Elmer Keith's 600yd shot

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Think I kicked this off on another post, glad to see somebody noticed. Elmers shot was with a .44 mag, a M29, not sure of bbl length. The load was likely his "Keith SWC" which was 250 gr cast lead w/ 21 grs of 2400. For some reason I want to say it had a gas check.

I cannot for the life of me find my copy of "Hell I was There" but I spent a lot of time reading that book and here's my recollection.

The elk was already hit by another hunter....it may have been his old pal Judge ......Parker (?) ...maybe, not sure. The names in the book. He shot several times, and could see the bullet strikes, or so he said. Seems like it was on a hillside, so there would have been some backdrop. From memory now, seems like the elk crested the hill and went out of sight. They got up there and found it on the back slope.

KEITH took a HUGE amount of guff over writing that up. Seems like I read later that he went back with his witness, and a surveyor, and they measured the dang site off.

Elmer's thing was revolvers, and he is credited with helping to push the gun industry into releasing the .44 mag. He was INTO long range revolver shooting, and mentions in other books about lobbing six gun slugs at old out houses over long distances on the prairie. In the same "....I was There" book, he talks about a group of Army officers during WWII not believing about long range handgun shooting. He took the lot out to a range there at the arsenal, ( he was inspecting weapons) and shot a snow drift up way out there with a GI 1911 .45 automatic. The comment was made by somebody to go out there and lay down beside it (the drift). Nobody did of course.

There are some old pics floating around of Elmer shooting a .357 at a target way out there too.....hard to believe type distances. Keith shot more firearms, shot more stuff, more places, than most of us ever will, ever. He was from an era and a lifestyle, that most of us will never get our heads and our hands around.

I don't doubt for a minute he did it. And I encourage everybody to read that book, an absolute great read.
 
While it saddens me to admit it, I do not have a copy of Hell I Was There, and my copy of Sixguns somehow disappeared from my home while I was in the service.

But Sixguns I have read, and the 600yard shot on the deer is in there.

I have also read a lot of what Elmer wrote in Guns & Ammo and the American Rifleman over the years, and he did a lot of shooting.

He wrote a number of articles about long range sixgunning, and its not as difficult as some think. As I have said, I've done a fair amount of shooting at a couple hundred yards, and so I know a bit about what it takes. 600 yards? It can be done. I can't do it. I doubt you could do it. But Elmer could, and did.

One article he wrote mentions shooting an old outhouse at 700 yards. A fellow showed up with a "suitcase full of pistols" and bet Elmer he couldn't hit with them at that range. Elmer got hits with every gun before it was empty, save one, a ".45 caliber slip gun". That one took him 12 shots.

he also remarked that at 700 yards range, the .45 Colt had enough energy to completely penetrate the weathered 1" planking, and bury its slug base flush in the 2x4 frame.

That might not seem like much, but it is enough penetration to kill a man or game animal, if it hits the right place.

You can doubt all you want, you can put it down to luck, and maybe luck it was, but "luck will often save a man.."

I've made a few lucky shots over the years. Shots I knew I couldn't be certain of making. But I did what felt "right", and it actually worked. And, yes, I've missed, too. Although, to be honest, the misses were pretty close. ;)

Call it luck, or skill, the will of the All Father, or using the Force, I believe he did what he said he did.
 
pre scorch

Well, I got some material wrong, ....went to the link and read the account as it was written in ..."I was there"....and might as well correct myself and take my medicine.

Mule deer, not elk, and it reads like it was a jacketed slug not cast. I remembered the bit about his boy finding a fragment in the meat, thought it was a gas check. And it wasn't the Judge....I may have the wrong gun writer there, it was another fella.

I still think he did it.
 
Elmer also blew up a few revolvers with his super 44 loads.
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Actually I don't think he blew up many .44s. But he did blow up several .45 Colt single actions during his search for the "ideal" heavy handgun load. In fact, it is the "weakness" of the Colt .45 SAA that is the reason we have the .44 Magnum today.

After destroying the .45s, Elmer went to the .44 caliber Colt SAA, because it had more "meat" in the cylinder than the .45s.

He found he could get the .44 to take the load he wanted, and "convinced" the industry to make it. The story gets a little murky on that, depending on who is telling it, but the version I always liked best was, essentially, that Elmer took his load to S&W, and they agreed they could make a gun for it, but nobody was making the ammo.

Elmer them went to Remington, and told them S&W was going to make the gun, could they make the ammo? And the agreed they could, making the case longer than the .44 Special, like the .357 & .38 Special.

According to the story, Elmer then went back to S&W and told them Remington was going to make the ammo, and S&W said "we can wrap a gun around anything Remington makes!" The rest is history.

It may not be completely true, but it is a good story.

One thing Elmer wrote repeatedly was his favorite load for the .44 Mag. A 250gr bullet (cast, his own design) over 22gr of #2400 powder and standard (not magnum) primers. Skeeter Skelton also liked that load, except he favored 21.5gr not 22.

If Elmer had had access to guns like the new model Ruger Blackhawk, or the Redhawk, when he was doing his testing, we might not have wound up with the .44 Remington Magnum. We might have gotten the .457S&W Magnum, instead. :D
 
From "Hell, I was There!" and from his autobiography.

Keith claimed:

- That the animal was already wounded ("one front leg a-swinging") by Paul Kriley who was shooting a ".300 Magnum" rifle.
- To have hit the animal 2 out of 4 shots.
- To have been shooting from the prone position.
- That the shooting ranged from 500 to 600 shots with at least one of the 2 shots connecting at 600 yards.
- That Kriley spotted at least one missed shot for him through the scope of his rifle which helped him adjust his elevation.
- That the incident took place on Kriley's ranch.
- That he had been doing some long range shooting (out to 500 yards) with that revolver prior to hunting season.
 
2 out of 4 shots, I would really have to see that. I was mistaken thinking it was 4 "walking shots" then the 2 connecting shots.
 
Lets say an experienced hunter and shooter in the rifle section with a open sighted 444Marlin asked everyone about it's effectiveness as a long rang mule deer rifle, up to 500yds. He would politely or not so much be scolded for his inquiry. I realize Elmer Keith was without a doubt an exceptional shot and person but the above fictional 444 Dude would more than likely get run out of town on the first train to 300Magnumville.;)
 
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Glad to see there's some reality injected in this thread. The story's been sanitized by the internet to suggest Keith made a clean 600 yard kill with a single shot, but Keith's own version isn't quite as tidy.

As other's noted, Keith took several shots (one of which blew that animal's nose off IIRC) after a client wounded the animal, and even then, the animal wasn't killed. They finally had to kill the animal at much closer range. It was a very bad day for the animal.
 
I don't think Elmer Keith would use a jacketed .44 bullet, if they even existed back then. Anyway Sixguns was published in 1955, and I thought the .44 magnum was introduced in 1956. There is a lot of info on long range shooting in Sixguns and it appears he did a lot of it.

My neighbor Mildred, 95, and her late husband had a ranch on the Pahsimeroi River and tells me she knew Elmer and he even made some type of contraption for removing pies from an oven. She knew he was a gun enthusiast but little beyond that, however she has a nephew who palled around with son Ted and when he comes to visit she'll let me know so I can chat with him.

Of course he made the shot.
 
Practice -

Uncle Elmer wasn't talking about putting 250 rounds into a piece of paper at 21 feet once a month.
 
I once watched a very good shooter put six rounds from an S&W Model 27 into 2 inches at 100 yards from a rest. Now I am well aware that a 600 yard group would not be simple multiplication (6 x 2=12"), a good shot, who really knew his gun and load should certainly be able to put bullets into or at least very close to an animal that size at 600 yards.

Jim
 
What about wind drift, how much would that factor in? Could be monumental. I think much more than a rainbow like trajectory. How much bullet drop would we be talking about?:confused:
 
No way such a shot could be made, other than by luck.

As others have mentioned, Keith was a man of his word in a time when that still counted for something. Many of his other shooting feats were witnessed and well-documented, and from reading his writings, I really see no reason he'd exaggerate something like that.
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I didn't say Keith lied, or that the feat is impossible, just that there is no way you could do it without "luck", or random chance.
If we were talking about a laser, then hitting something with it would be all skill, but when you don't know where the bullet will land, within a two-foot circle, there is a random element.
Even if sight aligment and sight picture were perfect, as with a machine rest, the gun would still shoot a random pattern, and the shooter couldn't know where a given round will fall within the pattern.
Hitting at 600 yards is possible, but I don't think it can be done on demand, as a revolver isn't capable of repeatable accuracy at that distance.
 
Also, it needs to hit the vital area, not just anywhere on the whole wounded 200lb adrenaline soaked Mule deer. No comments on the hypothetical 444 hunter?
 
I'll readily agree that a 600 yard hit on a deer with a pistol is improbable. However, Elmer never claimed that he did it regularly, he said it happened once, out of several shots taken at an escaping wounded animal.

Was luck involved? Absolutely, although being a crack shot and having extensive experience in long range pistol shooting would improve the odds quite a bit.

For those who claim it's impossible, please explain what phenomenon makes it so. Do force fields surround deer past 500 yards? Black holes? Warps in the space time continuum?
 
I have a 2 Foot circle steel gong out 400 yards. If I shoot at it enough I can hit it on rare occasions even with my snubby. I have shot at it with my NAA mini revolver but I dont think I have ever hit it. Or if I got lucky and did it had not enough power to make the gong sing.

I am not near the shooter Elmer Keith was.

I have to admit though that I am a huge Elmer Keith fan so my opinion of his shoots is likely bias. He is some what of a local Idaho hero. If you go in to the Boise Cabela's he has a talking display with lots of trophies and mounts and many of his guns behind glass.
 
Keith was a big fan of hard cast SWC bullets, well known. The kill shot which apparently was through the lungs, left Remington bullet jacket material in the flesh, his words not mine. The other hunter was shooting a 300 with"needle point" Remington ammunition. There is no way a 44 magnum would penetrate the body of a full grown Mule deer buck at 600 yds. 600-700 fps is not going to do it.
 
Many of the top shooters are assumed to have 20/20 vision .NO they had much better sight !! That helps .:D
 
Back in the mid ‘70s I hit a running jackrabbit at 120 yds with a S&W M19 from the two-hand standing position.

At the silhouette range one day, I knocked down 5 steel chickens with 5 shots at 50 yds shooting a .44 Spl revolver DA. When my buddies challenged me to do it again, I told them I was out of ammo.

Those are true stories, but I don’t claim to be able to duplicate them on demand. Keith thought he’d missed the deer and only found out he’d hit when his son skinned the deer and found the wound.

The point is, if you do a lot of shooting, you’ll get some pretty amazing results every now and then. Elmer told about hitting flying birds with a revolver, too. How many did he miss? We’ll never know.
 
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