Can you I.D.this man?

Couldn't you have found a picture of him with a handgun? LOL!

Hes got one hanging on his hip right side..look close

Elmer's "Sixguns" should be in every handgunner's library ! I and others have many times proved that Elmer was right !

Father? Maybe, but I think that Lee Jurras brought it back in vogue. Unfortunately, Lee's theory of "light and fast" is now out of favor. I still have Jurras' and Nonte's book.
Peter.

Hope you guys enjoyed the pics

I am a big fan of Elmer Keith and fully believe he had bullet design down pat nearly 80 years ago. Mr. Keith used a handgun as a matter of convenience. Look for Al Georg, he did much more for promoting handgun hunting; even to the point of converting a Remington rolling block rifle to handgun.

Yes, the photos are great. Thanks for sharing.

Al Georg...+1, I spent some time with Al's son a few months ago. A real nice man. He is the owner/editor of a magazine/newsletter for sport fishing covering the greater Pacific Northwest and Alaska. The name of it is The Reel News. He does a fantastic job covering the issues related to those areas. His wife Laurie assists whenever she can. Nice folk.

BTW, a few of the handgunners I hang around with are getting some of the Al Georg shoulder holsters made up, both for scoped revolvers and unscoped. His design was about as good as it gets and it will include the detachable matching cartridge carrier. I will post pics for sure.

Those really are great pictures, blackbearhunter -- thanks for posting them!

Would you look at that Ivory on the wall!!!!I bet you would have a hard time today to find a Tusker with that much bone!!!!!He was quite a character and I have the greatest respect for him !!!!!

That is a great exhibit,my wife and I got to see it while on our honeymoon.Well worth the 5hours driving out of the way.

Father of handgun hunting eh? While Keith usually gets all the credit, Al Goerg is considered by many to be the pioneer of modern handgun hunting. Unlike Elmer - who just shot game with whatever handgun he happened to have on him at the time - Goerg used specially-designed handguns like his .257 Roberts Rollingblock, 6mm XP-100 and Ruger Hawkeye. Elmer didn't like scopes on handguns, while Goerg loved them because he understood their advantages for the hunter. He also understood the advantages of a shoulder rig while hunting, and his hunting holster is still the best design in the business. He was an out-of-the-box thinker, and far ahead of his time in many ways. Sadly he died in an Alaskan aircraft accident in 1965.

Keith may have been the "rockstar" of handgun hunting (due to popularity and exposure from his long-running mass market column), but knowledgeable handgun hunters know Goerg's major contributions to the sport. If we'd just had Elmer to follow, we'd only be shooting game with iron-sighted, short-barreled revolvers....think about it.



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TX Nimrod................right on.

Why is it that everytime someone post something about elmer a few people feel they have to jump in with something to take away from what he did. Personaly handgun hunting to me is not using a 257 roberts rifle with the stock cut off and a 10x scope. Its wondering the woods with a N frame smith or a ruger blackhawk. to each his own but its about like comparing salt and pepper or whats a better vehicle a corvette or a mack truck.

First off Lloyd, no one is taking away from what Elmer did; so just calm down. Handgun hunting is different things to different people. I hut with both the Contenders and open sighted revolvers. Like you said, to each his own.

Al Georg went hunting with a handgun on purpose, we all know Elmer shot game as the opportunity presented itself and he stated he would rather have a rifle than handgun for hunting.

Yup; that's my man, Elmer!

Ill stand behind the FACT that elmer did more to inspire a generation of hunters to switch to handguns then the rest of them combined.

Long ago, a revolver was a "PEOPLE" killer and only a lame horse or something else that needed done in was shot with a revolver.
It took a long time before they were used for sport hunting in their own right. I have to give credit to all of those folks.
But I will always contend that the semi wad cutter was not and is still not the best design for a boolit.
This has nothing to do with the feats done by those we miss and died way too early.
It is plain mechanical issues.
They were looking to modify the wad cutter to a better balanced boolit that shot farther yet cut round holes in paper. Why do you need round holes in paper with a hunting boolit? Well, they needed a way to measure holes to score targets with accuracy. The shoulder is a waste for anything else.

Back then they used wad cutters for paper punching and all else were round nose boolits that would fail on anything shot, too many times.
They did not have the velocities or the lead alloys we have now.
I do not know who made the first semi wad cutter, Thompson or Keith. The meplat was genius and is the basis for all of our revolver boolits.
They were all great men but were looking for a multi purpose boolit.
All that was needed was to move the ogive out to eliminate the shoulder for the perfect revolver boolit.
Since soft lead was used, none of you know what the boolit looked like when shot. I can show you with a picture from an old Handloader.
Now tell me the boolit style Elmer and all the rest of those were really shooting?
YEP, YEP. YEP, look familiar?

I think Elmer was the God father of handgun hunting

Yes, he didn't solely hunt with hanguns, and he didn't hunt with some abortions of rifles modified to be called handguns. But he did take big game with handguns, and came up with handguns that had sufficient power, accuracy and effective cast bullets to take big game. He also redefined what people considered as handgun accuracy.

Elmer was a hunter, not a target shooter, and not someone trying to define a niche of equipment that would make them a "handgun hunter" In the process of his finding the best tools to use for hunting, he found out what worked for long guns, and what worked for handguns. He chose the best tool for the job, and sometimes that tool was the one that rode on his hip.

quote:

Originally posted by bfrshooter:
Back then they used wad cutters for paper punching and all else were round nose boolits that would fail on anything shot, too many times.
They did not have the velocities or the lead alloys we have now.
I do not know who made the first semi wad cutter, Thompson or Keith. The meplat was genius and is the basis for all of our revolver boolits.
They were all great men but were looking for a multi purpose boolit.
All that was needed was to move the ogive out to eliminate the shoulder for the perfect revolver boolit.
Since soft lead was used, none of you know what the boolit looked like when shot. I can show you with a picture from an old Handloader.
Now tell me the boolit style Elmer and all the rest of those were really shooting?
YEP, YEP. YEP, look familiar?

I have seen similar pictures of fired SWC bullets before...

If you recover one of your SWC bullets and it looks like the one on the right, then you are shooting too soft a bullet, at too high of a pressure.

I have recovered some of my cast SWC bullets from game, and dug many others out of the ground, and NONE of them have slugged up like the bullet on the right.

yes sir i agree totaly. My swcs and keiths never look like that when i recover them.

quote:

Originally posted by N E 450 No2:

quote:

Originally posted by bfrshooter:
Back then they used wad cutters for paper punching and all else were round nose boolits that would fail on anything shot, too many times.
They did not have the velocities or the lead alloys we have now.
I do not know who made the first semi wad cutter, Thompson or Keith. The meplat was genius and is the basis for all of our revolver boolits.
They were all great men but were looking for a multi purpose boolit.
All that was needed was to move the ogive out to eliminate the shoulder for the perfect revolver boolit.
Since soft lead was used, none of you know what the boolit looked like when shot. I can show you with a picture from an old Handloader.
Now tell me the boolit style Elmer and all the rest of those were really shooting?
YEP, YEP. YEP, look familiar?

I have seen similar pictures of fired SWC bullets before...

If you recover one of your SWC bullets and it looks like the one on the right, then you are shooting too soft a bullet, at too high of a pressure.

I have recovered some of my cast SWC bullets from game, and dug many others out of the ground, and NONE of them have slugged up like the bullet on the right.

Notice also that there are no grease grooves left. How much would anyone bet the grooves and lube was gone before leaving the forcing cone?
Out the gap???
Elmer like pure lead with some tin so did he ever shoot a boolit out of the muzzle like he loaded? I bet he suffered from severe leading too but that was never written about.
He complained mightily when a company changed his grease grooves, etc. Have to wonder what the problem was. Could it be the round bottom grease grooves slumped closed faster then the square bottom ones?
He was not stupid and had problems like the rest of us.

elmer used lead tin alloys because thats what he had availble and at the time thats what was considered hard. Also some of his lead tin alloys were about as hard as the wws we get today.

quote:

Posted 03 July 2010 15:49 Hide Post
elmer used lead tin alloys because thats what he had availble and at the time thats what was considered hard. Also some of his lead tin alloys were about as hard as the wws we get today.

That may be true but it takes a lot of tin and at today's prices we could shoot gold.
I have to see if I can find it in his book but it seems to me he used 20 to 1 and that is not hard.
Even 10 to 1 is only around 11 BHN and the wrong shaped boolit will slump even with BP.
Tin really has little hardening action. I just took a bunch of BHN readings on pure tin and only get 5 BHN.
Adding more and more tin will not help and wastes money.

It is well known that the alloy Keith recommended was 16:1.

I agree with Llyod's comments on The Man Elmer Kieth and his influence.

Through experimentation I'm beginning to agree with bfrshooters comments on bullet design. I'm almost a former hard core Keith LSWC believer.

Paul H- Hmmm, what was he doing at Camp Perry? lol
Ya don't get there without doing some practice. He knew how to test, and he had a pretty good idea how to interpret results.
I don't know many "non-target" shooters that are able to hit jackass rabbits at extended ranges from field positions. His stories said he was out for practice. It's not for food, when you're using a .300 Magnum, .333 or .334 OKH, or even a .285 OKH.
Whenever I carry my M57 into the field, I imagine "I was there."
Have fun,
Gene

There is no denying the impact Elmer Keith had on revolver and pistol shooting, in many aspects of the game. However, I will stand by my position that Al Georg pushed hunting with a handgun. I like LBT bullets, but I doubt I will ever be a former Keith bullet believer and fan.