Monday - May 14, 2012

Oh Deer, Drew Redesigned Another One

It’s a .22 rimfire rifle with a special coaxial double barrel on it, that uses concrete nailgun blanks to shoot hollow crossbow arrows at impressive velocities.

These things are still firearms, called “arrow rifles”, but they claim tremendous accuracy (1” groups at 50 yards) and power. If you screw off the arrow’s target point and screw on a broadhead, do you now have a nearly silent short range deer killing machine? Could be. I’m not sure how the game wardens would classify this one for regular hunters, but for the guys who work as suburban deer assassins this could be a real solution.

Here’s how they work. The arrow has no nock in the back; it’s open. The rifle has an outer barrel tube and a very thin inner barrel tube. The arrow slides down over the inner tube in a moderately tight friction fit. The arrow uses plastic vanes instead of feathers, and they fold mostly flat inside the outer tube. A special chamber is on the breech end of the barrel to hold the concrete nailer blank cartridge. Pull the trigger and the blank goes off, pressurizing the hollow inner tube and applying force to the arrow from the inside, right behind the head. It’s like when you were a kid and used to blow the paper cover off your soda straw in the lunchroom. The hollow arrow rides straight on the outside of the inner barrel, and perhaps gets a little guidance from the inside of the outer barrel. It pops off the end and goes zooming away. Spin a new arrow down the barrel, load in a new blank cartridge, and you’re ready to shoot again.

It doesn’t take much skill to use. You don’t have to spend years pulling a bowstring and becoming Robin Hood to know how to do it. Load, point, fooop, harvest. That simple. The arrow rifle packs more wallop than even the strongest bow or crossbow. In theory.

And theory is the problem. A 305 grain arrow is awfully light. Sure, it’s only 16” long, just like a crossbow bolt, but it’s a good 25% lighter than a typical hunting arrow. That means it will shoot faster, but it will have very limited range. How limited a range do you really need to harvest deer in suburbia? I’m not sure. I drove down to Flemington last night at about 10:30, and the deer were everywhere. In my 12 mile drive I passed 8 small herds of them, some right out in the middle of the road just standing around, and several single deer on their own. I’m pretty sure I saw 50 deer, and even blowing the horn on my car (which they ignore) I passed within 15 feet of them. In a car. How many more were in the fields 50, 80, 100 yards away? Probably thousands. Hunterdon County is plagued with the rotters. They’re everywhere.

Lots of areas are like ours, and many towns have hired deer assassins. They don’t call them that, oh no. They call them “intrusive wildlife management experts” but they’re deer killers, plain and simple. Around here the deer are so inured to people you could probably hunt them with a hammer. You can just about walk right up to them before they’ll startle and run. But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes you need to shoot them from a bit more than arm’s length. Sometimes you need to shoot them from halfway across a meadow, or at the far end of somebody’s acre-plus backyard. And that range might be a bit more than what you can do with a modern bow.

The limited range idea is a good one. You don’t want arrows or bullets flying for a thousand yards, shooting through walls and bad stuff like that. Thunderous booms that shatter windows and frighten the neighbors. Bad. But I’m not sure this particular rig has the power to do the job at 75 yards. And I’m not even certain that it will suffice at 50. It’s range might be too limited. So let’s build a bigger one that will do the job, no matter what.

For starters, I think the arrow should weigh quite a bit more. Call it 435 grains, a full ounce. A nice thick shaft and a full size broadhead, to cut the biggest deepest hole and have the retained inertia to do it, no matter what the angle to the target is. At a distance a bit beyond what regular bowhunters would consider. 80 yards, or 100. How to go about building one of those?

Pretty easy to solve that one. Just use a bigger blank. And a gun with a locking action, ie the Ruger 77/22 bolt action rifle, instead of recoil operated semi-automatic like the Ruger 10/22. Lock the action closed to get every last bit of oomph from your cartridge. With a good steel inner barrel, chamber pressure won’t be anything to worry about, especially since the “chamber” will be 15” long, all the way down the barrel to the back of the arrowhead. Even in .17 caliber, that’s still a fair amount of volume, and that reduces pressure. A lot.

Running the numbers with the archery formula, (KE = M*V*V/450240; use the same KE for a different arrow weight M to solve for velocity V) a bow that can push a 305 grain arrow at 425fps should be able to push a 435 grain arrow a 285fps. That’s very close to what the best modern compound bows will do, and they shoot hard and flat enough for 50-60 yard deer hunting. Take it up two notches, since arrows are not really all that aerodynamic, and build one that will shoot the same 435gr arrow at 440fps. In a gun. Now you’ve got a 100 yard weapon for sure. And it can be done with a blank cartridge smaller than a .22 WMR, something halfway between a .17 Hornady HMR and the smaller .17 Mach 2; one only 20mm long. That’s more than you’ll get from even the strongest concrete nailer blank, but we are talking special purpose. And even my daydream “super magnum” arrow rifle won’t make as much bang as a firecracker. foop.

For short ranges you could always use a smaller blank. A put a hit on smaller deer. We have lots of those here too.

http://www.laruetactical.com/ruger-10-22-deluxe-arrow-conversion-kit

http://www.swivelmachine.com/html/rimfire.htm

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_2_219/197781_NEW_PRODUCT_______Ruger_10_22_Deluxe_Arrow_Conversion_Kit.html

h/t to John Jay

Posted by Drew458     on 05/14/2012 at 02:02 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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