TC Maxi Balls?

[luieb45]

I think I'm going to order some of these for use in 2nd deer season and muzzleloader season in my .45 TC Hawken. I killed a deer with roundball but I didn't get a pass through and she hardly lost any blood until she collapsed. And I can shoot that gun with good long range accuracy up to 125 yards on a rest but a .45 roundball gets a little weak at that distance. With these all lead bullets do they leave leading behind in the barrel? How do I clean it out of there?

 

[WALT53]

Your bullet is not going fast enough to lead your barrel.clean as usual water an patch and a wire brush. walt :thumbsup: ps just make sure there is lots of lube on them

 

[ohio ramrod]

Myself I have not gotten good accuracy with them. I get much better accuracy using hollow based mini's in my 45. :idunno: :idunno:

 

[paulvallandigham]

If you are rubbing bare lead against dry steel, you will get lead streaks in the bore. The only way I know you can prevent this is by greasing the bore with a greased cleaning patch,in front of a cleaning jag, BEFORE you load that powder and bullet.

No one ever claimed a .45 is a guaranteed pass-through caliber using RBs, at over 50 yards. Some larger diameter balls won't always pass through, either, out at 100 or 125 yards.

That is why you have to learn to follow TRACKS-Deer Tracks---, and use Blood as CONFIRMATION, or " icing on the cake", ONLY.

Blood tells you where you hit the deer, compared to where you aimed the gun. The quantity and location of the blood can also help you determine where you it the deer. The color of the blood, as well as anything that appears in the blood will tell you what organs you hit, or "missed".

Tracks tell you the sex and age of the animal, whether it is right or left eye dominant, whether a leg or shoulder has been injured, and from the chips and nicks you can find in the toes of the deer tracks, Individual Identifying Marks( a/k/a "Accidentals") that identify THAT deer, and only THAT Deer from all the other deer similar in size, sex, and condition that might be in that area. Tracker use the same "technique" to identify individual shoe prints, or tire prints found at crime scenes.

BTW, I had one small deer I shot at less than 20 yard with a 12 gauge slug, from a deer stand, that broke its left shoulder in several pieces entering, Tore off the upper side of its heart, after severing several major arteries, and the flattened slug stopped against the sternum, never exiting. The small buck did squat down on to the ground on being hit, and I believe that motion absorbed all the power of that close ranged shot.

Because of the high placed hit on its shoulder( I was shooting down at a relatively steep angle as he came out of the woods so close to my stand, while I was only about 10 feet off the ground), there was blood on brush above the ground, and obviously some few drops on the forest clutter. But, mostly his whole chest filled up with blood in his left lung, and in the torso from the ruptures of his arteries before he died, about 25 feet from where he was hit.

The lessen to be learned is that there are NO guarantees that any projectile will perform as you want it too, no matter how well placed your shot is. My deer was missing half of its Heart, and still managed to walk and stumble 25 feet before it died.

I have since abandoned using tree stands to hunt deer, BTW. I do much better shooting from the ground. I would rather go out before the season and cut "shooting lanes" down of brush, leading from my "stands"(ground blinds), than to be sitting up in those cold winds all day. :surrender: :hatsoff:

If your .45 shoots accurately as you say it does, stick with and simply pass up those long shots. No matter what rifle you carry into the woods, and how good a shooter you are, you will always have opportunities to see deer several dozen yards beyond where you are comfortable taking a shot. I was in a palace built on stilts one fall, and had a small yearling wander under my "stand" early on the first morning. I passed on the shot. That after noon, the only bucks, and large does I saw, ran passed me out in open fields( plowed) at more than 200 yards from my "stand". IF I had been allowed to use one of my scoped modern wonders, I may have been able to make meat, as they paused before jumping over a section fence. I don't recall now if I had my MLer, or my Deer Slug shotgun. Either one would not have been adequate to try to take a shot at that distance, NO?

I didn't see another deer the rest of the season. That's why its called Hunting, not "Gettin'"! :shocked2: :thumbsup:

 

[majg1234]

Maxiballs and Maxihunters will both give some better penetration than PRB.The problem sometimes is accuracy,they may not shoot as well or they may you'll just have to try'um to see.Over the years I've taken a bunch of whiteails with each bullet but now shoot PRB.The leading thing can be pretty much eliminated with a felt wad or patch over the powder good lubrication of the bullet and Shooters Choice solvent will clean it out.You'll need additional steps to get the solvent outa the bore though.Good luck with your hunting and "make meat" :thumbsup:

 

[smo]

Luie, I don't know how well those maxi bullets will shoot in your .45. I used them years ago in a TC .50. they will do a number on a whtetail,at least a Southern whitetail.I've never had one take another step after being shot with one.This maybe just luck :idunno: I've killed 5 or 6 deer with them and all went down where they stood. :thumbsup: You will find that the recoil from the bullets is a little more than a patched roundball. :grin: By the way how much powder are you shooting in the .45? At 20 yds i would have thought the rb would have penetrated the doe :idunno:

 

[luieb45]

I'm going to try and be as polite as possible here. We need blood to do our tracking. Yes, you can track a deer by just its track and that sort of thing... in ideal conditions. We don't always have ideal conditions so blood is your best bet at recovering your deer because I HATE losing deer. So if you don't need a drop of blood to track your deer, how the h*** do you track a deer that you shoot in the last minute of shooting light, wait 30 minutes and go crawling on your hands and knees through the good ol' western illinois briars and brambles with a flash light looking for a poorly shot deer shot with a small caliber gun? No, you won't find that deer. If you got that thing spittin' out blood you'll find that deer but you're already fighting an uphill battle in the dark. Just sayin'...

 

[luieb45]

I used 70 gr. on that deer cuz it shot good :haha:. I think I might order some over powder wads while I'm at it. I just want something that will knock a good hole in a deer and kill 'em good, cuz that's what we all want :grin:

 

[tg]

"I just want something that will knock a good hole in a deer and kill 'em good, cuz that's what we all want"

I gotta agree,I tried using round balls but all I could do was kill them Deer BAD! so I went back to them long Boolits and started killing them Deer GOOD again, go figure, :hmm:

 

[rabjr]

I'm going to try and be as polite as possible here. We need blood to do our tracking. Yes, you can track a deer by just its track and that sort of thing... in ideal conditions. We don't always have ideal conditions so blood is your best bet at recovering your deer because I HATE losing deer. So if you don't need a drop of blood to track your deer, how the h*** do you track a deer that you shoot in the last minute of shooting light, wait 30 minutes and go crawling on your hands and knees through the good ol' western illinois briars and brambles with a flash light looking for a poorly shot deer shot with a small caliber gun? No, you won't find that deer. If you got that thing spittin' out blood you'll find that deer but you're already fighting an uphill battle in the dark. Just sayin'...

Have to say I'm a little perplexed here. You just shot a deer, made a good shot and if I remember right, it only went 30 yards. You couldn't have found this deer in the dark with no blood trail? The key here is making sure you make good hits which is the responsibility of everyone here. Pass on those questionable shots and make sure you hit your mark like you just did the other day Luie and you'll never have to worry about blood trails. The sad thing is, you just proved that gun will preform for you if you do your part but that don't seem to be good enough and now you want to go change things for frankly a poor excuse in my book.

 

[luieb45]

From what I've learned is there are too many situations where things can and will go wrong and you will make a less than desirable shot which you might get away with on a bullet but not a ball. I saw where this deer dropped because I was 15 foot up and saw where she dropped. Had I been sitting on the ground in thick cover like I like hunting in I wouldn't have seen her drop and in some situations wouldn't have even seen a reaction leaving me only to look for blood. I've spent too many late nights tracking other people's deer crawling around in holes in the brush on my hands and knees looking for tiny specks of blood after gut shot deer. That's understandable on a gut shot deer but no blood on a lung shot deer? I'm sorry my ethics are kicking in and I want to make sure that the chance for that deer getting wounded and unrecovered are as small as possible. Sometimes ethics overrides tradition for me :hmm:

 

[rabjr]

Nothing to do with tradition, if you want to use maxi-balls by all means use them. I'm not here trying to convince you to only use balls. Just pointing out the gun works, you proved that. Just think your over thinking things is all. :v

 

[BrownBear]

Check out this one from LEE. One of my pards uses it for impressive one-shot kills on deer, as well as elk and moose. It's as accurate as a snakebite in his rifle and the broad flat nose really punches through game. If he's ever recovered one, he hasn't mentioned it to me.

 

[paulvallandigham]

OKay: I will also try to be as polite as I can be. I don't take last minute of daylight shots at deer or anything. That is HOW you get bad hits!

Yes, I have crawled through Illinois hardwood forest turf-- maple, oak, walnut, hickory, hawthorn, etc. tree leaves covering the ground, and all kinds of bramble as undergrowth. Yes, I have done this with a flash light- for other hunters who used poor judgment, but don't like to lose a deer they shot.

Is it very difficult work? Heck Yes! Sometimes we are lucky enough to shine some blood spots, and that confirmation that we are on the right tracks buoys our spirits and helps us continue on.

I have lost deer doing this, however-- I don't want you to ever think that I never have bad luck---- but that incident occurred when a storm front came through right at dusk, and a huge wind blew all the forest floor clutter several dozens of feet away, losing all the blood sign that was on the top of leaves, and covering over trails and deer tracks. We did concentric rings trying to cut sign for 2 hours after dark, with lanterns, and in the rain before giving up because the rain was coming down so hard it was also washing away tracks.

Precipitation, wind, car tires, and human shoes and boots are the great destroyers of tracks and sign. When any one of these conditions is present, you have problems following any kind of trail- including blood trails! :shocked2: If you have more than one of these present, even the best of trackers will be defeated. Trackers discuss these problems all the time, and share any technique they have found to keep them on a trail. ( I know certain techniques that can be used in some conditions where weather has destroyed obvious tracks.)

Blood evidence is very good sign to use, when you know how to use it correctly, and when to use it. But, as you and others have noted, you don't always have blood visible close to where the deer was hit by your RB or bullet. One of my tracker friends worked a deer track of a deer arrowed during archery season for over 300 yds before he found a pinhead size drop of blood on a river trail. He did that search on his hands and knees! The last 100 yards was on a trail that was so dry and hard packed, that there were NO tracks visible on the main trail. He used a technique described by Jack Kearney in his book, "Tracking: A Blueprint For Learning How", when he discusses "following the non-visible trail". The hunter who shot the deer followed Don walking behind him, and scanning from side to side, seeing nothing. Once Don found that tiny drop of blood( dried and dark red by the next morning he knew the deer was heading to one of two possible shallow river crossing that the deer used in the area to cross the upper Embarras River. He walked to the first crossing, following the boot prints of the hunter from the evening before, noted that the guy looked down stream, but never upstream of the crossing, and turned to examine the banks on the near side on the upstream side of the river. About 20 feet from the trail's entrance into the river, he spotted the deer- dead, laying next to a deadfall tree.

The hunter tried to tell him that this deer could not be his deer as he had looked for it at this crossing the night before during his earlier search. Don had to show him his own boot prints in the mud, and show him how he never looked to his left- upstream-- and his boot prints proved it. Don then examined the deer for its through wounds, and showed the man that he had hit this deer exactly as he had described it to him earlier when he asked Don's help to find the deer. Because the deer was laying in mud, next to the river, the meat was in good condition. The cold water and ground kept the meat from spoiling, and Don found the deer before the sun got high enough in the sky to heat up the carcass. The hunter's shot from his stand hit the deer high, missing the left lung, but cutting the right lung before exiting high. Because both entry and exit wounds were high on the body, the chest had to fill up with blood before it came out the exit wound. Even then, the razor cuts of the broadhead did not allow a lot of bleeding outside the body and the blood was absorbed by the thick fur of the deer's coat. Don was amazed that he found any blood at all.

Several weeks later, Don and I were at the same ground, and he showed me the stand the hunter used, and then walked me through the trail let by the deer and the hard-pack river trail that gave him no sign. Even then, we could not get scuffs on the hard-pack without purposely scuffing the ground with our boots. Don and i worked several deer trails on our hands and knees, at night, with flash lights, and in one case had to resort to feeling for the next track with our fingertips because the temperature had dropped during our work in a corn field, and covered everything with a fresh layer of FROST. :shocked2: The man we were helping track that deer thought we were out of our minds, but we followed the injured deer's tracks another 30 yards, until she got onto another river trail, where we could not see the distinguishing marks of her tracks, covered by the frost, to separate her tracks from other similar sized doe tracks on the trail. And, our fingertips were freezing constantly as we touched the frost.) :shake: :rotf: :surrender: We might have been able to pick up the track the next day, After the sun was high enough in the sky to burn off the frost, but I had a court case set the next morning, and Don could not take any more time off work and keep the job. However, that would have given the deer a half day head start on us, making any chance of finding her that much more difficult. And any tracks she made in the frost, would be lost on the frozen ground underneath the frost, when the sun burned off the frost.

Don and I did not like having to give up the search, but we had done everything we knew to stay on her tracks, and used some "tricks" we knew, when any sane person would have called it a night and gone home.

If it were easy, everyone could be a tracker. :hmm:

 

[Dphar]

I think I'm going to order some of these for use in 2nd deer season and muzzleloader season in my .45 TC Hawken. I killed a deer with roundball but I didn't get a pass through and she hardly lost any blood until she collapsed. And I can shoot that gun with good long range accuracy up to 125 yards on a rest but a .45 roundball gets a little weak at that distance. With these all lead bullets do they leave leading behind in the barrel? How do I clean it out of there?

Its simply not possible to make a judgement by shooting one animal. Too many variables. The mind set of the animal is a major factor is how far the will go after being hit.

If you think the RB is bad you may, from reports, be REALLY disappointed in the maxi. From what I have been told/read from several people who have used them they tend to not expand on occasion, perhaps most of the time, one correspondent told me his wife shot one with a good hit and he subsequently killed the deer the next year and found the wound scar the through the chest.
Some Canadian hunters told me that they started using the MAxi on Moose when it first came out but gave it up and went back to the RB, eventually to large RBs 62-69 or larger.
TC developed the "maxi-hunter" apparently to address this problem.
If you must use a bullet use a blunt one. Apparently the Maxi tends to collapse the front driving band into the huge front lube groove and then not expand.
Also be aware that "naked" ML bullet can slide away from the powder charge.
Pass through is not always important.
Further a 45 rb will usually pass through on broadside chest shots to 120 yards at least. Though its not 100%. With a 45 you need to be careful for use heart-lung shots and AVOID major bones in the shoulder. On larger deer like elk its best to avoid the heavy upper leg bone even with a 54 or 58.
If the 45 RB does not please you then go to a 50 or 54 caliber rb its safer by far and both are sure death on deer. Just don't expect them to fall over at the shot with anything, they seldom do. Either of these will pass through deer to 150 yards on chest shots. I broke a shoulder blade on a doe at 60 yards last year and still go pass through with a 495 RB.

I shot a small WT yesterday at about 40 yards with a 54 with 102 gr of FFF and a round ball good shot, still made about 60 yards. Did get a blood trail after about 20 yards.
The 22 RF will kill deer with chest shots. But it better be in the right place if you expect to find them. This is the real key. Shot placement trumps the bullet size and design every time.
Once all the "buy our bullet" hype and BS is gotten past the RB, properly sized for the game, is actually a very good hunting projectile. The modern shotgun slug is just a RB weight projectile that allows shooting through a choke. The RB was the preferred projectile for heavy game in Africa and India until the breech loader changed things.
If a 75 caliber RB driven by a 167 gr of BP will kill and 8000-10000 pound African Elephant with one well placed shot how are we to accept that the 45 caliber RB as inadequate for a deer that might weigh 300?

Some years back I read an account of a modern hunter who had shot some animal or the other with some bullet makers projectile and he wrote them because the bullet did not do as he thought it should. The guy at the other end of the conversation simply stated "the deer died didn't it?"
Gotta run its coming daylight.
Dan

 

[Rat Trapper]

I've had good luck with the Hornady great plains bullets in 50 & 54 caliber. For some reason I can't get either the maxi hunter or great plains bullets to shoot out of my TC Hawken 45 caliber rifle?? An over powder wad will really help with conicals. In my rifles that shoot the conicals well a heavy load seems to work best. A bullet with a slight hollow base/cup may work better than a solid base bullet. Ya just have t try several and see what works best. I like a hollow point in the nose of the bullet for deer hunting. A conical will put two holes in the deers hide which should help in tracking.

 

[smo]

Luie did you hit her in the shoulder bone? 70grns should have been plenty powder to drive that rb through her at that distance. :idunno: An over powder wad will help with accuracy and will protect your patch more which in turn may possibly give you a little more volicity. I use wasp nest for a wad, some use corn meal i've heard. :thumbsup: The bullets won't make a bigger hole but they will give more knock down power on both ends... :grin:

 

[CoyoteJoe]

To get back to your original question, Maxi-balls will penetrate but you're trading off some expansion and wound channel diameter to get that penetration. If it's a good trade, only you can decide, we all have our own priorities.
I've never tried them in .45 caliber but I have gotten excellent accuracy with maxi's in .50 and .54 caliber. In fact the best 100 yard group I've ever shot was with the .54 maxi-ball, even though recoil was brutal. But that won't be a problem with the .45 caliber, .45 maxi's only weigh about half as much as a .54 and the .45 rifle weighs more than the .54 Renegade that beat me up. I will say however, that accuracy came from maxi's I cast myself, I never got such good results with "store bought" maxi's. But give them a try and good luck to ya'. :grin:

 

[majg1234]

Loui.
just saying like others have posted try'em if you think It'll help but make sure you shoot them a good bit first,I've killed a lot of deer with both MAXIBALL and MAXIHUNTER mostly 50cal but have used both on 45 with good results.I've also killed WT with a 40 cal PRB,but was ever cautious about the shot I took.Just 2 wks ago passed on a HUGE 8-10pntr with my SB 20ga flinter he was @ 80yrds+ now this SB will place a ball inside of 3" @ 60yrds but i've never shot it @ 80yds It was at the end of shooting hours and the thoughts of loosing or tracking a deer like that didn't appeal to me @ all. as a result I wouldn't shoot>>>>been thinking about that decision for 2 wks now but feel I did right.I've only lost one deer in my long years of hunting and it made me SICK!!! Don't ever want to go through that again.Bottem line IF they shoot well for you use them and keep us informed!!!

 

[Rifleman1776]

Often overlooked is the fact we are using a 200 +/- year old technology to hunt with. Trying to make an ml rifle perform like a .300 winnie maggie is an exercise in frustration. I used for many years a .45 cal. longrifle flintlock. My patched round ball was pushed by 65 gr. of bp. My self imposed limit for shots was 100 yards. I was able to recover only one ball from a killed deer. Weight retention was 100% and expansion was about 2X creating a massive wound channel. Keep in mind, if you go to a maxi ball (bullet) you will be dealing with increased pressure, much more bullet drop and unknown accuracy. For longer shots your bullet will be traveling a rainbow trajectory and, essentially, falling to the target, not at it. This means even small miscalculations in range can put the bullet in front of the target or behind it. As you can tell, I'm not a fan of your idea. No offense, but if you are not happy with traditional ml performance, you need to use a modern suppository gun.

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