It's been a fantastic year with the Sharps 50s. My oldest son shot his first deer at a 102 yards with a 50 1 3/4 425 grain paper patch bullet.
I shot an antelope doe with my 50 2 1/2" 473 paper patch bullet at 298 yards and also a deer with the 50 1 3/4 at 30 yards.
A big thank you to Orville for letting my son and I come out to his ranch and hunt for a few days. I told my son that the only meat we would have would be what we caught out of the creek or shot on the hoof. That's a hell of an incentive. We had a great, peaceful, traditional hunt. Exactly what I wanted.
With a world full of technology, and having anything you want at your fingertips, this was a great experience for my son.
I put a full 70 grains of powder Brent. This year we used pure lead when casting our bullets. Kaleb actually casted these particular bullets for hunting. After a few tries he got his cadence down and did a very good job of keeping the weight consistent.
I was particularly surprised on how much the bullet expanded on these does with a pure lead bullet. I destroyed the bottom of my deers heart and Kalebs doe had some serious lung damage. I usually go with a harder bullet around 1/60 mix. There is a big difference between pure lead and 1/60.
I've been using 40:1 a lot and I'm thinking of going harder, much harder. I used to do pure lead and it sure does work (very little lead is lost on recovered bullets), but I've been going with harder stuff because it is more convenient. Doesn't seem to affect performance for me.
Yes using the harder bullet doesn't effect the killing performance. I'm actually use to an entrance hole the size of the bullet and an exit hole the size of a 50 cent piece. This was an eye opener.
I use a .023 card, 3/16th lube wad and then another .023 card. I like my bullets to be seated between .200-.250 in the case.
Congratulations to you and your son Stephen. You guys are really testing the ranges on those 50's. Short, long and in between. I use pure lead and while it's a PITA to cast it just works good. Most times the exit on deer and antelope from 50 to 200 yds. is about 3/4'' with a 45 cal. The bullet under the skin of the elk I shot last year meas. .958 and lost 2 gr. from 430 to 428. Of course the range was a whopping 25 yds.
Great story and pictures to boot! Really super to read about a dad and his son hunting with traditional BPCR's. He will really appreciate this when he looks back on this time with his father. - Mike