In an earlier post, I suggested how a longer barrel can help boost .45 ACP power. But why use such an inherently low powered round at all? Is the point to prove that it can be done?

I've only been hunting deer for about 8 years, all on a very large family owned swamp and river bottom paradise for deer. About a dozen of us hunt this closed area. So I see lots of deer shot every year, with slug shotguns, bows, and the occasional handgun.

What has impressed me most, and was completely unexpected, is how difficult it is to kill a deer, even with a heavy, high power projectile going directly through a vital area, expending most of its energy. We've lost a number of deer so hit, because they ran long distances and could not be found before the meat was ruined. Our bow hunters have lost the most.

Several years ago, I shot a deer from about 50 feet with a 575 grain blunt 12 gauge slug which went directly through the heart, causing it to literally explode into a flat pancake. I watched a cloud of blood and tissue exit the far side, but the deer took off through knee-deep swamp. I eventually found it, and towed it out by the antlers. I had to track another one nearly 200 yards, after I solidly hit it through the chest/lungs bullseye area.

Not even a .44 magnum will decisively stop a deer, unless you hit the spine or brain, maybe. So it seems to me that anything less than a heavy shotgun slug from close range, or a large bore rifle slug in states where it is allowed, is just not a wise or humane way to hunt deer. They seem to be about as hard to kill as members of the cat family, and that came as a surprise to me. To hunt them with a bow, or low powered handgun, is just something I could not in good conscience do, although I know it is possible. And I know some of you probably take exception on the bow hunting comment, but I just see too many deer disappear to die an agonizing death and have the meat wasted. My personal entertainment is not worth that.

Because of what I have seen on how hard they are to kill, I would not even use the .357 Magnum. Model 29 in .44 Magnum? That is accurate enough for a scoped head or spine shot, and that will stop them right now.