I have been wanting to hunt using a less than adequate caliber for some time now, but morals and ethics have stopped that from happening.
Cody too has been wanting to hunt a Impala with a .22 and I have been telling him its wrong. I have heard myself saying things like "its wrong to do so if you have a better means of killing" - "its a living thing my boy, not a fun and games toy" ETc ETC. BUT ! still the challenge and thought of "I can do it" remains.
Cody has his first rifle still, a ruger .233 with a 20 inch barrel and it is now our cheap shooter which gets just a bit less than the .22 down the barrel - like 100 shots a go. This .223 is fed bulk buy Hornady bullets which I buy at a 1000 per purchase, V Max and Sierra GK 63 gr bullets. The VMax bullets were used for vermin control and the GK bullets for a 7 year olds first animals, Duiker and Duiker and a small w/hog or 3.
I have tuned the loads for all 3 bullets to be within 5 mm horizontally and 4.5 cm vertically - the VMax is 4.5 + and the GK is 3 cm + at 100 m
On this last hunt I took my old 303 along as my bit of a challenge rifle ;D , but when we got there there was a issue, the scope seems to have died and I can not hit a A 4 page at 100 m. 10 shots later i got the message, scope is ISM, not gonna fix that here and now.
I looked at the 223 and tried to recall all the game shot with it and the results, I reasoned about shot placement and a hole through heart is a whole through heart, its dead - you do not get degrees of dead.
So to cut it short, I shot a impala at about 80 - 100 m. The shot was perhaps a bit further back than perfect, but far from a bad shot(hanging in photo it looks further back than when leg is in normal position).The shot also was not a good shot, by far. High and back end of both lungs. The 7-08 or .270 would have been no more than 30 m run same shot.
When the shot sounded, I heard the hit and watched the herd run off, they did an away and cross back in front of me 200 m down run off. Somewhere in the run the ram disappeared, or did it ? - Not sure?
I called the dog up and started a track, but the wind made her do frustrating things, and many a time I thought she was just doing dog things, playing. Going 150 m forward was a 600 m snaking back forth matter, down wind - across, up wind, across, almost back to start :o
The animal was found 150 m max from POI and it was lying down. The animal jumped up and darted when we got to it, this run went about 700 m further with a clear by eye blood trail being left along the way. Cody jogged ahead with the dog and I did a by eye follow up after the animal. It was found standing and Cody shot it again - F**** up my perfect meat shot animal with his 7 mm meat mincer. :-X
My shot was as far back as feasible, it was also only taken when I could enter and exit without hitting a leg, the 7 mm just blew it all apart .
Point of post.
If one looks in the photo, the 5.56 GK bullet exited at about 12 mm or more diameter, it hit both lungs far back - a shot that using an appropriate caliber would caused far quicker death.
The "enough gun" statement is quite clear to me.
I have not included an entrance photo as there is nothing to see, no hole so to say.
Exit wound with 7 mm damage almost visible to left.
20241019_224420 by David Frank Allen, on Flickr
Exit wound, not bad meat damage with 7 mm results seen to left.
20241020_094940 by David Frank Allen, on Flickr
Entrance from inside with finger through hole.
20241020_095018 by David Frank Allen, on Flickr
