Everythings Bigger in Texas

www.huntingclub.com

At 47 years old chances are I won't be going into outer space. I'm not a spelunker or a submariner. I'm not a test pilot or a race car driver (though I did some laps at the Richard Petty Driving Experience and it was pretty danged cool). I'm not a nano-scientist or a medical researcher. Yet for all the things I'm not, I am motivated to be the "first ever" to do things.

On the occasion when someone counts up the number of caribou hunts I've made, I'm often asked, "Why do you keep going back?" I can quickly respond that it's for "the firsts!" On subarctic hunts, I love to go off by myself if I can to make a big hike. I'm convinced at some point in the day, I'm going to put my boot down on a particular spot or two where no human has ever tread before me! That's an exciting first!

Even more exciting is being the first ever to take a game animal with a new load! And a couple weeks back I got to experience that first again with one of my favorite old cartridges - the .45-70 Gov't.

It was on a Texas deer hunt co-sponsored by Winchester Ammo, T/C Firearms, Bad Boy Buggies and Hi Mountain Seasoning. Upon arrival we were given our choice of what we'd like to shoot. I spied a T/C Pro Hunter Katahden in .45-70 and a couple of boxes of ammo with white-printed labels on the box end (usually a sure sign of engineering samples not yet in production), so I scooped them up.

The cartridges turned out to be the first-ever .45-70 rounds loaded with a new 375-grain Winchester Dual Bond bullet designed specifically for this round. Previously Dual Bond bullets were restricted to cartridges principally designed for handguns and in saboted shotgun slug loads. The Dual Bond is a "bullet within a bullet" design. As the name indicates the bullet has two bonding systems; an inner-bullet weld, and a mechanical bond of the outer jacket to the inner bullet.

At the brief range session the Dual Bonds performed well, grouping at 2 inches at 100 yards. I adjusted to center the group on the bull, shot another and headed to the stand. Now I certainly wasn't the first to shoot a deer on the trip. The hunt was for management and cull bucks, and all I could run into on each sit was either trophy deer or very young bucks with tons of potential.

Finally on the last morning an old 7-point wandered past my elevated stand. I shot when the buck was at 35-yards angling steeply away with his head down. The bullet entered through his left shoulder, then traveled forward through the chest and down the neck. We recovered the bullet just behind the bucks chin.

The bullet was perfectly mushroomed just like the catalog pictures and the outer jacket was attached to the inner bullet. However as we pried it out the jacket came away separately. Weighed together, there was 100 percent weight retention.

The Winchester Dual Bond .45-70 load will be on shelves in June this year, but maybe by then I'll have taken the second, third and fourth critters with it? I hope so! I've got a feeling what we have here is the start of a long and beautiful relationship!