usually hit a circle of 4- to 5-inch diam- eter. Of course, this requires the pistol to be capable of this level of accuracy. For practice, I use silhouettes of the varmints I plan to hunt and place them at typical ranges. If I can reliably place the bullet with a solid hit on the target under field conditions, I have the confidence that a coyote called close to my stand is going to be perforated. Used within its limitations, the
45 Auto can be an effective tool for dis- patching varmints. It may be somewhat on the order of a stunt, but there is a place for this type of varmint hunting. Not everyone, including me, has the desire to shoot at a small animal 1,000 to 2,000 yards away, which is a stunt of another type. Blow a leg off of a prairie dog at that distance with a 50 BMG and it is a “kill,” but making a solid body hit at 50 yards with a conventional handgun is just as legitimate a kill. I suppose a parallel could be drawn between a bow hunter who uses a recurve instead of a compound with all the bells and whis- tles. There is a place for all types of bow hunters as well as all types of varmint hunters. So, when I look for varmints or I am wandering around armed with a 45 Auto, I do so with anticipation and a willingness to accept severe limitations. That is my choice. This project was undertaken to
assess the capability of loads for the 45 Auto when used as a short range varmint cartridge in a defensive type of handgun. In developing loads, I studied data from a large number of sources. It became apparent that there is consider- able variation in recommended powder charges even for bullets of the same weight. Moreover, in load development one source may have used a Colt with a 5" barrel, another may have used a Sig with a 4.4" barrel, and still another may have used a 6" test barrel. Thus, this project began with loading ammuni- tion and testing it in my 45 Auto with a 5-inch barrel. When it comes to loading the
45 Auto, there are many propellants that work well, but I easily can get by with Alliant Unique and Power Pistol, Hodgdon HS-6, and Accurate Powders No. 5. Although many other bullets are available, I chose to use the Hornady XTP, Nosler HP, and the Remington Golden Saber 185-grain bullets. For this project, I used once-fired Speer cases
and CCI 300 large pistol primers. Cases measured 0.893-inch in length, and bul- lets were seated to give cartridges that had an overall length of 1.245" with the Nosler bullet, 1.200" with the Remington Bullet, and 1.220" with the Sierra bullet. In previous work, I have loaded a series of several cartridges and found that another series loaded identically but at a considerably later time gave velocities that were within less than 10 ft/sec of the first series. Because of this, five car- tridges can give a good representation of the velocity of the load. Accordingly,
I prepared a group of five cartridges as carefully as possible for each load tested. Velocities were measured at 10 feet from the muzzle using a Competition Elec- tronics ProChrono chronograph. Firing was carried out utilizing a Caldwell Pistolero rest. The results obtained with the various loads are shown in the ac- companying table. The S&W 4506 functioned flaw-
lessly throughout the complete series of tests. In fact, I have never had a single stoppage with that pistol, and I have had it for many years. For all of the 18
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