Gary Reeder
Back in 1990 a good friend in Utah called me and asked if I
Wednesday, November 20, 2024, 16:57

still went on these handgun hunts. I told him we did and he asked if we could come out to Utah and take care of some Bison that were tearing up his farm equipment. Needless to say I told him we could. He said he had 5 permits from the Game & Fish to rid these "varmints" from his range.
Two days later we were there, all 5 of us. The Henry Mountains of Utah were a different hunting experience for us. We were all using handguns of different calibers and styles. There was a Dan Wesson 445 and the rest were all Contenders (no Encores back then). I used the prototype of the 450 GNR in a Contender. The Bison were scattered thru his herd of cattle so we had to be careful where our bullets ended up.
On my shot I had to wait until the Bison bull got out of the middle of the herd of cattle. It ended up being an offhand shot at about 65 yards.

The bull was hit good and he did a little half circle and then went down with one round of the 450 GNR, which was the Hornady 350 grain soft point.


We had to get the rancher to bring out a front end loader to hang them up to gut them. Then part of our bargain was that we had to do the skinning and preparing of the buffalo and the meat went to a local home for little kids.
What this long rambling is about is one of our hunters was Tom Thomason who used a 357 Magnum Contender that had been rechambered to 358 Winchester. No brake and nothing to take the thump out of it on the shooter except Pachmayr grips and if I remember right it had factory porting. Tom shot his Buffalo a couple of times before it went down and each time he pulled the trigger he had to rub his hand against his jeans to get some feeling back in them as the recoil was a tad stiff. But he got his Buff with one of the old fashioned Contenders with Pachmayrs on it.

The rest of the guys used various Contenders except my gunsmith, Mike Thompson, who used a Dan Wesson 445.

One of my hunters, John Charuhas, used a 35 Remington Contender and his buffalo was right at the edge of a stream when he was hit. He managed to stagger into the stream and bogged down in about 3 feet of mud right up to his ribcage.
Another of my hunters, Jack Pitcher, used a custom 45-70 Contender. Jack passed away recently and we got his guns in from his widow and the 45-70 Jack used, along with a few other barrels will be up for sale after we clean them up a bit.