Reeder Custom Guns - We have a customer that wants to hunt

the small deer, like the Key Deer or our Coues Deer, maybe 50 to 55 LBs and wants to use the 240 Banshee in a Contender. Robert talked to him at the shop and wanted me to load up some ammo for the old fellow to practice with.
The 240 Banshee is a 22 K-Hornet blown out and necked to 243. The 240 Banshee will do the job on a small bodied deer as long as he puts the bullet in the right spot. It will put a 55 grain bullet out at 2500 FPS and a 75 grain bullet out at 2200 FPS. So the cartridge has enough punch for a 55 lb deer as long as bullet placement is the most important thing with the shooter.
This is one of those times when I miss John Taffin most. He would say BULLET PLACEMENT!!! Thank you John.

Post reply

I have been privileged to take more than a few of them. They are little but they are smart critters. I always enjoyed them. During real dry spells we used to have some of them come into our corral for a drink of water from the horse trough. I never bothered them or let the dogs out when they did that.

This is a nice one my Dad took one year.
[image]

Post reply

Standards.
Our Florida Key Deer are even smaller than that one. I didn't hunt them much while I was down there. You had to fight the snakes that were everywhere and Skeeters that were the size of a humming bird. Plus if there was a small canal or large mud puddle you can bet there was a gator there somewhere.
On one hunt there was a big canal that was probably 7 or 8 feet deep and there were huge gators lying on the banks maybe 6 or 7 feet from us. Kase was with me and I told him to be quiet and ease back to the top edge of the canal and we will get way from these living suitcases. Just as we got up to the top edge of the canal and maybe 8 feet from a huge gator I noticed something flying over my head. I looked up and there was an empty Coke can flying toward the big gator. It hit him and he growled and snapped at us. I was ready to throw Kase to the gator.
I went back a couple of times but never got a gator. They passed a new law down there that you could only use certain weapons like a 44 magnum bang stick and if you killed one you had to check him in. There were so many big gators that I would have had to go down among them to get the one I had killed.
If you went out with a guide in a john boat you had to
figure a way to snag the gator with big treble hooks and pull him to the side of the boat and then kill him with a bang stick. And often the gator was bigger than the boat.

Post reply

And it is exactly as you describe. We have three weekends in August and can hunt from sundown to dawn, which is ridiculous. We have thousands of gators here. We use air boats, trebel hooks and 357 bang sticks. If I could figure out how to post a pic here I would. Anywho, it is fun.

Post reply

That's what I'd use 60 gr. or less. They seem to expand but not explode. Since they are designed for 4000 fps they do great at impact speeds around 2k. The 70 gr. may or may not expand, but with a good hit it really doesn't matter.

I shot my Muntjac with a 40 gr. Nosler Ballistic tip at 2150 fps from a .224-327 FA revolver. It did the job but it was like stabbing it with a pencil. The little bullets are designed for the .22-250 for Pete's sake.

The little 6mm pills run the standard factory range from .243 to .240 Weatherby. That is what the factory provides for. I don't think their engineers are figuring for nuts like us.

Post reply

We have a customer that wants to hunt

Coues deer are small ...

That deer would be a big one by Florida's

I hunt gators in Mobile Bay

The light varmint bullets actually hold together