Quote:
Originally Posted by BlackHeart
Did one steer with a 270 and the X method that failed. His head was down and enjoying a barley chop ration that had been put on the ground and shot was from standing and close. The result is the shot was perhaps a bit low and angled too sharp thru the top of his sinuses and missed the brain altogether. Don’t use a scoped gun as the barrel to bore difference has to be taken into account and when all is said not worth the potential issues.
Interesting was second shot was necessary and 1/2 cm higher and dropped stone dead.....but his head was up and looking at you.
So if you use the X method, crouch down, if his head is down and no scope. And I’d add 1 cm up for safety on your X estimated spot.
Also we normally have used a .22 on yearling steers without fail, but seen a neighbor fail on a big old bull he was turning into burger. He had to finish him with the 303 after the animal took off and went through his fences like butter.
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If you were to take a set of 1/4" steel rods and run them through the bullet paths, you'd see that the differences in shot effect vs place is very important. When I started out butchering, I'd run a steel rod into every head after I took it off to see what exactly the bullet went through.
Ideally, from the front, you want the bullet to go through the center of the first neck joint. If it broke both sides, so be it. That gets you the bang/flop that most people like to see.
As you found out, the x method only works in certain head positions. I generally drew a line with my eye across the bottom of the ears and aimed for the center between the two. Head position mattered a lot less then. Sometimes you have to picture where the far ear is, but that takes a bit of practice.
If in doubt, fire it right down the ear canal.
22lr on a bull can be done. But the only reliable place to put that bullet is right down the ear canal. On big bulls esp, Charlois or Limosine, I generally liked using the 45-70. (there's a reason that they liked hunting buffalo with those guns) On other smaller animals, 44 mag in a carbine was the best. 240 gr american eagle jhp were the best of that lot. Hornady critical defense 240 gr was second best. Hornady American Gunner in 357 mag 125gr from a carbine was pretty effective as well. But that ammo was harder to come by, so I never used it for work. It's really effective on pigs that are hard to kill, such as mine.
All the guns mentioned have iron sights. Scope distortion is a big issue making shots that close.