Rossi Rifleman

I see that it was one year ago today that I posted our 2019 deer season results. As last year, my son took the Rossi .357 lever and I had the .44 mag lever. Both rifles are stock with open sights. As last year, my son filled both of our tags. (Legal here to fill another tag) He took 2 does shooting handloads of 158 gr XTP's. The only change was using Lil Gun in lieu of H110, The does came in together and fell together. Using his phone GPS it showed the distance at over 135 yds. My .44 mag will have to wait another year at least to take it's first deer. Good eating ahead for us.

I haven't hunted a single day this year. Surrounded by them on the ranch, but too many things going on.

I've seen four deer in plain sight in town this year. That's very uncommon.

I put out two ground blinds with 100 yd shots in mind for the .44 mag 92, no bucks have come close while I was in them. Of course, while I was hunting my elevated “shootinghouse” I see bucks within 100 yds of the ground blinds. One kill with the .308 Ruger RSI and one clean miss of a really big’un with same. Both within 125 yds of ground blinds for the .44!!!

That is for sure how hunting can be. Bought all you an do is smile and maybe laugh but keep at it.

At least you saw deer. The Gun season in NE Ohio was so bad that it wasn't even funny. Opening day it rained steadily all day. My rain gauge said 1.5 inches, but it sure seemed more. 4 of us hunt my 115 acres and the only deer that was seen was shot by my son-in-law as he walked back from lunch. He stumbled on a reasonable sized 4+ point buck with a broken rack bedded down in the woods 4 feet from a field. He almost walked by it. It never moved. He could have clubbed it with his rifle. He shot it with his Henry Big Boy .357 where it laid. It got up and bounced about 20 yds from where it was shot before it fell.

Then the snows came... Tuesday morning we woke up to 18 inches of snow and nothing moved. Wednesday morning there were very few tracks across the fields or in the woods, even in areas where normally the tracks look like a deer highway. Nary a gun shot that day either from any of us or the surrounding nearly 500 acres that surround my property. Finally on Thursday morning you could see evidence that the deer had been up and around that night, but again there was almost no shooting in the area until nearly sunset when the property one over from mine came alive. It was not until Saturday that one of my sons had an opportunity to take a doe, just to suffer a misfire from his Ruger .450 Bushmaster.

On an normal year, we would have seen 30 deer between the 4 of us over a week like that.

Good thing we are not dependent on taking deer to feed our families... we'd be pretty hungry this year...

We live in a sub division that's sort of in the country adjacent to a large tract of government land. We have deer in the yard regularly and they feast on our garden and other plants. They have made our arborvitaes into phallus shaped topiaries. We had 12" inches of snow a couple weeks ago and a small doe has started bedding behind our house in a little nook next to our A/C unit between the shed and house. The wife put a thick layer of leaves in there for mulch in the fall and the doe seems to like it. I think she may have been orphaned during the deer season in December. There are deer tracks all over our yard in the snow.

Too many hunters around here though. The last 4 years we've been driving an hour to my son's in-laws and hunt their farm. They have several tracts of land and we get one to ourselves. We've never seen another hunter (close anyway) while there. Weather can be a crap shoot here also. Could be rain, freezing rain, snow, sub zero temps or short sleeve shirts. We've hunted in all of those conditions in the first week of December.

Saw a dozen or so yesterday between the street I was on and Interstate 35. Captured them on my dash cam.

To the OP, I'm just genuinely curious, why the change from H110 to Lil Gun?

I may never get to shoot a deer with my Rossi. I typically have to shoot one in archery season before PA's orange army forces them into hiding during firearms season. This year the hunting pressure was outrageous. I heard a lot less shooting than most years.

KeepArms wrote:To the OP, I'm just genuinely curious, why the change from H110 to Lil Gun?

I had made up loads with both H110 & Lil Gun. When we went to the range to make sure guns were still sighted my son shot both and preferred the Lil Gun loads. I thought they both shot very good patterns but he chose the the Lil Gun. I didn't chrono them but according to the book the loads were close in velocity to each other. Also, according to the book the Lil Gun has significantly less pressure. This was from the Hodgdon web site.

Now, here's my question; according to the Hodgdon site, for the .44 mag with a 210 gr. bullet it is showing similar velocity for the 2 powders but, the Lil Gun shows higher pressures than H110. Not as much difference as in the .357 but still, Lil Gun show higher pressures for the .44. Can one of the more knowledgeable reloaders chime in on why this is.