A few weeks ago my Brother-in-law had asked me to accompany him to a hunting preserve where he planned to take a buffalo. He had a bit of somewhat unrealistic concern that the buffalo might attack him after being shot and wanted a back up shooter. We drove out to the preserve early this morning and met up with the owner. A few hours later we had located the herd in a wooded area and when my Brother-in-law saw the size of the buffalo, he turned to me and says you shoot it. Well he didn't get much of an argument from me, I've been dying to get some blood on the new Marlin 45/70. We were able to walk to within 100 yards or so of the herd without spooking them. The owner pointed out a female that he wanted to cull and I leaned against a tree and took the shot. I hit it about six inches behind the horns as a friend had advised me to do. I had a 460gr. Cast Performance bullet handloads with me, but decided to use a 405gr. Rem. bullet handload that moves along at about 1800FPS. The buffalo dropped like a sack of potatoes and the preserve's owner said he'd never seen a buffalo drop that quick. We couldn't approach it until we could chase the rest of the herd away. They tend to go to the downed buffalo and prod at it almost like they're trying to urge it to get back up. Once we got to it I did have to put one .357 shot between it's eyes because it was still breathing and responding to touch, but that was that. Buffalo do take a lot of dying. The 405gr. Rem. bullet took out half of what I believe was it's first vertebra and kept on going so I wasn't able to recover the spent bullet. They had a Bobcat to bring the buffalo out and a winch set up in a barn to haul it up to skin and gut it so that went as smooth as can ever be expected given the size of the animal. It weighed just over 1100lbs. Well my Brother-in-law got the meat, the head for a mount and the hide, but I got the satisfaction of taking it! Oh yeah, he also got the $1700 bill! LOL!
I'll get some more photos posted as soon as I can. My BIL took all of the photos in the field with his camera. I was able to get this one once we had it skinned out.
Don
[IMG]http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r150/leverguns1895/P5260001-1.jpg[/IMG

Neat.

Dimitri

Nice!

A question though...

Are they Buffalo or Bison?


I was chastised recently for calling them Buffalo, supposedly there are no Buffs in North America....They are (as I was told) American Bison.....

Joe

Well is it Ketchup or Catsup?

Dimitri

Dimitri wrote:

Joe Well is it Ketchup or Catchup? Dimitri

WTF is "Catchup"???

Woops spell checker did not like catsup.

Dimitri

They are bison, however "Bison Bill" just sounds too odd so...

Dimitri,
Thanks for fixing the link!
My Brother-in-law took the rest of the pictures in the field so I'm still anxiously waiting for copies.
This was a real treat for me just to see how the rifle and bullet performed. Those Rem. 405gr. bullets have sure earned my respect. I'll be using them on my hog hunt later this week. Hopefully I have equal success.
Don

Not a problem Big Blue, you simply forgot the last "]" bracket.

Dimitri

Way to go! I've heard a lot of talk that the Rem. 405's won't hold up to heavy game esp. at those speeds. I hope I can find a load my gun likes for them. I've got a bunch because Cabela's messed up an order badly (the only time it ever happen to me.) They told me to keep them. I've tried a few with H4198 and shot a load with imr 3031 that shoots well for a friend but not in my 1895G.

If you want to be politically correct they are North American Bison, I just call them Buffalo