buffalo bore ammo

[AK-49]

looking at some buffalo bore ammo in 454 casul... what do you think 325 gr or 360 gr for use in a ruger alaskan against a bear charge... ouch!

http://www.buffalobore.com/index.php?l=product_list&c=11

[Hi Ball]

AK-49...The caliber and ammo are good to go for any bear you may run into but I sure would rather have my .375H&H in my hands. Bears are the only animal in North America that make my hair stand up on the back of my neck.

However, your 454 Casul pistol is no pop gun! The only thing I see wrong with pistols and bears, would be having the ample time to draw and get off a shot and same goes for carrying a rifle. Bears can cover 40 yards in 3.5 seconds! If you end up bumpping one at much closer range, you will need a guardian angel to help you out.

[GF.]

I'd go with the heavy.

Even if hydrostatic shock were a reliable way to get a boom-flop result, there's no handgun in the world that's going to create enough of it to stop a big, angry bear. We're not talking about thin-skinned varmints here....

So penetration wins out, and that's what heavy bullets do best...

Just curious, though....

Do you already own the Casull, or are you still open to other rounds? The Casull has such a rep for being a handful... but then BB sez they don't max 'em out for exactly that reason...

But whatever you do... Mind the gap! (and- WARNING: GORY PICTURE - stop scrolling when you get to the pic of 'how not to hold a revolver' unless you really, really want to see what a high-velocity gas-cutter will do to your piecesparts)

BTW - they tested this on last night's Mythbusters using a 'hand' constructed out of chicken wings, and it wasn't pretty on the high-speed, but at least it was just chicken...

http://dougdavisent.com/safety/revolver.html

[Hi Ball]

I am very sorry to hear about the losing of a thumb using any firearm! However, proper instruction should have been learned before ever handling a pistol.

YES, the picture showing the two handed grip on that pistol is totally WRONG!
Earlier this week, I had a bit of an argument with a CCW instruction on two hand gripping a semi-auto pistol. If your right handed, the left hand grips under the right hand and away from the front of the cyclinder on any revolver. Also on a semi-auto, YOU NEVER place the thumb over the top of the right hand and vise-versa for a left hand shooter. To do so will cause the slide to come back and slice your thumb badly.

St. Louis has a great plastic surgery department at BARNES JEWISH HOSPITAL, I hope the injured party has been taken there for treatment. They are the best.

[AK-49]

GF, I haven't purchased the ruger alaskan yet... I have shot one and they are a handful.

Too bad about the injured person. I wonder why anyone would hold a revolver in such a way. However I wouldn't expect that much gas to escape from the gap. Is such a gas escape from that area normal? Can you shed any more light on this?

[GF.]

You can Google around a little bit and find the topic has been beaten to death by guys who know a helluvalot more about handguns that I ever will... but the word on at least one of these incidents is that a novice handgunner bought himself a cannon, scoped it, and used that unsafe grip in order to balance a front-heavy rig. So, having wrecked his thumb, he's planning on suing Smith for a bad product...

But it's hard to know if he'll get anywhere with it... Gas jetting from the B-C gap is totally normal - the laws of physics demand it. When you have X thousand CUP of pressure contained in the cartridge, it's going to escape at its earliest opportunity, and that gap between cylinder and bore is it. Get any piecesparts in the way of that blast, and something's gonna have to give. And as the gunsmith on Mythbusters put it, when you have a 2300 fps cartridge, that means you've got a 2300 fps gas cloud expanding through a gap just a few thousandths of an inch wide, which makes for a mighty sharp blow (puns intended! :eek: )

Most pistol cartridges aren't nearly so violent, so you could get a bad cut or burn to teach the lesson rather than losing a hunk off your hitch-hiker, but there was one video on YouTube featuring a 'wimpy' .44Mag round vs. a polish sausage, and it didn't look like an injury I'd care to try and shake off....

The injury in that article I linked looks like what happened to bro-in-law's thumb when he caught it in a watertight hatchway out on the carrier. They thought it was going to be a career-ending injury (can't be a bomber pilot if you can't work your pickle-button ), but they stitched his thumb into a slit in his groin and got that skin to graft on and replace the pad of his thumb. Funniest thing about it is that he has to shave his thumb every few days :D

Not so funny was how long it took him to get through the recovery... Press the back of your right wrist against against your belly button.

Now hold that position for 6 weeks :(

So anyway.... I'll bet that Alaskan is a handful, but probably not so awful with .45 LC, .44 Spcl or even 'normal' .44 Mag loads that it would be much worse than a .357 Mag with a 3 1/16 barel on it...... So it almost seems like a pretty near intelligent 1-pistol collection. You'd probably have to be a damn big dude to be willing to pack a full-sized wheelgun on a daily basis, but it would sure give you a healthy range of alternatives for varmints of various sizes.

Just kinda too bad they don't offer interchangeable barrels and sleeves so that you could carry it 'Alaskan' style as a snubbie with a 'sleeve' inside the frame, or convert it to a 6" or 8" hunting rig ... Maybe I'm dreamin', but it seems like it shouldn't have to take much more effort than swapping out the choke tubes on a scattergun....

[AK-49]

yeah a novice clueless about how to shoot a revolver.... tragic and sad

Believe me I have some reservations about putting 360 grain buffalo bore through that alaskan.... I weigh about 195 and can bench press 200 lbs with free weights so I have fairly good strenght but still wonder about shooting those rounds.

[Hi Ball]

AK-49.......You simply have to work up to it just like lifting your 200 lb bench press etc. I could not handle full house 44mag loads at first years ago either. I worked up to it with .357 mag and then using Super Vel ammo...hot stuff.

Then I handloaded light loads at first with the Smith & Wesson model 29! Yeah the Dirty Harry thing got me back then, one handed shooter my ass, I would tell Clint Eastwood.

If you do purchase the pistol, you can of course have fun shooting much lighter loads for sure. If you bought the pistol for BEARS, than this is what does the job verses a pop gun .38spl or .357mag.

Now when you shoot this Hand-Cannon, do so off of a padded rest for the first several shots. I would also wear a shooting glove for added protection OK. Hell have Fun and enjoy your new toy!;):D:D

[Bill Gunn]

as the gunsmith on Mythbusters put it, when you have a 2300 fps cartridge, that means you've got a 2300 fps gas cloud expanding through a gap just a few thousandths of an inch wide, which makes for a mighty sharp blow (puns intended! :eek: )

....

The velocity of the gasses in most small arms is between 4,000, and 4,700 fps (and it does cause a major OUCH :eek:).
It has to be faster than the bullet, to get the bullet to the speed it's at.
If I set my chronograph real close to the end of the rifle barrel, it will actually read the speed of the gasses.