Today at the Back-Up Gun Match we have a showdown between shotguns. But not proper shotguns; oh no – we are using only tiny shotguns! Friend of the channel (and regular BUG Match enjoyer) Matt Haught from Symtac Consulting is shooting a Serbu Super Shorty and I am shooting a MIL Thunder Five (a .410 revolver). Matt has three rounds of 12ga 9-pellet buckshot and then can reload; I have 5 rounds of .410 3-pellet buckshot but no reload (it’s a slow enough reload as to be impractical in a 30-second BUG Match stage). Who do you think will come out on top?
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Thunder Five set the stage for the Judge and S&W Governor, which don’t give much hope for better results with .410 loads and questionable accuracy beyond 5 yards with .45 Colt or .45 ACP. None are guns I would want to rely on for self-defense.
The Serbu Shorty might have application as an entry weapon for Swat teams with multiple heavily armed people backing one up.
The Judge seems to be an implement for burning gunpowder to little purpose.
I have to say that Ian wore the perfect shirt for that match.
I swear, Ian has to have some pretty juicy blackmail material on whomever is running these matches to allow him to goof on everybody with what he pulls. I guess he is the designated comic relief.
Not necessarily. Remember: what is not verboten is allowed. That is why U.S. cavalry in 1930s used https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/m1-combat-car/ which was not (officially) tank, as tank was considered infantry-only weapon.
I am also thinking that Ian’s antics are a draw for people to come to the matches.
There was also an unfluted cylinder available for the Thunder-5 that allowed it to chamber and shoot .45-70. They made it for a time for the California market which has a ban on shotguns with revolving cylinders or drums. I have one, and the accuracy wit .45-70 is MUCH better than what you were experiencing with the .410 Cylinder. It would be fun to see Ian do the same back-up gun drill with that option instead. _III_
And how many penalty seconds are added to your score when after every shot you have to pick yourself off your butt after being knocked on it from the .45-70 recoil?
If any .45-70 knocks you on your butt, you were firing from a highly unstable position.
I enjoy every demonstration that .410 revolvers are useless except as a novelty.
I have this friend… He used to be pretty big into the really big revolvers, like Elmer Keith big.
At some point, he acquired a .45-70 revolver with about a 12″-15″ barrel on it, and it was meant to be fired from the prone, along the leg as you sort of sat facing the target…
I watched him actually fire that thing in that mode, once. It was… Interesting. You had to wear a set of really heavy leather chaps while shooting it, and the marks from the gas cutting coming out the side of the cylinder were truly thought-provoking, as in “If that were bare skin…?” sort of horrified-at-the-implications thereof.
I’m not really sure what the actual utility of the thing was, but he took it hunting at least once, up in the mountains of Northern Idaho. My take on it was “Get a freakin’ rifle, dude…”, because you couldn’t really use it during black powder season, so… Why? Just… Why?
The grip of it was fascinating. He had these special gloves with Sorbothane inserts, the primary grip itself was some custom Pachmayr affair that had only been run up in tiny production numbers, and the resulting damage, even with all that, was amazing. We’re talking black-and-blue wrist and forearm, all so he could say he had taken an elk with a pistol…
My final verdict on it all was “Nuts”.
With careful stalking and shot placement, a .44 magnum would do the job on an elk. Plus a Ruger Black hawk is a handful to shoot but far short of madochism
“With careful stalking and shot placement, a .44 magnum would do the job on an elk.”
I’d like to point out that “With careful stalking and shot placement…”, a .22 Long Rifle will do the necessary with everything up to and including a polar bear.
This is not to say that such activities are at all advisable.
My stepdad made the mistake of offering to go out with an Inuit hunter of great age and experience, a man whose own relatives did not want to go with him hunting any more. Being from deepest, darkest Eastern Europe, my stepdad did not pick up on all the signaling from the Inuit’s relatives, and he let himself get suckered into going along with him in order to serve as muscle.
He did not know that a.) they were going after polar bear, b.) that the only hunting rifle they would have was an ancient Winchester lever-action of unknown provenance, first acquired about the time that that band of Inuit had encountered the white man in the form of a whaling ship, and that c.) said rifle was effectively a single-shot affair, due to its issues with age and what-not. You had to kick the lever open, for example.
The two of them got their bear, but the experience still affected my stepdad some twenty-thirty years later, with him getting really quiet and staring off into space for some length of time after describing the two of them stalking the bear through the ice, and then maneuvering to shoot said bear through the head from behind the ear…
We could never quite figure out what cartridge it was, but it was absolutely and emphatically NOT what the doctor would recommend for a polar bear hunt, being some sort of ancient Winchester rimfire that likely wasn’t a .22 LR, but something closely akin. You could see the equally ancient packaging for the cartridges in one of his post-hunt pictures, and I’m here to tell you that they looked like they were the same ones that the Inuit had gotten from the whaler with the rifle, all those years ago.
My stepdad was a bit of a local hero, for having taken the old guy out on his last hurrah of a hunt, but they all told him that he was crazy, after the fact. Lauded for his bravery, he kept his mouth shut about not really understanding what the hell he’d signed on for, because his English at that point in his life was terrible, the Inuit’s was virtually non-existent, and he’d really never had a good idea up until after they were skinning the bear of what they’d been going after. As he told it later on, he’d thought they were going for seal, not what ate seal…
Absent the pictures, which we unfortunately lost in a house fire, I’d have never believed that story. He had photographic evidence that mostly supported it, though…
I didn’t suggest it was ideal. My point was that if a hunter wants to use a handgun on elk, then there is nothing wrong with a scope mounted on a .44 Mag. The hunter has to be a very good shot and confine himself to ranges where he can place the bullet accurately. Bowhunters do something similar under even greater constraints.