Thinking of frangible .50 for whitetails.

[Roadrunner]

Everybody, please feel free to tell me what is either right and/or wrong about my thinking. Here goes.

I'm thinking of taking my bolt action fifty cal to Pennsylvania for the opener of deer season (I checked with the PA game commission and bolt action fifties are legal). Hunting there would involve lots of long shots across open fields in the range of 400 to 700 yrds. However there is the occasional farm house and new yuppie house out in the country so I would have to be very concerned about my backstop. Therefore I was thinking about utilizing frangible ammo instead of any sort of solid bullet. I read on other sites that many people have shot game (Texas hogs and coyotes - these are the only example I've been able to find) with frangible fifty cal ammo; with outstanding results. I reason that fifty cal frangible ammo would not only have enormous stopping power but would be much less likely to cause any ricochett problems then any sort of solid bullet. Even possibly safer then say a 300 Win mag in a hunting round. Safer yet would be a 300 Win Mag in frangible, but this would probably not have enough knock-down power. I read on another site that someone checked fifty cal frangible ammo for ricocheetes and found that there were none. The bullets simply discintgrated (sp) when they hit anything solid.

So any comments about the logic (or lack there-in) with this line of reasoning???? Thanks.

 

[rifletuner]

Roadrunner

Do I read this correctly that you believe a .300 mag would not have the capability to cleanly kill a whitetail at 400 to 700 yards? If that is what you are suggesting, you can rest assured that a .300 mag will have ample ability to take a deer at those ranges and further.

Fergus

 

[Gary Rihn]

At 400-700 yards, a 50 BMG is definitely not needed.

And I know this board was started to avoid ethics arguments, but I think it would be a shame to waste that much fine venison on a semi-smallish deer to a frangible round, especially out of a 50 cal.

 

[Roadrunner]

Fergus,

Sorry but I guess I didn't make myself clear. I feel that a 300 Win Mag shooting FRANGIBLE ammo wouldn't have enough knock down for a whitetail.

Gary,

My feeling was that at 400 - 700 yrds a fifty shooting FRANGIBLE ammo would be safer then say a 300 Win Mag shooting solid bullets (i.e. jhp). I realize that there might be more venison wastage, but I feel that the benefit from the increased safety (i.e. no danger of richcheets (sp)) would justify the increased venison wastage. I also spoke with one gentlemen that said a high chest shot would result in a minimum of venison wastage despite the frangible ammo. Thanks for the input.

RR

 

[Dave King]

RoadRunner

What do you use for frangible rounds? www.thefrangible.com has a good site but I don't see anything for a .50!

 

[Roadrunner]

Mike at H-J Ballistic 256-447-1987 for frangible .50 cal ammo. I've been surfin biggerhammer and there's a couple people there who hunt with frangible. Apparently it does amazing things to produce instant kills on game animals. But I haven't seen anything on whitetails. It would seem to me that any round which instantly desintigrates upon striking the ground or anything else would be a safer round then any other type.