" ending its travels in the offside neck muscle. We believe that the difference in penetration is somewhat attributable to the fact that the Barnes bullet didn't fully penetrate the brain cavity. Examining the wound path, it appears that my friend shot low enough to completely bypass the brain compared to the fact that the Hornady had to penetrate skull bone twice (once in the front of the head and once in the back).
It was also apparent that the Hornady soft point did a lot more damage to flesh and bone. A lot of meat was pulverized and bones were falling out in small pieces. I also stabbed my fingertips with pieces of sharp bones several times, so I'm assuming that bone fragments acting as secondary missiles contributed greatly to the quick collapse of the animal.
Anyway, the most interesting thing I noticed out of the whole experience is how the lowly .22 WMR dropped these large animals just as fast as the minimum African game cartridge.
Hope ya'll enjoyed...
Ed
The father of a shooting friend of mine is a ranch butcher. For a fee, he'll come to your ranch and butcher your cow, pig or even buffalo if you pay him enough. He usually does a few animals every morning and then takes the rest of the day off. He makes it look easy but he's been doing it for many years.
Anyway, he was hired for three bison that were somehow raised as pets here in Northern California. The problem was that they had a habit of jumping over fences and being very unruly when you wanted them to do something...aka, stand still and get shot. Eventually he and his son (my shooting friend) came up with idea to shoot all three at the same time so that they wouldn't try to escape...and this is where I came into the fold.
I was invited to tag along and be a trigger man due to the fact that I own a large bore rifle; an 1895 Winchester chambered in .405 Winchester to be exact.
I had some full power loads loaded up so I grabbed a few and went to their place this morning. The guns were my .405, a Rem 700 in .375 H&H and a Marlin in .22 WMR. Obviously the Marlin was assigned the smallest animal and my friend and I flipped for the largest one. I won and took the big animal with my .405. Now you may think that a .22 WMR is ridiculous for an 700 pound animal, but I can assure you, he brings down large cows with it on a regular basis.
We walked up to the pen where they were kept. They immediately walked toward us and stopped at about 10 yards. Slowly they moved towards us and within a few seconds all of us were prepared to shoot. On the count of three all of us fired and they collapsed to the ground in a heap of dust. All shots were frontal head shots right above the eyes. On the good side of things, there weren't any problems and all of them died very quickly. On the other side of things, the real work has just begun.
The load used in the .375 was a Barnes 270 grain Triple Shock over 71 grains of IMR 4064 and Federal Large Rifle Magnum primers all put together in Winchester brass with an estimated velocity of 2650 fps. My .405 Winchester was using a Hornady 300 grain jacketed soft point over 55 grains of IMR 4895 and Winchester Large Rifle primers and Hornady brass. I estimated my velocity to be around 2200 fps.
Neither of us put our bullets between the eyes. I was a bit high and left and my friend was a bit low and right. Either way, both animals dropped DRT. Once the heads were removed, we skinned them and examined the bullet entrance holes and the back of the skull area. As you can see from the pic, the different types of bullets made significantly different entrance wounds.
There was a lot more bloodshot flesh around the soft point entrance compared to the Barnes bullet and its straight punch effect.
Penetration of the Barnes bullet was also a lot deeper than the Hornady bullet. We estimated the penetration to be almost 32" with the bullet path terminating almost equal to the shoulder in depth. The Hornady penetrated approximately 22" ending its travels in the offside neck muscle. We believe that the difference in penetration is somewhat attributable to the fact that the Barnes bullet didn't fully penetrate the brain cavity. Examining the wound path, it appears that my friend shot low enough to completely bypass the brain compared to the fact that the Hornady had to penetrate skull bone twice (once in the front of the head and once in the back).
It was also apparent that the Hornady soft point did a lot more damage to flesh and bone. A lot of meat was pulverized and bones were falling out in small pieces. I also stabbed my fingertips with pieces of sharp bones several times, so I'm assuming that bone fragments acting as secondary missiles contributed greatly to the quick collapse of the animal.
Anyway, the most interesting thing I noticed out of the whole experience is how the lowly .22 WMR dropped these large animals just as fast as the minimum African game cartridge.
Hope ya'll enjoyed...
Ed
