What were they using? I have used many 380 HP's and most never exited the first jug. If they were using FMJ's I suppose they could get more than one jug, but six I would love to know what brand, and bullet. Thank You. Be Safe,

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I BACK OUR BLUE

A Government building is the only place I go willingly without a gun. I've been bit 8 times and had to have rabies treatments twice. When I'm bike riding on open roads and country bike paths, I carry a LCR with Gold dot +P 135gr same as my daily carry. If I'm walking the woods, it is a 1911 or 1917 with Hydra-Shok 230's. As teens camping it the woods, I used a 12 gauge pump, others usually had a K98 or SMLE.

One time my best friend took a hound with a 45-70 through both lungs, the dog attacked and bit the gun muzzle, turned and fell over dead a few yards away. Whole thing lasted 10 to 15 seconds at most. LESSON: Don't stop until it is over!

I had to shoot one, used 308 soft point. Pulled lung out the hole. The dog was down but alive and suffering. I ended that asap.

So, is 380 enough gun for wild dog? Answer: Sometimes.

Ivan

A distinguished member here reviewed several hundred homicide cases. He mentioned that with .380 the choice of fmj or jhp is a coin flip. If the jhp expands, the penetration often isn't enough to reach vital organs.

For more info on milk jug testing see :
Ballistic test medium

The particular .380 ACP rounds I carry are Hornady American Gunner XTPs, which seem to be pretty much the gold standard for .380 JHPs because they meet minimum FBI Specs in Ballistics Gel Tests.

I wouldn't carry FMJ because those things penetrate a lot more than anyone would expect. My mother once had an ND in which she accidentally shot through the living room floor with her Taurus TCP, the bullet punched straight through the hardwood floor, penetrated through galvanized aluminum furnace ducts, and was found in a considerably deep divot in the concrete floor. I'm not sure what she had loaded, but I've seen the bullet and it appeared to have been an FMJ, hard to tell for sure though because it did mushroom out.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

In those days things were a bit more peaceful than in this century. This was a rural area, had hunted there a good bit in the past and never saw another person or any aggressive critters before. Lesson learned though, never again.

Most .380's are small, hitting a moving target with small guns is not easy.
If the gun is big enough to shoot well, you might as well have a better caliber.

The .380 is effective against canines. It is equally effective against incisors, bicuspids and molars.

FMJs out of either .380 or 9mm over penetrate. Paul Harrell demonstrated that with his 'meat target'.

If you are careful with your ammo selection, which I am, .380 is adequate for canines. They get a little over 12" of penetration with decent expansion.

Two I like are Sig Saur V-crown and Precision One XTP. Both of these are standard velocity.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

You FUNNY! Not very helpful, but still funny...

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Your post is interesting and I believe you. But I used that Halt spray on numerous dogs and it worked every time.
Lets keep in mind I was always on a moving bicycle and it stopped them from pursuing me. Might be different if I was standing in their territory.

He said several brands of FMJ's penetrated 7 and stopped in the 8th. He also said Critical Duty penetrated 3-4 and stopped in the next one. A 12 gauge slug stopped in the 1st but expanded. I'm guessing it was a Foster-type slug.
Anyway, that's what he told me and he's not one to exaggerate.

I do have to wonder where he got all the jugs. Maybe from someone who works in a cafeteria. He works at a school.

It's also important to note that .380 ACP was substantially downloaded for decades due to the popularity of cheaply made blowback .380 Pistols which were frankly unsafe to shoot regular loads through, so ammo companies started loading their ammo below Standard Pressure to avoid the possibility of any legal action taken against them because some guy's Saturday Night Special/Ring of Fire pistol catastrophically failed and injured him.

Once the trend of modern, locked breach .380 Pocket Pistols took off, ammo companies started loading ammo to the proper specs again, with some companies loading their ammo right to the edge of SAAMI Specs because the locked breach design can handle much higher pressures than straight blowback.

So in other words, if the guy who did these milk jug tests did so before, I dunno, 2010, then yeah, it's not too hard to believe that .380 ACP FMJ of that era didn't penetrate very well.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

I've never shot a healthy dog with a 380. I have used a P3AT to put several out of their misery injured badly by run ins with cars. Worked well for that.

As for rampaging bad dogs and a couple of sick dogs, I've put them down with subsonic 22lr from an old Marlin bolt. It worked every time. However there were a couple that needed a coup de gras but they were already done.

If I was being threatened by a dangerous dog that I was out on foot with I'd have used my duty gun. But the 22 subsonic worked great from the scoped Marlin bolt when able to make careful shot placement.

Out for a walk I almost shot a couple of young aggressive Great Danes that got after me with my P3AT. They read my mind. When I decided to kill them they suddenly backed off. For the next several weeks I walked with my PF9.

Hornady Critical Defense from a Kimber Micro 380. Ended an attack from a Rottweiler and two Pitbulls. They were attacking my Belgian Malinois through our gate. They were trying to pull her through the gap between the gate and the fence. One shot to the head of the Rottweiler and he was dead before he hit the ground. The pitbulls fled, but were euthanized by authorities later. $2800 in vet bills for my girl and she was never 100% after that. Best dog I've ever had.

With the RIGHT load, I trust 380, but that would me my minimum.

While in an RV park, I was walking my dog, on leash. A woman on a bike approached with an unleashed dog. She asked if my dog was friendly, I said yes. She replied hers was too...then her dog attacked mine.
I drew my .380, using trigger discipline but she rushed to get her aggressive mutt.
I didn't say a word and kept walking.
My after action assessment was I erred.
Not only were the dogs movements too fast, I was in an RV PARK! No clear shot!
A belly gun is difficult at best, to hit what you're aiming at.

Good luck!

I've never been attacked by a large aggressive dog thank goodness so I can only speculate. It seems to me the only way a dog can bite you is to get to contact distance. So it seems to me that you should be able to easily shoot the dog with a point and shoot small .380 like the Ruger LCP.

Shot placement IMO is the obvious answer. I personally think a 380 is marginal at best. Over penetration shouldn't be a concern shooting down at a wild dog, coyote etc. If one has to pull the trigger you want the target to go down and stay down.

Bigfoot are known to mimic coyotes. I realize that isn’t an improvement.

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Uvidíme se později, aligátore.

Rabid animals are a whole lot tougher to kill than healthy ones. Like bears and people up on Crack and other mind-altering substances you can shoot them in a "killing" location and they don't know they are dead. That being the case, they seem to think they still have the ability to take you out with their remaining strength. Guess what, they can. Having said that, I will carry nothing less than a .380 as they are the most common PD firearm in the states. Remembering that most wild animals are more cautious of people than dogs, it's best you carry something you are most comfortable with. If it's a .380 fine, if .40 fine too. Just be sure to practice enough that you are comfortable in your ability to hit what you are shooting at. I like the idea of you carrying both a pistol and a can of spray. Use one and then the other, but which ever you use first, be prepared to respond to an officer asking questions. To the question, Did you have to shoot it? Your answer should be, Hell yes, it looked like it was foaming at the mouth. At least that would be my answer.

Let me add that I am a confirmed dog lover and have had one in my life as long as I can remember. Shooting a dog is/was a last resort thing for me. Those I encountered all those years ago were feral and very aggressive-and they were NOT afraid of people. We tried yelling, throwing rocks/sticks etc ., all to no effect. Hence the reason we retreated. When we went back, armed, we had a second encounter-much like the first except for our rifles. These were NOT “somebody’s pet” (more like Cujo��)

You don't have to explain yourself to anybody, and frankly anyone who would accuse another of shooting an otherwise friendly animal without due cause isn't worth responding to.

In my experience, the sort of folks who take the most offense towards others defending themselves against attacking dogs are the sort who has one of those extremely hostile, anti-social dogs who will attack any person or animal they come into contact with, so they're bothered by it because it could happen to their dog one day, but they would rather pretend that their dog as well as all others like it are sweet, innocent, harmless creatures, and that it only acts the way that it does around strangers because it can "sense" that every other person or animal it has ever responded to with hostility was dangerous.

Nobody else is that unreasonable nor accusatory towards those who have so much as expressed a perceived need to defend themselves against feral dogs, much less had to do so.

Rest assured, you did the right thing, the responsible thing, and frankly provided a public service by taking care of dangerous wild animals who almost assuredly would have gone on to attack someone. Other folks would have probably just left them be with zero regard for the safety of others, but you went all the way back out there, tracked them down, and euthanized them in a humane fashion.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

If you have to ask , then it is not enough. we know that .38 Spl + P works
we know 357mag works , we know .40 cal/10mm works, and we certainly know .41Spl/MAG and .44 Spl/MAG works.
Don't wonder , KNOW.

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V/r,
Markham

Dogs...

I shot a pit bull in the 'hood after it started chewing on me on the street without provocation. It let go and was attempting to get behind me to attack my back when I shot it with a .40/180 gr. Gold Dot middle of the body. It ceased the attack immediately, and its blood shot high into the air with each beat of its heart as it staggered on to a porch and died there.

Another time I attempted non-lethal methods to grab a Rottweiler that had been abandoned at the bottom of an outside stairwell. The dog was somewhat aggressive and came charging up the stairwell. Another officer beside me shot it almost point blank with Remington Reduced Recoil 00 buckshot. The dog ran off like nothing had ever happened. There was not a drop of blood and no evidence of a miss. A few minutes later it was found on somebody's porch, finally bleeding out. But it did take the full charge of buckshot without apparent effect.

Another time a full grown pit bull that had been purchased on the internet sight unseen went nuts at a domestic disturbance and attacked everybody in the residence, sending four people to the hospital. Another officer and I went to make sure the dog was contained and it charged the other officer from the back alley. He got the gun out in time and killed it with a few shots with the same Gold Dot ammo.

My former FTO was sent to a call of pit bulls at large from a known problem house. They attacked him in the street, and he killed both of them, again with .40 Gold Dot. I found two of the bloodied and expanded bullets on the sidewalk. Those Gold Dots expanded very quickly and didn't penetrate a whole lot but they worked well against dogs.

Years ago I was attacked by three Pitbulls. I was able to draw my Deparment Sig-Sauer P-229 .40 loaded with 180 grain JHPs and doubled tapped each Pitbull center mass.Neither of the Pitbulls acted as if They were shot.The sound of the shots turned Them and They retreated into a wooded area.
When backup units arrived we hunted down the pitbulls and finished them off with 12 gauge shotguns.
If I was in yours shoes I would pack a Glock Model 20 10mm loaded with JHPs. ( and a pair of fast running shoes)

I like big bullets and a lot of them.

The only dog I ever shot was a feral Lab, about 75 pounds, that was attacking livestock and pets in the area. Since I shot him at 50 yards with a 180gr 30-30, he was DRT. Buried right there too.

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The best I can with what I got

Based on what I've read here, I think I'll go ahead and just pack my M&P40 Shield. Sure, I can't carry it in a pair of drawstring shorts, but I'd rather sweat it out a bit in cargo shorts from the heat than sweat it out in fear otherwise.

Alas, I don't have any 180gr Gold Dots, but I do have 165gr Ranger Ts, which seems to be a pretty effective round.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

Any data to back that up? I have not seen a department in the Western States that has any uniformed officers carrying 380.

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Front sight and squeeze

Your assumption that PD stands for Police Department is spot on for some referencing, however my use of the abbreviation is for the words Personal Defense. And yes, there is plenty of reference material for that statement. I'm not trying to be nasty here, just explaining myself. Please don't take offense.

Llance

This is a good point, any critter knows something is up when they can't breath.

Rosewood

Depends on the size of the K9 and where you hit em. Hit a chihuahua in the Keester with a .380, and you're still likely to lose a foot.

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213th FBINA

There are coyotes around our mountain property and they have killed our neighbor's chickens and one of our cats. When I walk the property I carry an M1 carbine with soft points. Light, fast to the shoulder and great sights. The .30 carbine cartridge is not the wimp many think it is.

I think it’s all bunk. No water jug will ever stop any kind of 12 ga slug. That’s where he lost me.

Thanks for the kind words. We’d hunted there before (and after) without any issues from anything. We liked it because you had it to yourself. Great deer hunting spot. Ever since that time I am never afield unarmed. I hunt with stick bow or traditional muzzleloading rifles, but there is a modern handgun with me ALL the time, just in case..

Thank you, sorry for the misinterpretation.

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Front sight and squeeze

The same folks who call .30 Carbine "weak" are the same folks who unironically refer to .357 Magnum and 10mm Auto as "manstoppers" or "one-shot-stops" despite the fact that both have less energy than .30 Carbine.

Good point, I overlooked that part. Overall it reminds me of a time in which I saw a post claiming that a friend of his had been shot with a .380 ACP and had the bullet get stopped by his leather belt. Or better yet, the time I read someone claiming to have withnessed a .380 ACP bouncing off his friend's denim jacket.

Don't mention it, I just get really angry when folks start tossing around baseless accusations of animal cruelty in response to tales of self-defense against vicious animals.

It reminds me of two crazy former neighbors of mine who claimed to be animal rights activists, but in reality were physically and verbally abusive towards their own dogs, one of which had actually broken her own dog's back, then attempted to cover it up with a ludicrous story that it had done a backflip and broken its own back in the process.
Those creeps would demonize hunters, animal control, park rangers, and basically anyone who had ever killed an animal for any reason, yet they themselves were unspeakably cruel to animals. (And when I say "unspeakable" I mean that I won't even write about some of the things they had done to their own pets just for annoying them.)

Moreover, it reminds me of some folks I know who have a dog that is extremely violent and thus has to be separated from other animals and people alike at all times due to how anti-social it is, yet they refuse to have it put down and took an attitude towards me and accused me of being heartless because I told them that they really ought to euthanize it of genuine concern for their safety.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

Rosewood loves him some 30 carbine. I have the Modern production Thompson/Kahr Mil Spec one. It was made in about 2005 or so?? Ditched the imitation "Universal" which is anything but.

I never gave it much thought, but it would make a great woods walking gun for protection and taking game. Even better than my Marlin 1894CP 357.

Rosewood

I've never encountered aggressive coyotes (but I know others that have), but I have been in a similar situation as you with wild/feral dogs. Quite a few years ago I hunted on a 1500 acre lease about 120 miles southeast of Atlanta and this lease was surrounded by other similar sized leases, so there were no homes of any sort near to it. Seems that lots of folks felt that was a great area to drop off dogs they no longer wanted and the dogs that survived long enough became totally feral and ran in packs of 6 to 10 animals. These dogs had no fear of people and were the top animal predators in that area at the time (this was before coyotes moved into the area). My hunting partners and I would camp on the lease and hunt a week at a time and would occasionally encounter the dogs. Most of the time they would run off like any other wild animal but on two occasions they didn't. The first occasion I was hunting on the ground sitting next to a large tree when a pack of the dogs was chasing a doe .... she ran past me about 10 yds away with the dogs hot on her heals. All of the pack except for one dog (a black one about the size of a Lab or German Shepard) continued after the doe, but this one dog noticed me and stopped and then lowered his head and came at me growling and snapping his jaws....it was so close I didn't really aim, I just lifted my rifle and fired and the dog was DRT. The second occasion I was in our hunting camp in my camper with two of my buddies in a camper next to mine. We had each killed a deer that morning and had hung the deer on a pole there in camp. All of sudden a pack of the dogs rushed into our camp and were leaping up trying to pull one of the deer down. My hunting partners were quicker than me and grabbed their pistols and chased the dogs to the edge of camp & killing two them, but they had emptied their pistols in the process and now one of the remaining dogs turned and was coming for them.....by that time I had finally gotten my pistol from my truck and as my partners were being backed up by the dog I stepped past them and was able to kill that one.

Those two occasions are the only time I've ever been threatened by man or beast and had to fire a weapon.....but it left me with a tremendous dislike for feral dogs.

Don

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Laus Deo! <><

I wish that more companies would manufacture clones of the M1 Carbine and especially make some new rifles chambered in it. Heck, I would be all over a .30 Carbine Upper for AR Pattern Rifles if they made such a thing. (Or do they? Might have to look into that...)

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

The real deal ones are still out there. I have a National Postal Meter and an Inland. The NPM is my go-to.

I get a yuck from folks who talk about how weak the .30 carbine is. Lots of folks on the wrong end of one in Europe and the Pacific would strongly disagree if they could still talk. ��. Yea, compared to an ‘06 or 308 it’s pretty weak (but then so is the “mighty” 5.56/.223 that so many rave about and that terrifies the unwashed in those awful black rifles��). A carbine is a darn good woods (or self defense) rifle for most of the country.

About 40 years ago, we lived lived in the country away from the main roads. My wife at the time told me about this large dog, 70-80 lbs at least, that kept coming up and would not leave. She tried to run it off but it would growl, snarl and she would get frightened and go back in the house. I didn't feel comfortable about her or my daughter going outside because of this dog. This happened a couple of times before I was able to catch up with this dog. I had an astra handy so went out to run it off for keeps. When it saw me, it growled and snarled but did was start to slowly walk off. It stopped and growled so I lined up and shot it at about 50 ft. Dog took off around to the front of the house with me following. It went up onto the front porch where I ran it off and shot it again. As it ran off, I shot it a third time. I am pretty sure I actually hit it twice, it was moving pretty fast on the last shot.

I was using FMJ in a 9mm. I thought the dog would go off and die as I felt I got one and possibly two good hits. Anyway, two weeks later this dog was on my back porch again. This time I grabbed my 44 super blackhawk and proceeded to end this dog situation. It saw me coming and started to slowly walk off. It stopped broadside, I lined up a neck shot and fired. Dog went straight down. Dead I thought. I put my gun up, retrieved a handy shovel and came around back preparing to bury it. When I got back around the house, this dog was up and slowly walking off. I dropped my shovel and went inside to grab the nearest gun, the astra, but before I could get back around, it had made it into a nearby thicket.

I searched but the dog had gave me the slip. Never saw the dog again so I guess it did die. All this is to say that in this limited experience situation, dogs are hard to kill, regardless the caliber, unless you have good shot placement.

As with any defensive handgun caliber/cartridge,
there can be a hell of a lot of territory between killing and stopping.

A 380acp (9mm Kurtz) would not be of any consideration for me personally


///

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"IN GOD WE TRUST"

To be fair, there are plenty of folks who denigrate the 5.56 as nothing more than a varmint round, especially since the Army adopted .227 Fury.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

I have no problem using it.

As always, shot placement trumps caliber. A shot to the vitals with a 380 is almost always going to be more effective than a leg shot with a 44 magnum.

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Send lawyers, guns & money...

Have terminated dogs when I was a Kid.
We used 12Ga’s and I don’t recall having any problems.
And I have attacked by 8 dogs and I wasn’t carrying.
I got me a big stick and backed up to a large circular Cacti we have around here.
The idiot dog owner called them off before they got to me.
PD? I thought it meant Police Department.
Personal Defense? Well maybe.
It can also mean Personality Disorder.

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NRA LIFE MEMBER

The last group of dogs I shot were traveling together 6 of them. They got into the chickens and killed 11 or 12. I had a pre 15 loaded with 1/2 lead RN 158 gr the other 3 were 125 gr Hollowpoints. The HPs were up first and I shot 4 rounds 2 were DRT...one ran about 30 yards and the 4th ran about 150 yards. RNL. Shot them all under 25 ft...some very close...all running and killing the chickens. They were all focused on killing the birds and didn't seem to even hear the shooting till the 4th one which ran off yelping. 2 ran away before I could get a good shot at them. I had pictures if I heard any complaints. My neighbor shot a German Shepard that attacked and killed one of his calves...approx 200 lbs. I helped bury the calf but not the dog. So the 38 (jacketed is better) will kill dogs and other critters the 7mm mag is better. In case you wonder... I am a dog lover too...but there are often packs of dogs that get together and go back home. Their owners don't realize or in some cases don't care

I love dogs. Except when I was overseas I've always had at least one dog. I currently have three, and if you're one of my Facebook pals you are probably tired of me posting pictures of dogs every week from the shelter where I volunteer as a dog walker.

I've also shot dogs. Two pitties that were trying to eat my daughter's 4H rabbits (.22 to the ribs - they ran off to die somewhere else) and a big chow that was part of a pack that killed and partially ate a 6 year old boy. He took a .40 to the chin and, as the kid says on O Brother, he R U N N O F T. I found him the next day, eaten his own self by some coyotes.

I spent 17 years working on Indian reservations, where loose dogs are just a fact of life. If I had shot every dog that threatened to chomp me I would have done nothing but shoot dogs and do endless paperwork about shooting dogs. Once my supervisor came from Helena to tour the rez. He wanted to be anywhere else on the planet, but at the time he was required to visit each RA once a year. I bet him in the short allotted time I could show him a dog eating another dog. I had just that morning seen a rez dog eating a bag of dry plaster. He was looking pretty rough and I thought he might have fallen victim to some of his homies by then. On the way there I passed a small cemetery and there was a rez dog with just his hindquarters and curly tail sticking out of a grave. He was gnawing away on something, so I took that as a win.

My go-to on rez dogs was an ASP baton. I rarely had to whack them - just snapping it out usually triggered some herd memory causing them to peel off and find other things to do. The ones to worry about were the sneaky no-eye-contact ones who would try to get behind me. They usually needed a snout-bonk.

But, to answer the OP's question, its is my opinion a .380 will most definitely deter a dog attack.

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“What you got, ain’t new.”

Water filled milk jugs are bad evaluation mediums. They are not pressure vessels. Try two liter soda bottles filled with water. You will find your penetration is much less.

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