Handguns Calibers at 100 yards?

S

stonewall50

New member
Was having a discussion with a friend about "long range" shooting. It got me wondering: what would be the idea "pistol" caliber to shoot if you were forced to shoot at something at 100 yards?

Does anyone know where to find information on the various calibers and their energy at 100 yards? I am particularly curious about 9mm and .45 acp. I know someone who killed a hog at 44 yards with a .357 magnums but that isn't 100 yards.
 
I can't even see something at one hundred yards, let alone hit it with a handgun, and I certainly don't know the answer.

But I gather that .357 Sig has one of the flatter trajectories around and the 9mm projectile seems to be more stable in flight than most.

Or you could just ask Jerry Miculek. He can hit a target at 200 yds with a pistol fired upside down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChSazF41q-s
 
Google handgun silhouette shooting. There are lots of calibers used and they shoot out to 220 yards (200m). The better shooters shoot at shoot off targets which are quite small at that distance and run them all. One hundred yards is not all that far for any handgun. Rimfire silhouette is shot out to that distance and the targets aren't very big either. I've shot 80x80 with a handgun several times and 60x60 many times in competition. It's just not that difficult to do.
 
Once ya' know where to aim, shooting handguns at 100 yards truly is not all that difficult.
.22 pistol silhouette has been around and popular for a long time.
When I was a kid, my pals and I used to have contests with different size water bottles at 100 yards.
Gallons, quarts and pints.
We mostly used Single Action six guns in .357 and .44 magnum.
.38 and .44 specials would do as well, but the magnums were more dramatic.
One fellow used to finish up hitting them with his .380, just 'cause.
It's plenty doable.
Give it a try with whatever you have.
 
if you were forced to shoot at something
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You'd have to be more specific about the intended target and the expected results.

You can "shoot at something" with any handgun, but that doesn't mean you could reliably kill something at that range without enough energy and a proper projectile.

For most things at 100 yds, I'd want a revolver cartridge that starts with a "4"
 
I used to shoot regularly at "targets of opportunity" on the berm behind the 100 yard line. These were usually Styrofoam cups, or clumps of weeds or small twigs. this plinking developed my long range ability in knowing how to aim for such distance.

Well practiced in that distance shooting, I killed a groundhog at 110 yards with my Super Blackhawk. I knew the load and its performance over distance, so I didn't think twice about making the shot.

My gun was a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum, my load was the 245 gr. Keith SWC over 25.0 grs. of DuPont (then) IMR-4227.

Bob Wright
 
I watched a man shoot a 6" group at 100 yards with a .357 off a bench; I don't know his load or holdover. I once could keep all my shots from a 3" Model 36 in a silhouette target at 100 yards shooting DA off hand, holding the bottom of the front sight in the rear sight notch, roughly a 20 foot holdover.

Jim
 
If you are asking what "pistol" caliber is by it's own merit alone, the most capable of humanely taking game at 100yds, putting aside well practiced shooters hitting 100yd silhouettes with a 380.... your 2 best choices would be 460 or 500 S&W, hands down. There are some other .45 to .50 cal wheelguns that are very capable as well, but those two are your top of the heap.

Look up some numbers on those 2 cartridges, especially the 500 with light for caliber bullets. For a handgun, both the 460 and 500 are VERY fast, VERY flat shooting, VERY hard hitting, to 100yds and well beyond. Claims of 200yd shots being well within reason with the aid of an optic are the norm.

Unless by "pistol" you are by definition referring to autos only...

If so, please disregard my post.
 
While conducting police firearms training one of the officers handed me his pistol (Glock 22) and asked if I could knock a bowling pin off the backstop at 100 yds, i'm sure to discredit my ability a bit in front of the others. One shot and the pin was gone. Several officers and I routinely shot the pins for fun which of course was unknown to the current group. A .40 round at 100 yards takes a dead center hold to knock down one of the pins. A 1911 a1 Ithaca that I had required just a hair of space over the top of the pin. Cans and rocks and junk are fun at distance with a hand gun.
 
We used to shoot .44 mag SBH (me and others) and S&W 29 (others) revolvers in Alaska at the Palmer Hay Flats 25+ years ago at 1 gallon water-filled milk jugs at 100 and 150 yards.

The 100 yard targets weren't that difficult once one figured out where the front sight blade should be positioned in the rear sight notch.

The 150 yard targets required "Kentucky" elevation as the front blade was completely out of the rear sight notch. I was then shooting a Speer max load of H110 under a Speer 240 gr. jacketed SWC. [I had (my son now has) a 3-screw with a nice trigger and those loads were reserved for the long shots and also while I was carrying it in a Bianchi shoulder holster when salmon fishing.] We kept score by how many times a shooter had to retrieve and replenish his own target. The poor shots had to walk nary a yard. :cool:

We had lots of fun with kidding each other about it.

Before I left Alaska, I gave my remaining (2 50-rd.) boxes to a friend who took them out on a camping trip (I asked him to bring back a few empty cases from each gun) wherein he and another acquaintance shot them from a M29 and a Redhawk at some 6" spruce saplings and the "range report" was: "OMG, WTH were those loads!". The report was that they cut down the trees with just a few rounds. They were also impressed with the recoil from these rounds, but the cases showed no evidence of punctured primers and the primers were only slightly flattened. I had previously loaded with 2400, but H110 was not as dirty.

I have owned a NM SBH and an OM (3-screw) SBH back in the 80's and the comparison is nothing short of phenominal. When I gave the 3-screw to my son, I told him to NEVER send it to Ruger for the "safety" retrofit. Just load 5 rounds and put the hammer on the empty chamber.

I once toyed around with rubber Pachmayr grips and 3 different oversized wood grips with the Ruger SBH, but I finally came to the conclusion that Bill Ruger (and Sam Colt) had it right in the first place: the gun just rocked back in the hand, did not punish the wrist, and was easily re-cocked and placed on target for the next shot. (I once had a .44 Mag barrel for a TC Contender that punished the wrist severely because it recoiled straight back.)

Jim
 
http://www.ballisticsbytheinch.com/calibers.html


That is an awesome resource which not only shows the effects of barrel length on velocity but gives real world examples in given firearms not to mention energy charts for most cartridges.
Honestly if I were thinking of a hunting handgun to purchase next I might consider the 8 shot Ruger Blackhawk in .327 federal magnum. It's a pretty flat shooter and the .32 projectiles available today perform very well indeed on medium sized game.
Yep... just went on the list! ;)
 
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manufacturer catalog

If they still print them, the manufacturer catalog typically used to have ballistic info regards all the cartridges they loaded, to include velocities, energies, and simple trajectories, and sometimes the barrel lengths used to establish same. Not gospel, but at least a reference. The Speer reloading manual in its various printings has also been a very useful resource as well.

The last one in my catalog collection of old paper is dated 2003. In it, the .44 mag carries more energy to 100, and is about as flat, (within an inch) as the faster .357 and .41. That is discounting such "short rifle" rounds from specialty pistols like the .22 Jet, the defunct 256 Win mag, and the .221 Fireball, which are essentially handgun varminters.

None of the gee whiz, hyper mag handguns were on the market then. Back in the day, a milk jug at 100 was in mortal danger from my rested 6" M27-357. Those days are long over. And my Dad's scoped 10-1/4" .44 Super B , benched, could bust a clay target (scavenged from the trap range next door) on the hillside behind the rifle range at 150+/-, after a few sighters, with regularity, if you pressed the shot right.

Dare I bring up Elmer Keith and his long range experiments....and fleeing elk?
 
Stonewall,

Any good flat shooting pistol/cartridge will do way past 100 yards.

Plenty of YouTube examples of long range handgunning.

Even a snubby can be used well at 100 yards.

Deaf
 
Snyper said:
You'd have to be more specific about the intended target and the expected results.



You can "shoot at something" with any handgun, but that doesn't mean you could reliably kill something at that range without enough energy and a proper projectile.



For most things at 100 yds, I'd want a revolver cartridge that starts with a "4"
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That is kind of what I'm talking about. Does anything maintain a decent enough energy to kill something? Say a white tail? Or a small pig?
 
bamaranger said:
If they still print them, the manufacturer catalog typically used to have ballistic info regards all the cartridges they loaded, to include velocities, energies, and simple trajectories, and sometimes the barrel lengths used to establish same. Not gospel, but at least a reference. The Speer reloading manual in its various printings has also been a very useful resource as well.



The last one in my catalog collection of old paper is dated 2003. In it, the .44 mag carries more energy to 100, and is about as flat, (within an inch) as the faster .357 and .41. That is discounting such "short rifle" rounds from specialty pistols like the .22 Jet, the defunct 256 Win mag, and the .221 Fireball, which are essentially handgun varminters.



None of the gee whiz, hyper mag handguns were on the market then. Back in the day, a milk jug at 100 was in mortal danger from my rested 6" M27-357. Those days are long over. And my Dad's scoped 10-1/4" .44 Super B , benched, could bust a clay target (scavenged from the trap range next door) on the hillside behind the rifle range at 150+/-, after a few sighters, with regularity, if you pressed the shot right.



Dare I bring up Elmer Keith and his long range experiments....and fleeing elk?
Click to expand...


Long range on elk with a handguns? Is that something I can YouTube? Lol.
 
I'd shoot a gun with which I was familiar! I have shot at 100yd targets with only one handgun, a .45 auto, so I'd choose that one.
I'd be more concerned about hitting the target, than about residual energy, at that distance.
Google something like ".45 auto 100 yard ballistics".
 
I'm a handgun hunter. My standard is a paper plate. My Redhawk in .44 groups well at 100 yards. Energy starts dropping at that range though. My Freedon Arms .454 Casull groups almost as well, and have taken 2 deer beyond 100yards with it. It has more energy at 100 yards than a 44 at the muzzle. My GP100 .357 groups well at 75 yards which is beyond it effective range as a deer gun.

My guns have iron sights. Bullet drop is not a factor because the human eye can't judge a couple inches at 100 yards. for the matter the black ring of a 25 yard target is a dot, so aiming for a specific part of the dot is unrealistic without a scope. Sighted in at 100 yards will easily put them all in the black at 25 yards.

The counter to that is you can put them all in the black at 25 yards and still be off by feet at 100 yards. People often attribute that to "bullet drop" when its actually a matter of just being far enough for the off sighting to be noticeable. I was testing some 300gr bullets in the Casull and they looked dead on at the 50' indoor range, and printed 4' high at 100 yards!

Most pistols will be far more accurate than the shooter at 100 yards and the biggest obstacle to smaller than sub paper plate groups for me is the human eye.
 
Most pistols will be far more accurate than the shooter at 100 yards and the biggest obstacle to smaller than sub paper plate groups for me is the human eye.
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Wow, that's quite a statement. Have you ever seen a silhouette match where the shoot-off targets were chickens at 220yds (centerfire), or 100yds (rimfire)? I once had to shoot shoot-offs at 100yds at the Region 1 Shoot and the chicken targets they chose to use were rifle chickens, not handgun. The ten chickens were less than 1.5" high and obviously were not square or round, they were shaped like a chicken. Actual size was just about 1sq.in. of total target to shoot at. I used a Browning Buckmark 10"bbl with factory open sights. I missed the first target, made a minor adjustment, and proceeded to shoot the next nine targets. I've seen equally good shooting on centerfire shoot-off chickens at 220yds at the International Shoot. If "paper plate" is the standard for shooting at 100yds, it's a pretty low standard. Handguns are much more capable than that. The human eye is much more capable. The human eye can detect differences much smaller than they are given credit for. And yes, you can shoot at different parts of a circle and hit where you want to.
 
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