Wapiti wrote:Whatever you're comfortable with mate, it's great we have a choice.
Interesting to always hear other people's justifications, we all have our standards were comfortable with.
Blokes in the area who do that stuff I know of, use 22 or 22 mag. Noise is always their reasons. 243, holy moly.
Me, I've used 22 forever, always solids, always front on and I'll never take a shot on a wound up animal. Always drop like a schoolbag hitting the ground when someone finds out there's hot chips at the tuckshop.
Is a 22 for everyone? No, and to keep the peace everyone can work out the reason why for themselves.
Last few, I've used 9mm, cos I've had it with me and I know it's on the money. Is it better? Instant death is dead.
I guess if I were dropping twenty cows the noise might add up to something, but for one or two shots it really is meaningless. Even the .243 is muffled to a degree by the closeness of the shot, barely noticeable when we're all concentrating on the shot itself. I doubt our neighbours heard a thing. The same butcher dropped four cows for him about five years ago with the .243 and we heard nothing - 380m away. We were taking the left overs for composting so were setting up a trailer for the butcher to drop the guts into, when we got there I was surprised to see they were already down. I used subsonic 7mm-08 a couple years ago because I had to do it inside a small steel dairy shed for a neighbour, and there were a few to drop. Subsonic is excellent in that situation, I think the .243 or .30-30 would've demanded hearing protection in there. I know first-hand that firing .223 inside a building without hearing protection is hell on the ears
Agreed about the 9mm, that or the .357 would've been my preference (I only have 500fps cast loads for the .44-40's though I would expect that to do just fine). Safely holstered until actually needed, and a near-contact shot will definitely do the job.
