Handgun Hunting Afield

I have been handgun hunting a long time. Since 1978 to be exact. I started doing it because I read Elmer Keith, Skeeter Skelton, Larry Kelly and Bob Milek to name a few. I guess I started doing it because no one else around me was doing it. Being different just suited me. What has kept handgun hunting interesting to me for all of these years is continuing to be different. 

The handgun hunters I know are generally either hard core revolver users or hard core Encore or Contender users. Some do both but very few use Semi-Automatics. At least the locals are that way. I hunt with all types of handguns.  Since the Semi-Autos are the least used, they piqued my interest. I have hand fitted barrels, slides, frames, triggers and just about anything possible to achieve the best accuracy I can get out of a gun. I have experimented with sights, red dots and scopes on autos. Some things worked and some things didn’t. Some things disappointed me and some things exceeded expectations. I look at everything as a challenge which brings us to today’s gun, a highly modified Glock 10mm and the load using the Cutting Edge Raptor I used in it recently.

I first heard about the CEB bullets on a hunting forum and although it caught my interest,  I wasn’t compelled to try them. They are pure copper bullets that are an alternative to cast lead bullets or jacketed lead core bullets. WIth several states banning the use of lead bullets for hunting it began to weigh on my mind a little more. I will be the first one to tell you I was a bit apprehensive about the bullets. About a year later I read a post by Chris Rhodes and saw his results hunting with the bullets in handguns. I was impressed and since I am always doing something different anyway, I decided to give them a whirl. Since I use a variety of handguns I ordered some 120 grain .40”, 140 grain .357”, 180 grain .41”, 150 grain .452” and 350 grain .510” bullets. The first ones I loaded were the 140 grain .357s. It took a bit to get the hang of loading them but once I did I was instantly impressed. 25 yard groups were literally a ragged hole from a scoped .357. After my initial loading I experimented with various powders until I was satisfied with the velocity. Next I loaded the 120 grain .40s in the .40 S&W and the 10mm. Accuracy was very good right off the bat. The 150 grain .452” followed in the .45 Super and .460 Rowland. No matter what I shot them in accuracy was great. I decided to get the 10mm in the field first. After speaking with Cutting Edge and Hodgdon I decided to use Longshot Powder. Hodgdon has already done pressure tests with the 120 grain Raptor in the 10mm and .40 S&W. They provided data that maxed out at 10.7 grains in the 10mm. The starting load was 9.7 grains so I worked up.10.3 grains was the sweet spot. Their data at 10.7 grains achieved 1447 fps. from a 5” barrel. At 10.3 grains my velocity was 1434 fps. with single digit extreme spread numbers. It was ready to hunt. 

The weather had been terrible for a couple of days. High wind and rain till everything was muddy. The deer didn’t want to leave the cover of the bedding areas. I went out on a morning hunt but didn’t see anything until I was leaving the farm. I decided for the evening hunt I would go to a blind set up we call the “well bottom blind’. It is an ideal setting for handgun hunting. The blind itself sits in a grove of hardwoods. The side I hunt from faces a steep hillside. 20 yards in front of the blind is a small creek and across the creek on the other side is the edge of a cornfield. The field edge is bordered by a line of hardwood trees. This blind offers two distinct types of hunting for handguns. I carry one gun for the hillside which offers shots out to about 250 yards and another for the near shots which are under 70 yards.  The flat area of the cornfield extends from the creek about 40 yards before turning sharply uphill. On this particular evening I carried an Encore for the long shots and the 10mm loaded with 120 grain Cutting Edge bullets for the close shots. All I needed now was deer.

About an hour went by before I saw any deer. I saw movement on top of the hill to my right about 200 yards away and I got the binoculars up. It was a doe. Soon she was followed by a couple more does. She started moving in my direction. If she stayed on her present course she would soon reach the field boundary and travel right in front of me. I began to feel that excitement that hunting with a handgun brings. I could feel my heart beating in my chest. After 46 years doing this it never gets old. I picked up my range finder and began getting an idea of how far she was then picking the spot on the field edge where she would have to turn. I reached for the 10mm and sat it on my leg. With my left hand I kept ranging her. She was now moving from right to left perpendicular to the blind and slightly uphill. I realized I was breathing hard so I forced myself to calm down. She traveled about 10 yards slowly and at each check now she was 59 yards from me. I laid the rangefinder down and eased the gun up to my rest. I put the crosshairs on her aorta and squeezed the trigger. She jerked at the impact, stumbled then made it 15 yards and crashed. It was ok to start breathing hard again. As I said, it never gets old. 

As I walked up to her,I started noticing blood everywhere. There were corn stalks still standing about 18” off the ground and they were thoroughly sprayed with blood. If tracking had been needed it would have been easy. Since this was a new experience with this bullet I wanted to learn all I could from this kill. Upon examining her I found that there were 5 exit holes. I thought that the petals would probably stay inside of her but all of them exited. The petals all exited to the right of the larger hole where the core exited. This got my curiosity up. I decided to transport her so I could hang her up to gut her. This would give me a better view of things. The bullet impacted dead center of one of her ribs and apparently the petals sheared off as the rib broke. For reasons unknown the petals all went to the left side of the entry hence the right side of the exit. They passed through the lungs leaving holes that looked as if they were created by a bullet approximately the size of a .22. The core penetrated straight ahead destroying the aorta. That is exactly where I aimed. Of special note the petal that traveled the farthest away from the impact completely penetrated the thickest muscle before exiting the shoulder. Now I was impressed. In summation this bullet performed better than I had hoped for. She was dead within 2 seconds. That is great for a rifle but from a handgun that is very impressive. 

I have had conversations with other hunters since Saturday that have a hard time grasping the bullet weighing 120 grains in a 10mm. They think it is too light. As I said at the beginning I have always done things differently. I told them to throw what they know about bullets out the window when using these. The 120 grain Raptor is nearly the same length as the 200 grain XTP which also shoots great in this gun. I decided to do another test in my ballistic buffalo. This time with a control using a 200 grain since some hunters seemed concerned about penetration. I fired the bullet into the same test media. Both of them traveled right at 8” with the 200 grain traveling maybe ¼” more. The eye opener was the midpoint wound diameter left by the core. At 4” the 200 grain left a hole in the media approximately ⅝” while the core of the CEB bullet left a ⅞” hole at the same point. The petals traveled between 5 and 6 inches. I only recovered two of them. I weighed them and the core. The core weighed 71.3 grains and the 2 petals I recovered each weighed 13.1 grains. If the other petals weighed 13.1 as well that would be a total of 123.7 grains. I didn’t even think to weigh that bullet before loading it. I went back to the shop and weighed one that was unfired and was 122.7 grains. Any way you cut it, it means that all of the bullet exited the deer. 

I am impressed with these bullets. They do everything you can ask a bullet to do with no chance of contaminating the meat with lead. They are accurate and certainly do plenty of damage to the vitals of game. I look forward to hunting with them in the other cartridges over  the next few weeks. 

The Gun: Glock G20SF Gen 3

DD barrel hand fit to slide

Lone Wolf SS slide

22 lbs. NDS recoil spring

Carver Hunter scope mount

Zev Pro Connector and 6 lbs. Trigger spring

The rest of the trigger group on this gun was left stock.

The load from Hodgdon: 

120 grain Cutting Edge Raptor

Longshot powder   9.7 grains starting-10.7 grains maximum

10.3 grains as loaded
Federal 150 large pistol primer

Starline brass

1434 fps. With  9 fps extreme spread

548 ft. lbs. Muzzle energy

Leupold M8-2X scope

Leupold RX1000 rangefinder