The bow in the photo above is a Hill style Robertson Stykbow. Of course I don’t always stack my arrows that close in the target, but have my days. I also shoot a JD Berry Serpentine.
I have both an Osage English Longbow, and a Pacific Yew English Longbow that I made. The Yew has a bit of string follow, but shoots like a dream. I shoot wooden arrows I build.
Actually a 20ga youth 870 is a pretty manageable package. Not a lot of fun to shoot if you have longer arms, but to keep it compact the short stock works OK. With ammunition advances over the last 50 years it doesnt give up much to a 12 in a lighter and more sleek package. Slugs are over 100 yard accurate, shot is good the closer you get in. A buckshot is a compromise. More oomph close in and will spread farther out and carry inertia.
As a bonus, the 870 is a inexpensive shotgun and a unrefined workhorse. If you need a spare paddle or something to push off with, you have it with you. Unless you bend it, it will keep working.
Anyone who has been with me pheasant hunting knows that shotguns dont take long to cycle and recoil isnt bad.
Another, likely as or more available in your neck of the woods, would be a 30-30 carbine.
AK is 7.62x39 and runs about 2300 fps. Less than a 30-30 Winchester with less power than one. 223, or 5.56 runs about 2700 fps on a max load with 77gr bullets. About the same as most hunting rifles.
No handguns have stopping power. They are a compromise.
No handguns have stopping power?
Is this a joke?
.454 Casull, S&W .500 Mag, .50 Desert Eagle, .45-70 Govt
There are lots of others.
Large caliber pistols have muzzle energy from around 2000-2,800 foot pounds, similar to a .30-06.
I brought my M6 Scout (22 K-Hornet over 410) with me when I paddled down the Missouri and did the headwaters of the Mississippi. I figure with a hunting round in the K, and a slug in the shotgun, I might even be able to defend against a bear with well placed shots, but it’s my “grocery getter” more than anything. -get pinned down by injury or storms, gear failure, or whatever, I’ll still come up with a meal when I want one. Wouldn’t be much use in a firefight, but then again in some areas of the country all you need to do is step out of your tent with it shouldered to keep the natives from taking too much interest in you.
We belonged to a camping club in Houston. Very nice set up on a lake. Large spots, nice bathhouse, etc. A nice quiet spot.
The last night we camped there , we had just finished dinner when I heard what had to be 2 gun shots in an RV close by.
When I got there, a nurse was inside the RV so I asked If I could help.
She said noone would ever help those people.
A murder/suicide. We never went back.
It was great that someone had a gun to protect them from all the bad things out there.
All of those are specific hunting handguns. The only people who carry them are hunters, anti gun movie actors, and guys that jack up trucks and put low profile tires on them. If you want to go overboard to make your point, there is a whole community devoted to long range bolt action hand gun hunting that actually uses rifle cartridges including 30-06.
So no, as compared to a long arm, a handgun doesnt have stopping power. Muzzle energy is only a part of the story. My 54 cal flintlock has 1800lbs+ of muzzle energy with a roundball. A 30-30 has 1900 ish with a 150gr core loct. I have a Walker Colt BP cap and ball that produces MORE energy than a 357mag. So they are comparable in effectiveness? Hardly. The #1 handgun is a 357 loaded with 125 gr bullets. (FBI stats) There is barely a secondary wound channel, there is little if any hydrostatic shock. The idea of a handgun is to convince the target to stop doing what he is doing. Once you start making holes, you need to keep making holes.
AU banned guns, they have a hire suicide rate than the US. Japan banned guns, they have a higher suicide rate than the US. If it were rat poison or antifreeze in the gatoraid would it be the existence of rodents or cars fault because they freeze and the engine blocks crack?
When I was 12 or 13 a group of adults decided they wanted our stuff more than we did. I was home alone wayyyy out in the country. A Winchester 32 special let them chose a different path that day and our house and my person were just fine. People make choices. Sometimes they are bad, stupid, or just evil, yet according to you, it would have been better if my family had been deprived of a way to make a living, or something bad had happened to me.
Spoken like a man. If you think there’s no difference, would you tell a single female not to hitch hike yet be OK w/a male doing it? Or camping. Or for walks along country roads.
I think people should make their own decisions and whatever they decide is OK w/me because I’m not them. Tens of thousands of cops carried a pistol their whole career and never fired a shot just as millions of people have auto insurance and never have gotten into an accident.
For the record, I think carrying concealed is a real PITA. Open carrying is a lot more comfortable. I do both, depending on the situation. I make no excuses for my choices unless I want to share them with people. Do you have an excuse for judging why most people carry firearms?
Still trying to have people not talk about what you don’t want to read?
You clearly have an issue with this topic, so why keep chiming in?
Remember when you and others discovered the ignore feature here, where you can ignore an individual here or even a whole thread?
I think our discussion is harder because we are comparing hunting with self defense. Wolves, blackbear, coyotes, dogs, and humans would be the probs I’d have to deal with, tho I did have to shoot and kill a rabid coon once.
With pistols I practice reflex shooting, only take head shots, and am pretty good at it, so I’d not feel lacking if all I had was my 9. I’d not go hunting with it tho.
Whether a handgun has stopping power or not depends on what you are trying to stop.
I have had the experience the first time I worked in Alaska of running into the large salmon eating bears and looking down at my Ruger Super blackhawk, .44 mag. I almost wet my pants. I carried rifles after that, but that was before the revolution in large handgun calibers.
I used to shoot muzzleloaders and hunt with them. A round ball has the worst ballistic coefficient of any slug that has ever come out of a rifle. I used a .54 cal perc rifle with special conical bullets made for big game. It was good on elk out to about 110 yards.
Old news, about 170 years old. The US Civil War showed that when a ball went against a miniball. That war was a turning point in warfare, one of them, as the technological changes like the miniball made the old ways too lethal to armies.
For those that are wondering…one of the biggest problems with 9mm fmj is…overpenetration. IIRC it outpenetrates the bigger pistol cal rounds also.
Some hunter in africa would kill elephants using the 7x57. Small around for such a big animal, but he used solids so they penetrated and penetrated deeply. This is a good example of why pistols are better in many self defense cases as the best firearm is the one you have at that moment. And people are more likely to have a pistol on their person rather than a long gun.
When I practice pistol shooting, I don’t shoot for groups and don’t really aim. I draw and shoot, when the sight picture is on target the shot is out. I shoot w/both eyes open and look at the front sight. I’ve not timed myself as I’m not into that, but I have a timer in my head if that makes sense. My guess is I can get 3-4 shots out in 2 seconds. That’s a lot of penetration with a weapon I’m most likely to have at that moment I need one.
If we are talking about criminals coming at us, like what sometimes can happen, I’m a firm believer in being the firstest with the mostest. Bigger cals w/more recoil and less capacity aren’t used anymore by the USMIL for a reason.
Well it looks like this site is actively censoring members now.
my post was deemed “offensive” to “the community”.
sorry ppine if what I said didn’t conform to what you demand.
sorry I told you how you could avoid reading what you don’t want to read
I’ll be more considerate of what could be deemed offensive to you the next time I post and not post it.
Weird that all the whining here by some people, this thread is mostly text, thus conversing, and has 160 posts.
Yes, this is how boards turn into ghost towns and/or die off.
I flagged your posts. If the moderators of this site permit repeated attacks of the character of posters here, which you have done, I will be very disappointed. Do you even paddle? Because you seem to be here solely for a penis measuring contest of some sort.
@Dago sorry I triggered you, snowflake. Hopefully all that spewage is an extinction burst. It must be horrible going through life with a persecution complex like yours.
and recoil isnt bad.
