Eeets Alive!!! PT II

You've probably guessed most of the answers already.


Sorry, 270 Winchester never showed up. I'm not sure why. Ditto for the 250-3000.

30-06 never showed up. That was interesting in and of itself, so I decided to find out why. It took some doing. However I added a weighted system of ratings. If you figure in Energy at 100 yards, Dekker KOV, and drop at 100 yards, and then make the system search for the best balance of the 3, TADA! You get a result that 's a 30-06, with a 168 grain match bullet , loaded about 92 % of the published maximum. The bullet it picked was not a good deer bullet, but that's okay. There's probably a 165 grain deer bullet that does the same trick. The 30-06 is the best balance within those parameters.

The 270 Win probably has a similar set of parameters that make it the best, I just haven't had the time to find it yet. My guess is that it lies in distances greater than 100 yards.

If you are digging for the best Taylor TKO. The best one of the bunch you can get is 45-70 with a 405 grain load. Of course Taylor invented the TKO based on hunting elephant. It gets penalized dramatically if you penalize for drop at zero of 100 yards.

If you switch to digging for the best Dekker KOV-- (Taylor TKO with SD substituted for caliber) you get 35 Whelen with a 250 grain bullet. If you optimize for 150 yards, you get 358 WIN. If you lower the range to 100 yards, you get 35 Remington.

Now, if you figure in the Shamanic Ratio ( Dekker KOV / recoil energy) and do away with all other provisos, you get . . .envelope please . . .


280 REMINGTON
CASE: REMINGTON
BBL: 24"
PR: REMINGTON 9 1/2
TWIST: 1:10"
TRIM: 2.530"
140 GR. SIE SP
DIA: .284"
COL: 3.230"
SR 4759 29.0gr 2335fps 51,800 CUP


I don't have the data in front of me. I think it was a fairly light load-- about 8 % off maximum.

The only thing I could see against this round was that the drop at 100 yards was over 5.3" I would prefer a flatter round, so I added a penalty for drops of greater than 4" at 100 yards. I reran the scenario. The result was:

6.5 x 55 SWEDISH
CASE: REMINGTON
BBL: 24"
PR: REMINGTON 9 1/2
TWIST: 1:7.87"
TRIM: 2.155"
140 GR. SIE SPBT
DIA: .264"
COL: 3.000"
IMR 3031 34.5gr 2355fps 45,800 CUP

Again, the load was not a full-house load.


So what about the 300 Savage? The 30-30? The 300 Savage 180 grain load is the best round if you are looking for a 30 cal that optimizes for the Shamanic Ratio. If you penalize for recoil, you get a 30-30 with 150 grains.


The bottom line:

1) The past 100 years of deer hunting has a rational basis. What was figured out with sliderule and intuition a few generations ago still makes sense.

2) The last 10 years with all its Wizzums and SAUms are fine, but they're optimized for something other than the fundementals of shooting whitetail deer at under 200 yards.

3) There is something to be said for 260, 280, 308, 358 and 458 as a caliber for deer. However, each has its own set of provisos that make them preferable.

4) You really don't need to bust your shoulder to get a deer dead. Lighter-than-max loads do the job better than maxed-out loads.

5) 30-06 is a good balance, but never the best . It is just the "best all-around."

6) This is all done by a guy who's never hunted West of the Mississippi. There's an inherent bias there If you're looking for answers for ranges exceeding 200 yards, you'll have to weight until I get a larger database put together.

Eeeets Alive Pt I

I once wrote years ago, when I first started dabbling with neural nets and artificial intelligence, that there comes a time in any mad scientist’s life when he feels compelled to grasp the table, lift his eyes to the heavens and exclaim: “EEEETS ALIVE!!!”

I don’t think this is going to push the envelope any in regards to what is known about whitetail deer cartridges. However, this is a good example of one man’s quest for answers to the ultimate question in a deer hunter’s life: What is the best round?

I have been downloading data from the Hodgdon and IMR sites and compiling a database of their published loads. So far, I have built a database of over 1000 loads built on a variety of cartridges. I didn’t grab them all, but I did try to grab the ones that have piqued my curiosity over the years. The range runs from .223 REM to 45-70. I will eventually publish the entire list, but this is an overview.

After I had the database together, I added the bullet database from Pointblank software. That gave me the BC and SD’s on most of the bullets in the Hodgdon and IMR sites. I then spent an evening matching the data up.

Then, I took a exterior ballistics spreadsheet template that I pulled off the net. It’s a shareware piece called “ball1232.zip.”

To summarize: I took a bunch of load data from Hodgdon and IMR, and added sectional density and ballistic co-efficient data. Then I married it up with an exterior ballistics worksheet and fed the whole thing into Microsoft Excel.

Then I added a copy of EVOLVER. It’s like Microsoft Excel’s SOLVER add-in, but it does a lot of tricky non-linear stuff to try and find the optimal answer to a complex question.

Here are the questions I started to ask:

Given the data at hand, which gives you the best bang for the ensuing recoil? If I don’t mind the recoil, what’s the best cartridge for 50 yards, 75 yards, 100 yards? 150 yards?

If I want a 30 caliber load, what’s the best? What if I want something under 30?

Anyone care to guess some of the best ones? I’ve been rather surprised. Not so much as they’re complete foolers. The answers are remarkably similar to popular views.

For qualifying “best bang “ I used the TKO formula. That didn’t quite do it, so I used the Bekker’s KOV variant that uses sectional density in place of bullet diameter. I then created the Shamanic Ratio: Bekker’s KOV divided by the recoil energy in foot/lbs. That gave me a number somewhere under 2. A pea-shooter like 223 REM gave a very low number. Shoulder-fired artillery like 45-70 didn’t fair to well either (but better than some might think). This seemed the best way to penalize a cartridge that was best suited for a light howitzer instead of a deer rifle.

These aren’t hard and fast declarations of fact. The application is limited in a lot of ways. First, there is not a lot of pet load data to feed in. These are just Hodgdon and IMR’s maximum load data. These are benchmarks to keep sane men from blowing themselves up. To modify them somewhat, I gave the app the ability to modify the number of grains so that it could extrapolate up to a 8% reduction from the max load. I tried a bunch of other things too:

1) I did away with the Shamanic Ratio and optimized just for Bekker KOV and Taylor’s TKO. I then penalized the system progressively for recoil over 20 ft./lbs
2) I let the app play with rifle weight and told it that I would punish it if it tried to tell me I should try a 10lb rifle to help offset recoil.
3) I made a rule that 150 yard energy must be over 1000 ft/lbs., and then I tweaked it a bit.
4) The options go on and on.

It’s amazing the sort of games you can play in Excel before the whole thing freezes up and you have to reload the app. The Evolver add-in works with artificial intelligence and it throws around terms like “propagation,” “mutation,” and “organism.” You can create little logical cattle-prods to keep the artificial intelligence processing along the right track. To many prods, however, and it rears up and bites you. I’ve had to restart Excel twice since I started this post.

Mind you, I’m still just toying with this application. These are not definitive answers.
No, I didn’t feed in your pet load, or mine. I didn’t put in all the loads in all the tables, just the ones that interested me. I will continue to expand on this project over time.

Right now, I’m re-running it with a straight concentration on the Shamanic Ratio with an 7.5 lb rifle and no other bells and whistles. This run does not worry about target distance. I’ll let what’s in the Petri dish grow for a while. Any guesses what comes up?

A Virtual Deer Camp

It occurred to me today that the world could stand a virtual deer camp. We need a place where it's always deer season. A place where we can always come back and find the stew pot simmering. My concept is not to compete with places like 24HourCampfire or BaitShopBoys. This is a writing project. Go ask those guys for help picking out a new deer rifle. This would be a good place for starting a post with something like:

" The alarm went off. It was way too early, but I knew the deer wouldn't wait."

or

"Fred looked over at me and said, "Kid! what the heck are you doing with that barrel???"

Is it real? Did it really happen? Who cares. This is VIRTUAL deer camp. Come check it out at Virtual Deer Camp

My proposition is this. Anyone is welcome. We will begin this forum with the clock set to a few days before gun season. You can write in first or third person. You can introduce characters, you can use characters of others. However, you must be aware that if you use a character that others have created, there is a certain etiquitte to this process. Writers love to see their characters blossom. They can't stand to see them misused or abused.

I will attempt to start this out and we'll see how it goes. As to where camp is, or what it's called, or what happens, that's up to us.

Acceptable Deer Rifle Accuracy?

Acceptable deer hunting accuracy? I'd say that is a two-part answer:

What can the rifle do?
What can I do with the rifle?

I usually shoot a rifle from the bench and work toward a 1-2MOA groups with a given load. Sometimes, starting out, a rifle may print 6-10" groups before I start tweeking. Once I get it down to 1-2" at 100 yards, I stop trying. Going further is not necessary. I have a slug gun that shoots more like 4" at fifty, but that's okay.

Then comes the real question: what can I do with the rifle. I've always figured that I'm doing all right if I can put it on a pie-plate at a given distance with a given stance, I'll be okay. That goes for bow, slug, rifle, anything. If I can keep it in a 10" circle, that deer is dead. In an unsupported offhand shot with my slug gun that's probably 65 yards. With my best deer rifle resting against a tree, I can go well over 200 yards. My longest shot deer hunting so far is 165 yards-- nailed a coyote with a scoped '06.

However, I also have to admit that I don't push myself in that direction. My hunting is mostly done from ground blinds and elevated stands at bowhunting distances. Most of the deer I've shot have been at distances between 10 feet and 30 yards. Most of the venues I hunt preclude shots over 80 yards. It does not take that much work to get a rifle to shoot into a pieplate at that distance, and that's fine by me. The time and effort I save on bench time is all used on scouting.

Glasses and Deer Hunting

I've been wearing glasses since I was 9. I have always been nearsighted. Iron sights have always been a bit of a problem for me, but scopes work fine. For the most part, I hunt with a 1.5-4.5X scope with decent eye relief, and I have no problems.

There are few things you can do to make eyeglasses less of a hassle.

First, buy yourself a glass strap. Croakies makes a good one. Use a strap. The last thing you want to do is lose your glasses while you're out.

Second, treat your glasses with some sort of anti-fog before going out. I've had several instances of my glasses fogging up just as I was trying to take a shot. You get excited, you get pumped, the temperature of your face goes up a couple of degrees. That warm moist air hits your cold lenses and Poof! Dishwashing liquid works. Spit works in a pinch. Those commercial no-fog preparations are amazing. Rain-ex is supposedly the bomb.

I was told I needed bifocals two years ago, and I knew it would be a problem for me. I opted for two pair of glasses. I never carry the reading glasses with me when I'm in the field. If you have trouble, just ask the doc to write you a script for some good distance glasses without the astigmatism correction. Remember to carry a card with your prescription on it. As long as you can find a Walmart, you can have glasses.

I always pick the largest wire frame glasses I can find. The bigger the lens, the happier I am. I get the most protection from a large lens. When I'm out, I always wear a hat with a large brim. It does a lot to create a pocket of dead air behind the lens -- less dust, etc. blowing in. A hat will also keep rain off your glasses.

Yute Rifles

elec1675 , a new member at 24HourCampfire wanted to know what we all thought about a Mini-30 as a Yute rifle:



Reged: 02/13/05
Posts: 4
Loc: Wisconsin Anyone use a mini-30 for whitetail?
#429900 - 02/13/05 01:56 PM Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply



I'm looking at a deal on a used 7.62x39 ruger as a deer



I'm looking at a deal on a used 7.62x39 ruger as a deer rifle for my son (1st season '05) We hunt in a mix of heavy woods and cornfields where a heavy bullet is better. Any opinions? My other option is I give him my 99 savage in .300 and use my 99EG in .250 savage (100gr. ). I trust my son, but I really like these 99's. What to do, what to do?



My Opinion


I am not going to try and talk you out of a Mini-30 or a 7.62X39. It is roughly equivalent to a semi-auto 30-30. Use good ammo for deer and save the nasty steel-case surplus stuff for the plinking range. You probably won't go too wrong. I've shot Mini-30's; they're not the most accurate, but they are fine for close-in hunting. There're certainly lighter than an SKS.

The one thing I can say against a Mini-30 is that I was glad I had a fairly accurate rifle for starting out my son. I doubt you'll get much better than 4" groups at 100 yards from a Mini-30. The fact that I was able to shoot tight groups helped me isolate his accuracy problems from the rifle's. It also is inspirational for a young boy to see what kind of group can come from a rifle when Dad does it right. Make sure that whatever you choose, it's a rifle that doesn't have you second guessing.

On the other hand, if you're a Savage 99 fan, why not think about a Savage 99 in 308? Either for you or him. It will be a better all-around rifle. I load mine light for deer (down around 300 Savage levels) and it's an awesome deerslayer with minimal recoil.

My #2 started with a full-sized 30-30 lever as his Yute rifle. #3 is still too small to shoulder anything serious, but claims he wants a Ruger Deerfield.

Another good Yute rifle in my mind are those old Savage 30-30 bolt-actions. They're just about everywhere in the used bin. They're just fine for those first few hunts, and then you stick them in the back of the closet for the grandkids. I was shopping for one when I discovered that Mooseboy could shoulder a Marlin 336 without modification.

BTW: one other tip. If you go shopping for a Yute rifle, double-check places like Brownells and Boyds to see if you can pick up a full-sized replacement stock as he grows. You'll be surprised how soon you will be wanting one.

The Lucky Thermos

I used to take a themos of coffee all the time. In fact it was a that small thermos that was , in part, responsible for my first deer. I'd run out of regular coffee that morning, and used some ultra-high test espresso stuff to brew up my thermos load. I hunted on the ground that morning, and after a couple of cups of that stuff, I had to go "pay the rent"

I walked over a few feet from my ground blind and I was just zipping up when I noticed there was a nice stump to sit on and the stump overlooked a different part of the creek bottom I'd not seen before. It was slow, so I thought I'd stay put for a while on that stump. I had this new-fangled thing called a grunt call. I blew it, and just then a herd of deer broke from a line of cedars just a few feet up hill and ran right at me.

The got so close that one set of hoof prints was between my boots. I got my first doe out that herd-- caught her running at a distance of less than 10 yards with a 30-06.

That thermos had been the one I carried from Kindergarten on. It fit inside my lunchbox. When I started deer hunting I dug it out of the back of Mom's cupboard and put some camo tape on it. It lasted 15 seasons until completely rusting away about 5 years ago. Nowadays, I carry a big stainless thermos I used to take to work if I'm going to be in the blind all day. It just ain't the same. I miss my lucky thermos.

223 for Deer?

muzzleloaderman writes on 24HourCampfire:
.223 on deer
#425666 - 02/06/05 07:02 PM

Hey guys. I have been thinkin about getting a .223 for squirrels an other varments. Now I havnt checked the regulations but if its legal, what are your guys opinions on hunting blacktail with a .223? Ranges would ussually be up to a 100 yards occasionally out to 200. I know shot placement is the key, but still what are your guys's opinions?

________________________________________________________________________I had a similar project in mind a few years ago. However, I could never find a load that satisfied me. 223 Rem on deer is a finesse round. Everyone I've talked to or read that had good things to say about the round in regards to deer always stress good shot placement. To me, that says something. Of course, shot placement is important with any round. However, the net effect always seems to be damning the 223 with faint praise, at least to my ears.

That being said, here's what got me on my quest for a .223 Deerslayer. It's a posting from the old AllOutdoors forum from back in 2000:

(I don't have the header, but it came from the Texas Hill Country)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I used a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch rifle (.223) with a 1-7" twist, loaded with Hornady 75 grain A-Max bullets over a minimum charge of W748. The long, heavy bullets were seated much deeper than recommended to comply with the 2.25" OAL to allow feeding from the magazine. Best guess at velocity would be about 2400 f.p.s. I hit the deer in the center of the left shoulder blade and the bullet
exited in the center of the right blade.

The deer ran about 40 yards before falling over. Strange thing, though, the right-side frontal lobe of the lungs was hanging outside the body, through the small exit wound. Upon field dressing, I found that the left-side front lobe of the lungs was pulp. The right lobe, in it's entirety, was outside the body, intact and seemingly undamaged, connected through a little-finger size hole. I guess that the bullet must have not expanded, but tumbled through the left-side lung and pushed the right-side lung out of the way and then sucked it along in it's wake out of the small exit hole.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That sounded like a ripping good deer load, and I had a brand new Mini-14 to play with. Truck loads of deer falling to a 223 bullet couldn't be a fluke. A year later I gave up-- could not get the bullet to stabilize out of my Mini-14. I could keep it from keyholing when I when I shot it out of a Savage 325, but there wasn't enough twist in the Ruger. I also knew if I dropped back down to a more conventional bullet weight, I could make it work. However, the final decision to end the project came as I started harvesting deer off our new property in Kentucky. The size of the deer dictated some heavier medicine. While I am sure I could nail a yearling doe with a .223 Rem, I've tagged 200lb + bucks and 160lb+ does. The neighbors have tagged 300-pounders occasionally. The more I scouted, the less this project looked like a good idea.
As Brody said to Quint: "We'll need a bigger boat."

If you are starting from scratch looking for a deer round, I would suggest .243 over the 223 Rem as a good comfortable bottom end for starting your search. If I was going to start over again on a Mini-14-for-deer project, I think I would save time and money buying a Mini-30 or 44Mag Deerfield.


. . . but that's just my opinion.

More Game Animals I Have killed

Well, I probably have you all beat on sheer numbers. You have to remember, we were just a bunch of inner-city Yuffies (Young Urban Failures) enjoying a protracted adolescence.

Back in the early 80's, I ended up with a terrific cockroach problem. We'd shot this feature film in the basement of the house I was living in, and for the effect of dust in the air, we used flour. Better than 20 pound of flour went into the air over the 6 months of shooting. By Christmas, I had the best herd of grain-fed roaches in the county.

I tried everything-- sprays, traps, bombs. At best it would knock 'em back for a few weeks, but the flour had been carried into every crevice in the house. I couldn't afford an exterminator.

Before I discovered the magic of Boric Acid, we got into roach hunting. We'd turn off the lights and sit in the dark and watch TV. At the commercials, we'd throw a spotlight on the wall and jacklight the critters. The walls were going to be re-hab'd eventually, so making holes was no problem. However, we found that 177 pellets made too much of a divot and BB's made for some dangerous richochets.

Blowgun. That's right: blowgun. You could send a needle into one from across the room and pin it to the wall. We'd just leave them up there as a warning to the others. Later, the cat would come along and pull it off and eat it. At one point I had twenty pinned on the wall at once. Forget all other game animals-- for shear fun there's nothing like watching Johnny Carson on the tube and hunting roaches on the commercials. We killed hundreds. It also requires far more skill than bowhunting deer. Try hitting a moving dime-sized target with a blowgun at 20 feet sometime.

Then there was the pigeons. I lived up by the University of Cincinnati. There were hundreds of pigeons around my house. Again, I tried BB's and found the richochets were a problem. I tried .177 pellet and found they were travelling clear through the bird without effect and I was loosing them. I finally switched to a Crossman .22 pump air rifle. The larger caliber pellet would knock them out of the sky. I'd go upstairs to the attic after work and plug pigeons until sunset. We'd have shooting parties up on the roof-- maybe five of us, nailing pigeons on the neighboring roofs. I had some light surf tackle and a snag hook handy. If they didn't fall in the yard, I could cast over and snag them and drag them off the roof. Retrieval was no problem-- the cats helped out.

One of the regulars went as far as documenting the whole thing in a performance art piece that he used in his senior art show. Somewhere, I still have the stills. It included interviews, tips, and a commentary somewhat like Kurt Gowdy on the American Sportsman. I wrote the copy for him.

The cockroach derby lasted less than a year. By the next summer I'd spread a 50 lb sack of Boric Acid everywhere. The critters picked it up on their feet and carried it back into the walls to die. I never had a roach problem again. Eventually the plaster was spackled over and re-painted.

The pigeon shoots lasted for years. I bought countless containers of 22 air rifle pellets. We'd sometimes have a half a dozen pigeons in the garbage can in less than a half hour shoot. The cats got everything we couldn't get to. It got so just shooting pigeons sitting on a gutter line wasn't enough. We did pigeons on the wing, pigeons having sex (you get the male first; the female stays on the perch and wonders what happened) . At one point we found a tree in a local park that had fermented berries in mid September. The pigeons would get drunk on the berries. With a spotter looking for the park police, we'd take turns off a picnic table. The drunken pigeon shoot was a special annual treat.

Before it was all over, I'd started including the hunting results in my column in the local underground newspaper, and in my stand-up routines at the local clubs. Few folks believed the stories, but it always got laughs.

All this fun went away when I grew up, joined the NRA and a local gun club and started hunting deer, turkey, and engaging in regular sport.