Best Brush Gun

[Gunfighter123]

Double your fun and think about a Springfield Armory M1A -- a short one like the "bush/scout/socom" is a joy to shoot.

You can use a wide range of .308s, from 150gr. to 220grs. --- semi-auto with 5 rd. mags or 20rd. G.I. type mags for Vermin Control. The SA M1As hold their value very well and a 16" - 18" .308 is still light on recoil.
Just another option -- GF123

 

[Dutchman01]

I hunt the ozarks backcountry with a winchester model 95 saddle ring carbine. It's chambered for the 30-06 cartridge. It's hard to beat an 06.

 

[ilike223s]

I Recall that mag,

Quote:
Chuck Dye and moosehunt are spot-on;

um, er...

Long ago and far away, when I was the worst kind of buff (read all the rags, had zilch for experience,) I read an article in one of the gun rags in which the author set up arrays of dowels (¼"?) at various positions in the flight path of a variety of bullets from the varmint end to the "brush gun" end of the spectrum. As I recall, ALL showed such deflection as to demonstrate that there is no such thing, ballistically, as a "brush gun." Go with what you already have or buy the rifle you want for convenience (or any other reason )

Hunting down the article is left to the student as an exercise.
__________________
Formerly posting as Huck Phinn.
Gee, I'd still love to see your data!

I recall the reason for the writer to set up the dowel rods on a board and set out in front of his target,he had used all sorts of dowel rod sizes to see if a bullet of all sorts of weight would shoot through the rods and hit his target.
Not a single bullet hit the target after hitting a few rods.
He did this test because he was In africa and he missed a big water buf, or some other big game, when he took a shot while shooting through some high grass,,when he shot, the animal looked around then walked awy, the guied looked at the hunter, like how did you miss at 25 yards,
I missed a deer sideways, I found I had hit a tiny stick,I sat inmy stand thinking,what did I hit,well it was a tiny twig,thats all it takes,
I like a short barrel for brush gun,and in 444 or 45-70,,

 

[Art Eatman]

If I didn't already post it here, I've posted elsewhere: All experiments with bullet deflection and brush show that it doesn't really matter if the bullet's tip is pointed or rounded, or if it's a relatively small caliber or a "great ol' big un"; they all deflect. About the only meaningful variable is the distance between the limb and the animal. Short distance, you might get lucky...

"Brush gun" means a rifle/carbine which is easy to carry in thick cover, and light and handy as to swinging onto a target.

Art

 

[woof]

This seems to be a matter of religion rather than science with some doing a 180 degree misinterpretation of the study. Here is the link to the study: http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot40.htm. The main conclusions were that light bullets like .223 deflect wildly while bigger stuff plowed through. It is true though that round nose vs. spitzer didn't matter.

The myth is not a myth it is true. Anyone who has hunted in real brush with a .35 Rem and a .243 or .270 knows it is.

 

[regal]

The Mosin 1938 makes a good brush gun. Its cheap, can take abuse, and ammo is very reasonable.

 

[SwampWolf]

Very interesting and (somewhat) informative link, Woof. Enjoyed viewing it.

 

[Macmac]

I think the point of brush gun is being missed that the gun has clean lines and is more or less brush free.. So a trim tool for weilding in brush, snag free.

Most of my deer hunting since the mid 80's has been done with a Nor' West Gun shooting a 0.600 round ball, and that more or less cuts off brush, and doesn't zing off on tangents..

Brush hunting is close work, and sometimes the deer will be running away, still very close. A too fast bullet in the hind end of a deer damages more meat as i see things..

In heavy brush like I have in NH where it can be hard to see 25 feet never mind 25 yards, a slow round isn't all that bad.

And the Nor' West Gun is not a brush gun.. too long and too many stickieoutties.. but I love it.

 

[nksmfamjp]

12 ga shotgun, Mossy or Rem, you pick'em. Semi or pump. Put a red dot on it, single point sling and as many slugs as your state will let you carry! Yippee!

Something about shotgun geometry and the practice gained from breaking clay birds says brush gun to me!

 

[Tarvis]

Did anyone mention the folly of trying to shoot through thick brush in general? You can't exactly know your target or what is beyond if you can't see it.

As said by Shawnee on page one, no modern small arms projectile can be fired accurately through brush. The benefit of a brush gun comes from its portability.

This seems to be a matter of religion rather than science with some doing a 180 degree misinterpretation of the study. Here is the link to the study:

That was hardly a study. From what I could tell, they fired one round of each ammo type and based their results on their findings. This is the exact same as firing a one round group; it doesn't tell us anything other than where that one round went in that one instance. It did show what we would expect to see(which is why it is believable), but it didn't set any truth's into stone. He should have included information like muzzle velocity and sectional density, then compared two like bullets with all variables the same except for one and shot a 20 round group with each to determine the best performing attribute. Taking a 55gr .223 SP and comparing it to a 165gr ballistic tip and a 510gr .45 RN is like comparing a cell phone battery to a double A and a car battery; you get results but they fail to prove anything.

 

[Macmac]

nksmfamjp , I'ld agree with a 20 inch barrel, and the sleek lines if he wanted a brushy shot gun.. As a lad I had a L C Smith side by, some hack cut at 18 and 1/4 inches. It had a brass bead out front and some cut down section of a brake line doubled screwed at the breech, and it was a dandy in the brush.

I hunted alone and so placed numba 7 and 1/2 shot in the right tube and a load of 00 Buck in the left.. But the topic was rifle, or so I thought.

 

[mr.trooper]

http://www.steyrarms.com/index.php?id=162

7 round detachable magazine, 450 marlin. the MARLIN only has a 4 round tube magazine. Only problem...is getting one here in the US.

a better solution would be an AR in 450 bushmaster.

 

[R00KIE]

* .30-30 lever action. I'd go for a Marlin (can be had for about $250 if you look around)

 

[Tang419]

My "brush gun", is a Mossberg 535, with a rifled barrel and iron sights, loaded with .73 caliber, 465gr Lightfields at 1900fps.

 

[Tang419]

My "brush gun", is a Mossberg 535, with a rifled barrel and iron sights, loaded with .73 caliber, 465gr Lightfields at 1900fps.

 

[woof]

Tests like the one cited above have been done over and over. I've seen them reported here and elsewhere. They all show pretty much the same thing. Yes, any bullet can be deflected. No, it is not a good idea to try to shoot through brush. And yes, at the margin, bigger heavier bullets will deflect less than light ones.

Those who think light bullets will cut brush at all and those who think heavy bullets will cut through anything are equally deluded. Be a hunter, get a clear open shot or don't take it.

 

[praharin]

i think its worth a look that most of their 'experimental' shots were hitting dead center of a dowel. even the shotgun just busted through 1. this is hardly the case, and i think could have corrupted the results. if someone were to do the results with a few layers of cut sticks, placed at random distances and random angles. then shoot, just to make it simple, a 30-30 and a 30-06. easy enough to load them up the same except for velocity. how many times have you been in a situation where you would have had to shoot through a single wall of perfectly vertical, uniformly sized twigs?

 

[moooose102]

have you thought about a remington 7400 carbine (30-06)? cheap to shoot, fast handling, enough power for almost anything on this continent, the best ammo availibility of any caliber, super quick follow up shots (auto-loader) . while 30-06 only has a 30 caliber bullet, you could shoot 220 or 240 grainers out of it which should resist deflection a bit. a 45/70 marlin would be a great gun as well. especially shooting 400 or 405 grain bullets ot of it. but to get the real potential out of a 45/70, you have to hand load or buy EXPENSIVE ammo for it. and for what it is worth, take it down and have a set of fire sights put on it even before you shoot it. no sense in waisting a lot of time, energy and expense trying to use the stock (lousey) sights on your new gun. you NEED something that will come up FAST!

 

[woof]

praharin, The bullet doesn't know whether the dowel it hits is vertical, horizontal, angled, straight, smooth, twisted or anything else. It just hits wood at a specific point and reacts or doesn't. Of course this test didn't allow for a bullet to hit more than one dowel on the way to the target. But even in that case I would bet that even though any bullet would be more deflected, the gap between the light bullet's deflection and the heavy bullet's deflection would show an even wider gap.

Think of it this way: If you were being shot at through a gnarl of brush, would you rather the shooter have a .223 or a .35 Rem? Either would suck but I'd take my chances with the .223

 

[BADUNAME37]

If you can take the weight, I shot a 460 Weatherby Magnum with Barnes solid bronze (I believe 500 grain) round nose bullets through three trees with a sloped field beyond the trees for a backstop. The bullet traveled through ALL 3 TREES (about 4" - 5" diameter) and made a cut in the field about 10' long!

Trouble is, that would be a LONG and HEAVY brush gun! My point is that a heavy bullet will tend to plow straight through some objects and may STILL hit the target.

A real test would have been to have a target set up past the three trees to see if there is any consistency with the bullets after going through that much wood.

 

[Marlin 45 carbine]

Ruger M77 All-weather in '06. that's what I have.
I looked at the same que you posted for here in W. North Carolina. with 180/200 gr slugs will do for anything East of the Mississippi.

 

[woof]

The physics of this is about momentum. Momentum is mass times velocity. A 200 gr bullet at 2000 fps has a momentum that is equaled by a 100 gr bullet IF it is at 4000 fps. The 50 gr bullet would have to be at 8000 fps. So for real world shooting, the heavier bullets will have more momentum giving them the edge from the get go.

The real key is the distance between the brush broken through and the deer. That will matter more than the gun. Bottom line is nothing shoots through brush well enough for a hunter to be confident he can shoot through brush.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Somehow, all this talk of 'shooting through brush' reminds of 2004, when a hunter from Massachusetts came up here to hunt bear. He heard a noise on the other side of the blueberry thicket (you know how bears love blueberries, QED it's a bear!), fired, and when he went around to the other side to retrieve his quarry found a dying hiker. Instead of field dressing his kill and carrying it home to butcher and eat it, he did a funny thing- he ran. And went all the way home to Massachusetts, where later he told his wife what he had done. She called emergency services, but the guy was long dead by then.

The point of this long story is to ask what on earth you people are thinking shooting through heavy brush? Please remedially read No.4 of the Four Rules. If the brush is really thick enough to stop a hunting bullet, it is too thick to see through and too thick for you to adequately identify your target and backstop. The solution is tactical, not technological: wait for a better shot, or don't take it.

 

[BADUNAME37]

I'm assuming (there I go again) that all of this conversation is about hunting game that is completely VISIBLE, except for, perhaps a twig.

If people are talking about shooting at NOISES in the BRUSH, then don't even bother getting your hunting license. Maybe even sell your guns.

I have to disagree that brush that is thick enough to stop a bullet will also hide a game animal to the extent that it will be IMPOSSIBLE to ever see. I have dense brush behind my house that one could see, perhaps 15' at most in. If I am hunting in that brush and come upon a buck that is startled out of his sleep and I see clearly that it is a buck, yes, I will shoot the buck. And, given those circumstances, I would prefer my 12 gauge 20" barrel with slugs or 00Buck.

There, see, it can happen - and it can happen safely.

 

[lefteyedom]

Pssss,
here is a little secert I learned deer hunting in Maryland's shotgun only areas. sabot slug 20 or 12 gauge H&R sluggester with low power scope 2x ect are hellishly deadly on deer under 200 yards. Don't tell anyone I told you..