The Hunter's Alaska Read online

  4 - Guns, Ballistics

  and

  Other Interesting Stuff

  Most hunters love to discuss guns and all the hardware that goes with them, and few subjects are more intriguing to hunters than an author's opinions on proper weaponry.

  Yet, hunting guns are difficult to write about. Alaskan hunting conditions can vary so widely that generalities can become absurdities. Hunters differ in their abilities to handle recoil, heavy rifles, various sight combinations, and mechanical actions.

  It must be added that, despite any difficulties inherent in evaluating hunting arms and calibers, there is little this author would rather write about.

  In this portion of the book I would like to sort of roam across that subject matter. I would like to drift off a little now and then so that I can discuss that which I feel of immediate interest, rather than belabor until the reader is ready to holler "Uncle" just to get on to something (anything) else.

  I cannot recall when I began shooting a rifle, but I was a small boy. Shooting, hunting, and the outdoors have remained unflagging interests. (God, those are trite sentences for a hunter to write. Most of us were like that growing up.)

  Combine more than sixty-five years of gun and hunting experience with dedicated study and writing on the subjects and some pretty solid opinions are bound to develop. Having taken more than two hundred head of big game in Europe, Asia, and North America, I have formed some stem attitudes as to right and wrong in hunting weaponry.

  There are other aspects to my weaponry experience. I was a combat rifleman in WWII and the Korean Conflict. During the latter war, I developed and operated an infantry division sniper school in Japan. I first came to Alaska as a US Army Arctic Test Board test NCO, including peripherally, what is now the M16 rifle. In later years, I coauthored (with my brother, Lt Col N. A. Chandler USMC (retired) seven books on military and law enforcement sniping. In particular, we had the honor of writing the USMC's master sniper, Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock's, biography (White Feather, ISBN 1-885633-09-2). I have authored two novels on sniping and an eighteen-book frontier America series that is filled with hunting lore and vivid use of rifles in battle and hunting. I wrote the only published historical novel about Tim Murphy, our nation's first known sniper who was a hero of our Revolutionary War. If you read the magazines, you will have encountered my stuff in Gun World, Gun Sport, Tactical Shooter, and The American Survival Guide as well as the titles earlier mentioned. I could go on, but my point is that I have been involved in hunting and weaponry longer than many have lived. You can trust what I write to be thoroughly thought out and as accurate as I can manage.

  Before getting in too deep, it might be advantageous to mention that, unlike many gun writers, I owe nothing to any firm or company and can therefore speak negatively about a rifle, pistol, or cartridge without endangering invaluable advertising that keeps my publications or writing career afloat. It is sometimes claimed that I am opinionated, and I had also better admit right-off-the-bat that a lot of experts do not agree with my conclusions. I do not complain about that. They have a right to be wrong.

  As appropriate rifles, calibers, scopes, and bullets are delineated when discussing each game animal, we can deal here mainly with ideas, concepts, and philosophies of ballistics and the guns that create them.

  That, for most of us, should be pure contentment. However, strangely enough, many Alaskan hunters are not gun buffs. Their pleasure is limited to the hunt and perhaps the kill with little attention paid to the weaponry involved therein. I have never completely understood such attitudes but suppose they are similar to my own disinterest in fine tents and downy sleeping robes.

  I think that those fellows who know little more than how to load and sight are missing something. To a hunter who is also a gun buff, a rifle can become a treasured and beloved companion. An individual who loves guns but does not hunt is also missing out. The two go hand-in-hand. Personally, I admire a fine gun. I enjoy feeling of it and looking at it. I also like to use it.

  Young friends work at the author's loading bench.

  While the vast majority of hunters have all they can handle using a scope-sighted rifle, a few are also pistol proficient To become a deadly rifle marksman, and that includes being deadly on running and bounding game, requires both training and experience. To excel with a pistol is vastly more demanding. Errors tolerable in rifle marksmanship invoke gross inaccuracies with a short sight-radius pistol.

  Few shooters possess the physical attributes mated with the dedication and opportunity to allow development of pistol skills comparable to Elmer Keith and wisely content themselves with rifles for most of their hunting. They reserve their pistols for self-defense and occasional, selected game shots. It is a sensible and recommended compromise.

  Perhaps my most basic premise concerning Alaskan hunting weapons should be immediately laid on the line. It is quite simply that most Alaskan hunters do not use a powerful enough cartridge. I can dramatize by saying that I believe that too many hunters get their game despite their choices of cartridge, rifle, and scope than because of them. There is a disgusting amount of wounding and blasting away at hurt and dying animals. While some of it is due to bum shooting, often at excessive ranges, too much can be placed at the door of too little gun.

  Here is a short example of too light a rifle being used by Frank Cook when he took his world record Dall sheep in 1956, as printed in a publication of the time.

  "The magnificent ram turned to the side and the first 130 grain bullet from Frank's .270 caliber King Sporter knocked the sheep down. It got back up. Another shot and the prize went down again … . But champions die hard. After going down twice, Frank's target staggered up and started toward a steep slide area. Frank shot the big ram three more times before finally stopping it 10 feet from the edge of the slide."

  How a hunter who uses a .30/06 on a 150-pound whitetail deer can rationalize that the same caliber is just the ticket for a 1000-pound moose (also a deer) escapes me. When we next include the duffers stumbling about Alaska with their .25/06s and .243 Winchesters—well, to put it kindly, it is irrational.

  It would be foolish to suggest that small bores cannot kill. We recognize their lethality but question their ability to kill quickly and cleanly with great dependability on larger and tougher game animals. A lot of that doubt is because of personally observed, small diameter, hot bullet failures. Some doubts are because the ballistic tables, in which I have the most faith, demonstrate that small calibers do not cut the mustard.

  "What tables are those?" you ask.

  Well, not the ballistic tables you are used to, like those found in The Shooter's Bible and Gun Digest. Those most popular of tables are beloved by cartridge manufacturers and people who like high numbers. Those tables use an Energy column to demonstrate striking power. In this author's opinion, Energy does not accurately reflect a cartridge's performance on game.

  Unfortunately, typical ballistic tables use the Newtonian formula to arrive at their Energy figures. The Newtonian over-emphasizes velocity. In fact, in that formula velocity is squared. Energy, which those tables depict as hitting power, is measured in foot-pounds and is referred to as Kinetic Energy. The formula is:

  KE = [(V2 + 7000) * 64.32] x BW

  That impressive formula is very scientific and makes hot velocity cartridges look very good indeed. We need velocity, but there is another factor at least as significant, and the bigger the game and the farther away it is taken the more we need momentum.

  Momentum is the stuff that pushes bullets through muscle, bone, too often wet guts, and two layers of very tough hide.

  Momentum is provided in large part by BULLET WEIGHT.

  Here is a pair of empirical examples of the importance of bullet weight:

  A ping pong ball and a golf ball are about the same size. With which would you rather be hit? The ping pong ball, of course, because no matter what its velocity, it is light and therefore will not hurt much. But a golf ball has weight
. Weight provides momentum. Momentum keeps the ball going. The golf ball would hurt.

  Here is another, perhaps more dramatic comparison. Which ball would you pick to have powerfully propelled at you, volleyball or a bowling ball? Same reasoning as above, the volleyball being light cannot do much damage. A bowling ball? Heavy, it will break your bones. Bullet weight does count, and there is a ballistic formula that gives weight more appropriate importance.

  John (Pondoro) Taylor, a professional hunter of note, wished to best measure a cartridge's (bullet's) ability to put down game. He developed a formula that, unlike the popular Energy figure displayed in every magazine ballistic table, reduced velocity to a sensible value and better emphasized the importance of bullet weight.

  Taylor called his formula Knock Out Blow.

  While some have curled their lip, my experience indicates that Pondoro had it very close to right, and his formula is far superior to any other method of measuring hard hitting that I have encountered. Give his KO values consideration in your evaluation of all that follows.

  One other point. No bullet has knockdown power. No bullet! No bullet knocks down a whitetail deer, much less a moose. The impact of a bullet is too short in duration to move anything heavy. For example, only in the movies are humans tossed backward, through plate glass windows, to fall from tall buildings by bullet impacts. A rifle bullet moves nothing. A simple home test is to hang a heavy sandbag and shoot into it. A 150-pound bag struck by a .308-type bullet (at any velocity attainable) will barely twitch.

  Taylor's Knock Out Blow means that the game is dropped and cannot run off. Impact can knock Out—meaning unconscious or incapable of movement. A punch in the jaw is a familiar if crude human example. Collapse follows, not bodily hurling aside.

  Taylor was an African hunter who took thousands of head of big game while opening lands for settlement, protecting crops against animal damage, tsetse fly control, and while guiding the affluent from around the world.

  This is not the place to delve into the ecological impact of removing those vast herds of animals. It was done, and at the time, seemed correct—perhaps inevitable.

  Hunters like Taylor took game animals in numbers almost incomprehensible by modern measure. How does one equate the experience of a single man shooting hundreds of elephants, hundreds of rhino, lions, and leopards plus other hundreds of buffalo, and countless antelope with a modern hunter's accumulation of a couple of hundred head? To say the least, in comparison our experience comes off quite short.

  Taylor does not date back so far that he had no experience with our modern high velocity (high density) cartridges. In 1948 he laid out his ideas in his definitive book titled African Rifles and Cartridges.

  John (Pondoro) Taylor's comments on ballistic table Energy figures are pithy, for example:

  1. "Surely, the most misleading thing in the world, where rifles are concerned."

  2. "Gun and ammunition manufacturers invariably quote Energy figures because, particularly since the advent of the magnum, Energy is decidedly flattering to their weapons and cartridges. Personally, I take little notice of these figures. They are quite useless if you are trying to compare any two rifles from the point of view of actual punch inflicted by the bullet. Muzzle Energy is far too dependent on velocity and tends to ignore bullet weight … "

  Yet, too often we Americans conclude that the opinions of such men as John Taylor are suspect because they hunt non-Alaskan game, which somehow, it is alleged, makes Taylor's formula inapplicable. Any itemizing of African antelope alone will show size variations ranging from the twenty pound dik-dik through monstrous eland that are moose size, with so many diverse species in between that they almost defy listing. We simply must acknowledge that Taylor knew his guns and his game.

  This is John Taylor's Knockout Value formula:

  (Bullet weight x velocity x caliber) ÷ 7000 = KO

  Because the formula is simple, KO for any cartridge can be worked out using only our commonly-available ballistic tables. Incidentally, although 7000 does indicate the number of grains in a pound, we believe that Taylor just needed a divider that would make his figures more intelligible. Dividing by 7000 results in conveniently low and understandable KO values.

  By studying Taylor's writing, it can be calculated that he believed a bullet required a minimum muzzle KO of at least 22 to be acceptable on Alaskan-size game animals, and that when striking, the bullet must still retain a minimum of 17 KO value.

  Here are some examples of popular American cartridges worked out at the muzzle and at 300-yard range to demonstrate how a man of Taylor's experience and perception rated striking power. There is a lot of discussion further on in this book about appropriate ranges to shoot big game animals. If a reader feels he needs figures for longer ranges, he can easily work them out by purchasing almost any gun or hunting magazine and using the tables normally included. The math is simple and the information gained will be enlightening and will probably encourage the huntsman to get closer to his targets.

  To clearly observe the differences between use of an Energy figure and a KO value, I have included both the ever popular .30/06 and a current favorite cartridge, the 7mm Remington Magnum, neither of which I would recommend as a proper Alaskan cartridge.

  Writers on Alaskan hunting have for the most part suggested that the .30/06 is probably the mildest cartridge acceptable for Alaskan game and that the .30/06 can be used "in the hands of a good shot."

  We often read "It is better to use a gun you handle well than to use a rifle that causes flinching."

  Of course, but that line too often encourages a hunter to believe that his good old deer rifle is just fine for Alaska because he is familiar with it. Very often, the .30/06 is the rifle arriving with the hunter, and I have to state flat out, "A .30/06 is NOT an ideal Alaskan caliber."

  I am, in fact, not certain that the vaunted 06 is the best for any particular hunting. In the lower forty-eight the .30/06 is often a dam good compromise, but for Alaska? Leave the old army caliber at home. It was designed to kill man-sized targets, not big animals.

  In Charles Jacob's New Official Gun Book of 1951, Warren Page, shooting editor of Field and Stream magazine, wrote about the .30/06: "The cartridge is not a true stopper … "

  At this time, Warren, one of our all-time great hunters, had already shot four grizzlies with a .300 Weatherby.

  In the above chart, you will note that the .30/06 comes in just a bit short on John Taylor's KO value scale, and my experience demonstrates that is just right. Can you take everything in Alaska with an 06? Certainly, but you can also do it with a .222 Remington. Does that make either cartridge right? It does not!

  Despite a bit of ritualistic grumbling, most readers can probably accept an 06's limitations. But look at the 7mm Remington Magnum. According to Taylor, that cartridge is less adequate than the .30/06.

  Now everybody knows the 7mm Mag is a powerhouse of a cartridge, don't they?

  No, they do not. The 7mm Remington Magnum has extremely flat trajectory and the kind of power useful for mule deer or whitetail deer hunting at longer ranges. Flat trajectory is the 7mm Magnum's strength, not hitting power.

  It is ironic that the 7mm Remington Magnum is extremely popular among eastern USA whitetail deer hunters. Ironic and absurd, I should add. 80% of eastern whitetails are shot at one hundred yards or under, for heaven's sake. Of what value is flat trajectory in that kind of hunting?

  In our examples, the 7mm Mag suffers from both a smaller diameter and a slightly lighter bullet—if compared to the venerable .30/06. The skinnier 175-grain 7mm bullet is ballistically better and will travel great distances. Unfortunately, it does not do as much when it arrives. Bullet weight can be jacked up, but in so doing, velocity takes a dramatic drop and, of course, trajectory then suffers. The 7mm can be a marvel on lower forty- eight deer-sized game out on the flat plains, but it is not the best on big stuff.

  Since the perfection of good muzzle brakes there is no longer legitimacy
in allowing hunters to use their old deer rifles in Alaska. Any decent recoil reducer will bring a .300 Weatherby down to .30/06 recoil levels, or a touch better, a brake can lower a .338 Winchester Magnum's kick to a comfortable shove.

  As you will read, this author has used a .300 Weatherby more than any other cartridge for Alaskan hunting. I cannot fault the Weatherby, but I do not claim that it is the perfect Alaskan cartridge.

  During 1948 and 1949 I began hearing a lot about Roy Weatherby and his hot, new magnums. I was at that time doing serious hunting in Europe, and while Weatherby's powerhouse magnums were not desirable on roebuck or hirsch, I even then thought in terms of Alaskan hunting. In short, Weatherby's added velocities, especially in caliber .30, seemed logical to me. It appeared obvious that if I could move my .30/06 bullet faster, the impact on the receiving end would be more devastating.

  I did not buy the longed-for .300 Weatherby until 1955. The rifle I chose then was a custom stocked FN Mauser action with a Buhmiller straight taper, 26-inch long barrel. I had a Weaver K4 scope mounted in a Redfield Junior mount and added a front barrel band to secure the forward sling swivel. There were no iron sights. This was to be a working hunter's gun. It was intended to last a lifetime. I took 29 head of Alaskan big game with that rifle (plus a bunch of lower forty-eight plains and mountain game). I retired the rifle in 1975.

  For poking in the brush after a wounded brownie or grizzly, the .300 was too light—but not impossibly too light. I used it for that a few times. For some long and imaginative shots on sheep or goats, a heavier bullet (including greater diameter) would do a better job.

  The .300 Weatherby shoots as flat as anyone could demand, and it packs enough wallop for most situations. The recoil is not as heavy as that of some of the bigger-bulleted cartridges but, as mentioned, recoil need no longer be worried about. Install a Packmyer Decelerator recoil pad and a muzzle brake and forget recoil for all time.