.45 Colt bear loads
Posted: 07 Oct 2017 22:29
It's been awhile since I posted topic. I haven't forgotten my friends on here. I've pretty much kept up with the topics, but life kept me from doing much posting.
Well, Fall is here. All the food plots are as good as they get and it's time to get to the range in prep for upcoming hunting seasons.
I had worked up a load for the .45 Colt last March. I did velocity and penetrations tests through bags of wet pine chips (those used for animal bedding). I was satisfied with velocities slightly over 1500 fps and penetration through my medium of around 39 inches. The expansion of the 300 gr XTP magnum bullets were in the .710 range. I'm convinced that they should be "bear stoppers."
The only thing I hadn't done was to test them for accuracy. So, I made some time the last couple evenings to do just that. I bet I haven't shot 20 rounds through a rifle since March, so I knew I'd be a bit rusty. After a couple strings of 5 rounds, muscle memory and hand/eye coordination improved.
My setup is a green Tru-glo front sight backed with a Lyman's tang equipped with a Merit Optics Aperture Peep Sight. The Tru-glo allows me to see the front sight in dim light, hunting situations and the peep setup allows my old eyes to have the sight and target in focus. The disadvantage of the Tru-glo is has a pretty large bead. At 50 yards it will pretty much covesr the black 4 inch bullseye circle. At 100 yards, it just HUGE compared to the black circle.
At 50 yards, I felt I had it pretty dialed in. At 100 yards I was shooting left a couple inches. After the shooting session I ponder this. Examining my sights, it's obvious that the front sight needs a tap to the left. I'll solve that issue before the next range trip.
Here's the results. The 100 yard shot had a center spread of 5 1/2". That's not impressive shooting my any stretch of the imagination, but with the "kill zone" of a deer or bear being 10 inches or so, I feel pretty confident in taking that shoot. Hopefully, with tweaking the sights some and bit more practice, I'll get that group down to around 4 inches. The high flyer was my first shot at 50 yard. I covered the orange spot with the front bead. The next 4 shots, I split the orange dot with the bead. I did the exact same thing at 100 yards.
Well, Fall is here. All the food plots are as good as they get and it's time to get to the range in prep for upcoming hunting seasons.
I had worked up a load for the .45 Colt last March. I did velocity and penetrations tests through bags of wet pine chips (those used for animal bedding). I was satisfied with velocities slightly over 1500 fps and penetration through my medium of around 39 inches. The expansion of the 300 gr XTP magnum bullets were in the .710 range. I'm convinced that they should be "bear stoppers."
The only thing I hadn't done was to test them for accuracy. So, I made some time the last couple evenings to do just that. I bet I haven't shot 20 rounds through a rifle since March, so I knew I'd be a bit rusty. After a couple strings of 5 rounds, muscle memory and hand/eye coordination improved.
My setup is a green Tru-glo front sight backed with a Lyman's tang equipped with a Merit Optics Aperture Peep Sight. The Tru-glo allows me to see the front sight in dim light, hunting situations and the peep setup allows my old eyes to have the sight and target in focus. The disadvantage of the Tru-glo is has a pretty large bead. At 50 yards it will pretty much covesr the black 4 inch bullseye circle. At 100 yards, it just HUGE compared to the black circle.
At 50 yards, I felt I had it pretty dialed in. At 100 yards I was shooting left a couple inches. After the shooting session I ponder this. Examining my sights, it's obvious that the front sight needs a tap to the left. I'll solve that issue before the next range trip.
Here's the results. The 100 yard shot had a center spread of 5 1/2". That's not impressive shooting my any stretch of the imagination, but with the "kill zone" of a deer or bear being 10 inches or so, I feel pretty confident in taking that shoot. Hopefully, with tweaking the sights some and bit more practice, I'll get that group down to around 4 inches. The high flyer was my first shot at 50 yard. I covered the orange spot with the front bead. The next 4 shots, I split the orange dot with the bead. I did the exact same thing at 100 yards.