Story by Shane Jahn

I don’t recall the last time I traipsed across the hunting fields without a handgun. It’s just something I do. No matter if I’m primarily hunting with a rifle or chasing blue quail around thorny thickets with a scattergun, most often a handgun is on my side.

It’s not there necessarily for personal protection, although it could be. It’s there if I need it, well, for anything. For me, toting a handgun is no different than the daily ritual of packing a pocketknife. I don’t always need to cut something, but my knife is always handy in case I do!

When choosing to carry a handgun afield we must decide what its intended purpose might be. It’s never a bad idea to legally carry a handgun for personal protection, no matter what we are doing.

For the sake of this discussion, let’s assume we are wearing a gun as our primary or secondary firearm while hunting. Which gun we choose might depend on if we are solely handgun hunting versus wearing a handgun in addition to hunting with a rifle or shotgun. This handgun will be of an appropriate size to ensure accurate shooting at a given distance and must be chambered in a cartridge capable of taking our intended game.

Now comes the hard part. What size should this gun be and which cartridge should it be chambered in? I’ll stick with revolvers here as they are what I normally carry. The autoloaders in 45 ACP, 10mm, and so on are certainly viable but they are not my go-to field guns for the simple fact I prefer wheelguns over most others.

The size of the gun is restricted to the handgun you can shoot accurately at predetermined distances that ensures shots can be put on target every time. The size of the target is determined by what we intend to hunt. If it’s prairie dogs, we’ll need to group our shots in an area the size of a clenched fist or smaller. Squirrels will require even more accuracy. Feral hogs and deer will allow for a bit larger shot spread, say an outstretch hand or so. We’ll discuss how we determine these distances in more detail later.

************************************************************************
To read more, click here to SUBSCRIBE