SmallCaliberCentral

Hello everyone, hope all is well.
I shoot quite alot of rabbits with my howa .204 and always get very destructive results.
I decided to take one of my friends along with me on a rabbit hunt so i could show him what the .204 and its tiny bullet was capable of.
I saw a rabbit about 150 meters away, lined him up and squeezed the trigger..and what do ya know, it fell straight over! (not surprising)
Anyway we went up close to inspect the kill so my friend could really see the power of the .204, and to my surpise the rabbit was completly unscathed. It was stone dead but i couldent even find a bullet hole! usually the rabbit get ripped to bits from the .204 but this one was perfectly intact -- there was no visible would, no blood, just a stone dead rabbit.
Obviously i didnt quite provide the demonstration i was hoping for!
Anyone else ever had this happen? i assumed the bullet must have passed clean through missing all the bones etc..but i would think it wouldent really matter and the bullet would explode anyway...
I was using .32grain vmax's, anyone ever had this happen with vmax's?

If the wabbits in New Z are anything like the ones they have in Germany, it probably bounced off his head.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsi ... 676904.stm
Really I would check real close on the head and see if the bullet creased the skull.

hahaha i dont think they are quite that big although we do get some huge hairs..im about 190cm tall and i got one the other day with my .22mag it was so big when i held it by its back legs at waist height its front legs touched the ground -- thats over a meter long!!! (stretched out), huge!..
back to the one i shot with the .204 -- im pretty sure I shot it clean in the side...deffinitly no headshot

Oh My God! RUN! It's HareZilla!

(That is a BIG freakin' rabbit!)

NEVER had a failure - always blew 'em up.

This one did NOT skip off!
Mister Bunny...............Where's your face?

hi there fellow kiwi, lol

i shot a hare in cantebury 3 weeks ago between 150 and 200 yrds with a handloaded 32 gr sierra and the same thing happened.
BUT........ i cut it open to get a backsteak and it was alomst complete mush indise.
I couldnt find a entry hole either.
Next one you you find do a quick autopsy and im sure you will find what i did.

btw 39 gr blows them up real good but the 32gr balistics match my varmint reticle well so i use them instead

I've had a complete pass-through on whitetail deer with a 50cal Hornady SST in a muzzleloader before and looked very hard and couldn't find an entrance wound. The exit wound was so small the hair covered it back up. The deer ran 100 yards and died, but I didn't find the wounds until I cleaned the deer. It missed all the ribs. I guess the same could happen with a Vmax, not likely but you never know!

Oh, I know, the .204 is so awesome that the rabbit died of a heart attack! Either that or it was just sleeping. Okay, just kidding but I couldn't resist, I killed a baby sage rat that was about the size of a field mouse and I couldn't find any damage to it either. I think I killed it by the concussion of the bullet exploding next to it. Anyway dead is dead after all. Gary

usually i get terrific results with the vmax;s, i woudlent be at all surprised if its insides were mush...
that was the only occasion the target wasent "inside out"

I shot a jack rabbit once with a .270. It fell over dead. When I went to investigate, the only wound I could find was a .270 diameter hole in his ear 1 inch up from his head.

Maybe you had a really close pass by and the little guy's heart gave out?

I don't know what kind of shock wave a .204 bullet can produce, but it must have been enough.

nzs204
I agree with madracer, next time do a brief autopsy and take a look. I've killed 3 badgers in the last month with a Howa 1500 SSHB in .204 Ruger using Nosler 34 HP and Re-10x powder.
All 3 were DRT; roll over give 3 pathetic kicks and no more movement.
I was very curious at this behavior since badgers are rather large, mean critters. I would guess that all 3 went between 15 and 20 lbs. a piece. Anyway, there were no exit holes and I had to look very closely to find the entrance hole. But, when I picked them up it was like holding on to a large sack of jello! Holy Crap! Maximum internal destruction. The bullet expended all its energy inside the badger.
I must say I've never had this happen on jack rabbits, but it's certainly a possibility. And, to quote Captqc "Anyway dead is dead after all."

Rgds, Gerry

lol, best way i've ever heard it said was "in what part of the animals demise did the bullet fail?"

heres some wabbit damage

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nzs204 - I think you've found the perfect rabbit bullet - for folks who want to eat their rabbits! No damage, just a dead rabbit... Cool.

ahhaa yea ur right, only problem is i dont want to eat them. =p
perhaps next time i will be able to convince my mate how cool the .204 is with a spectacular gory kill.
Although to the credit of the .204, one of my other mates who shoots a .308 was so impressed by the accuracy and excessive gore caused by the tiny .204 that he now wants one himself!
I have shot possums from point blank (within a meter) with both my .243 and ruger mini-30 and the .204 beats em both when it comes to turning small game inside out (then again i was using hunting softpoint bullets, not vmax's im sure my .243 with vmax's would be an excellent small game explosion round) -- still for the size of the round it sure does a number of small game! i love it

I shot a tree rat with mine the other day and couldn't find an entrance or an exit.I did find a small piece here and a small piece there and a smaller piece
over there...etc LOL