Hunting With A Handgun

If you are over 40 years old and have been using a handgun for a while, you will notice that a pistol scope is needed.

Now I am older than 40 (a lot older,) and have enjoyed handgun shooting and handgun hunting since I was 21 years old.

I’m not going to pat my back too hard because the bones are starting to get easier to break, but I want to tell you I was damned good at shootin’ !

I was an A-Class shooter in IPSC, and in Bullsey, not so much.
My IPSC days were some of the most fun I have ever had out of life, hands down, bar none. The International Practical Shooters Confederation, IPSC, is a fancy name for a group of seriously dedicated shooters worldwide that concentrate on defensive handgun shooting.

In New York State I used to travel around to a great many locations and each course was set up different. When you are young, healthy and in good shape, there is nothing more exhilarating than moving from station to station, target to target, climbing over obstacles, jumping across ditches, crawling through tunnels, swinging on ropes, and all with the goal of getting all the way through the course using Speed, Power and Accuracy.

The main object was to be very fast though the course, but also to make sure you got all of your rounds on the targets. The scoring was a complicated procedure of a variable of your time and hit score. The prizes were a trophy and bragging rights.

The only way to get good in that game was to practice, practice, practice. The Colt 1911 .45 ACP was my weapon of choice and when I moved up in class I got so that I was shooting an average of 400 rounds a day! Of course that meant reloading every night, but oh well.

When the eyes were good, open sights were not a problem. When you shoot a lot like that it becomes second nature for the 45 to line up perfectly every time and you don’t even think about it as your eyes instinctively focus on the front and the rear sight at the same gazillionth of an instant and the round is let go.

I no longer compete. That’s a young mans game, but no one can take away my fond memories. Today’s foray afield is almost always in search of the Whitetail Deer. Now the instinct is gone, and there is no way I can ever focus on both the front and the back of open sights at the same time. I can barely focus on one or the other of them and still keep the deer in the mental picture.

So I have let common sense prevail and have mounted a pistol scope on all of my hunting handguns. I have tried several different types of cross-hairs and magnification and have settled on Red Dots for all of them, with no magnification.

I don’t have any problem seeing a far distance, so when you think about centering the kill zone in the glass of the pistol scope, and then wherever the red dot is, that is where the bullet is going to go. It’s almost Laser like and as long as you remember to squeeze the trigger slowly and to not jerk the pistol, you are going to get your buck.

That’s where my friend Dan came to the rescue. EdgeCustom.com makes some unique products for the handgun hunter. I use the Utra-Stealth Handgun Hunting Holster to carry my S&W Model 29 in .44 Magnum, and it is the “fastest” speed draw rig ever made. I have told you about the holster before.

Today I want to make sure you know about the other products that Edge Custom manufactures. Their line of non-gunsmithing scope mounts is superior to any that I have ever found. The scope mounts are engineered such as to take advantage of certain nubs and existing holes on certain model revolvers.

There is no drilling and tapping required to mount the scope of your choice on your handgun. They make specific mounts for Ruger Blackhawk, Ruger Redhawk, and some other specific revolver manufacturers. The mounts are very strong and they will never shoot loose. (Check their website.)

They also make a kick-ass product for the Colt 1911 .45 ACP. It is a scope mount that is machined out of Delrin and it replaces the left-had grip. The Delrin sticks up and is centered above the slide and your scope will not interfere with the action or ejection.

Using a pistol scope is almost like cheating. The first year I hunted with a Red Dot I dropped an eight pointer with one shot at 160 yards with the ol’ 44.

You will want to visit the website of EdgeCustom and also make sure you go to the Edge Custom Blog also.

Then go bag a buck.

Ol’ Squeeze

.44 Magnum, .45 ACP, colt 1911, edge custom, Edge Custom Holsters & Scope Mounts, ipsc, pistol scope, S&W Model 29, whitetail deer

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 7:23 am and is filed under Edge Custom Holsters & Scope Mounts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.