flabby lather than muscular, an ex¬ 
panding bullet that actually will ex¬ 
pand on a body no larger than that 
of a large house cat or a beagle will do 
splendid execution. 
Great energy, high velocity, or enor¬ 
mous momentum are both useless, and 
dangerous if the bullet will not expand 
as soon as it strikes. If it does not 
do so the projectile will cut only a 
small and almost invisible hole through 
the animal that results in another crip¬ 
ple which dives in a burrow — while 
the bullet is still raising dust 
off the hillside. 
Even the 170 or 180-grain 
Springfield bullets, at 2,600 or 
2,725 foot-seconds velocity will 
sometimes be a failure on wood¬ 
chucks if they do not expand 
as soon as they strike. I have 
used 170-grain metal - cased 
bullets sawed or split at the 
point so that they will expand 
so promptly that they will be 
converted into copper and lead 
fragments in less than three 
inches of penetration in clay or 
sand, and yet these bullets will 
occasionally penetrate a chuck 
without leaving much evidence 
of penetration that is visible on 
the outside. 
I remember one instance in 
particular where I got an off¬ 
hand shot at a rather small 
“hog” standing motionless in a 
clover patch. The range was 
110 paces and the chuck col¬ 
lapsed at the shot—the only evidences 
of a hit being the feeble waving of its 
stubby tail and the sharp “spack” of 
the striking ball. 
When I ran up the chuck tried to 
drag itself into the burrow which was 
less than four feet away. A shot side¬ 
ways through the brain at 10 paces 
left practically no mark at all on either 
side of the head—even though I used 
a 170-grain bullet at 2,650 foot-seconds 
striking velocity — and the previous 
shot was also quite difficult to locate 
AT HOME—BUT "NOT TO VISITORS 
on the hide, even though it had gone 
through high up in the rear part of 
the shoulders and had broken the back. 
Except for the fact that the chuck was 
dead, there was no particular evidence 
to show that it had even been hit. 
The very next shot with the same 
load was at 25 yards at a medium¬ 
sized animal that was running for his 
den. It struck back of the right shoul¬ 
der just as the “hog” reached the 
mouth of the burrow and killed it so 
instantly that it fell half in and half 
out of the hole—and hung there. 
The fact that chucks are so 
extremely hard to kill instantly, 
so prone to dive in as soon as 
fired at—or as soon as they see, 
hear or smell the shooters, and 
because so many of them must 
be shot in settled localities—at 
comparatively long range, con¬ 
sidering the size of the vital 
areas of the animal, is the rea¬ 
son why the high-velocity, very 
accurate, easily - disintegrated 
bullet is most popular and sat¬ 
isfactory. The 86 and 101-grain 
•25-caliber bullets, and 110 and 
150-grain .30 - caliber bullets 
that expand the easiest are the 
safest to shoot because there 
is less chance of flying lead 
glancing off a stone and strik¬ 
ing where it will do the shooter 
and the farmer’s hired help the 
least good. 
Cartridges like the .25-20 
(Continued on page 396) 
V'e 371 
