To all,

Well, with my XP-100 in 338-300 WSM taking care of two of my three deer tags this season, I wanted to try to fill my Whitetail Doe tag using my open-sighted Ruger 480.

This SRH really does not like the 325 gr bullets, of any type, velocity with top loads is impressive with 1450 fps easily attainable but 3" groups at 25 yards does not impress me.

The 400 gr jacketed bullets from both Speer and Hornady shoot much better but both are designed to expand at 475 Line. velocities so at the 480 level they would not expand much. Since they have a relatively small flat nose, I looked for something different.

I found that Cast Performance Bullets offers a 425 gr WFNGC bullet for the 480. I orders a box of 50 and found them to be very accurate. in the 1" groups range at 25 yards and usually under 2" at 50 yards with open sights.

I do something a little different with my bullets before loading. I clean out the first lube groove, closest to the crimping groove. This actually creates a much deeper crimping groove as well as allows the bullet to be seated out much farther. This has also seemed to improve accuracy compared to the standard seating depth.

With max loads of H-LilGun, the 7 1/2" SRH will drive these 425 gr pills at 1250 fps very easily. I decided to reduce this load to 1160 fps simply because it was more comfortable to shoot and cases seemed to stretch less.

I sighted the big revolver in at 1" high at 30 yards and headed for my tree stand.

It was a warm evening, about 50 degrees with a slight south west breeze. When I reached my stand, I paced off and marked 40 yards in four directions around my stand. This was the range that I wanted to limit my shooting.

I have harvested alot of game with scoped handguns, revolvers and single shots, but never with a conventional open sighted revolver. I wanted to keep things close.

I got up in the stand and after about 45 minutes, deer started moving. Five does, two mature and three yearlings pasted to my left at about 75 yards, to far out of my self imposed limit.

About 20 minutes after the first deer I noticed movement about 100 yards in front of me. I wanted to keep this hunt as traditional as possible fo I decided to not use any ranging or optical gear on the hunt, just my eyes and the revolver.

The deer were moving toward my stand in a good direction for a shot. I pulled the hammer back on the SRH and waited. It seemed like hours until I saw the first deer enter the small clearing which extended 70 or so yards in front of my stand.

It was a young button buck, then another button buck appeared. I couldn't tell this from 70 yards, I'll explain later.

I watched these two play around for a few minutes until two very large does fallowed into the clearing. It was obvious these were two very shootable does for the freezer as I like to harvest older does in the 4 1/2 to 5 1/2 year old range. The rear doe seemed a bit older with a more mature belly line but the closer doe was not far behind.

As the four approached my stand, the lead doe must have caught my scent on the swirling winds and came to a very quick stop. By this time the front sight of the Ruger was squarely on her quartering toward me shoulder.

The previous year I harvested a nice doe on the same land with a Ruger SRH in 44 Mag with a 2x Burris scope. The shot was a good one using the 270 gr Speer Gold Dot at 1550 fps but the doe managed to run about 175 yards before giving up the ghost and she made it onto another landowners property where no hunting is allowed.

He was nice enough to escort me to my doe after I showed him the blood trail starting on the land that I had permission to hunt.

With that memory fresh on my mind, I wanted to take out at least one shoulder to anchor the doe quickly and prevent a long dash.

The does were about 10 yards past the 40 yard market I set earlier but I knew this ment very little and with the alertness of the does, I knew it was now or never.

I leveled the sights squarely on the does shoulder and began to squeeze. The jolt from the big revolver almost suprised me as they usually do on a good trigger release.

As fast as the shot was off, the doe was gone from view behind a tree in front of my stand. The two fawns ran within 5 yards of my stand and turned back to see what had happened.

I could see the white belly of the doe through the brush and after a few seconds things all became quite again. In fact, it took nearly 15 minutes for the two button bucks to leave teh area so I could get out of my stand.

When I got up to her I noticed she had traveled less then 15 yards from the shot and I had missed the shoulder knuckle but not by more then a bullet caliber.

I obviously did not recover the bullet, as four whitetails standing side-by-side wouldn't stop one of these 425 gr bullets but I was able to get a good idea how well the LBT designed bullets work.

The bullet had entered just in front of the shoulder, punched the front of the onside lung, basically split the heart in half, the top was split in half, punched the rear lobe of the offside lung, drove a 2" hole in the liver and exited leaving a hole that looked like it had been punched with a .475" leather punch.

I was very happy with the hunt and load performance. I always knew it but it is even clearer to me now that these LBT bullets really don;t need to be driven to full tilt velocities to work extremely efficiently. Anything over 1100 fps will keep them accurate out to any open sighted range and penetration is second to none.

The load I use is as followed:

****Remember that I crimp in the first lube groove from the top so this load may be far to heavy with a standard seating depth*****

Hornady brass
CPB 425gr WFNGC
H-LilGun 20.5 gr
CCI-350
O.A.L.: 1.725"
Velocity Average for 10 shots: 1160 fps
Accuracy at 25 yards: Six shot groups at or under 1".

Hope this is interesting to someone looking for a good load for their SRH in 480 Ruger.

Good Hunting!!!

50

[ 11-26-2002, 03:58: Message edited by: Fiftydriver ]

Great story. So how were you sure they were button bucks?
Greg

Thanks for sharing the story with us. And congrats on a nice shot, by the way...

Thank you for sharing your story and experiences with us! Great shot, and yes you are absolutely right, those LBT's do not need to be driven at full speed to do their job!