Save a Pumpkin This Halloween

32

Work on your marksmanship skills before carving your pumpkin.

32 COMMENTS

    • My pumpkin did not go so far as to turn into orange mist: it did produce a pretty spectacular display though.

      I made a small-ish hole in a medium-sized pumpkin, filled it with water, and then shot it at close range with a 180 grain hollowpoint bullet exiting my .44 Magnum rifle at something like 2,000 feet-per-second. The resulting display was, well, spectacular as I stated above.

    • Since we are dancing around the idea of a gunshot turning something into mist, I have one single such experience. I had a 16-ounce can of condensed milk that was a few years past its “use by” date and the can felt extremely hard–as though it was under significant pressure from the inside. I shot that can of condensed milk with a full-power hollowpoint load from a .357 Magnum revolver and apparently hit the can dead center. I say apparently because the can disappeared and all we could find, aside from the giant cloud of vaporized condensed milk, was one tiny piece of the can’s wrapper. We searched the area for over 30 minutes trying to find the can–to no avail.

      For reference the vaporized condensed milk cloud was something like 25-feet in diameter immediately after the gunshot. (Of course it dispersed quickly.)

  1. I’m just curious what pistol/caliber makes nice neat holes in the front, and . . . doesn’t go through the back. Cool trick!

    • You want a round that will hyper-expand on impact, yet not have enough residual kinetic energy to blow out the back. That’s gonna be a tall order.

      Maybe a .177 cal. air rifle with not many pressurization pump-strokes, perhaps?

      Anyone, Bueller? Bueller?

  2. Out here in PA, we have pumpkin chucking contests. They use trebuchets to chuck pumpkins as far as a mile. Might be a hoot to combine pumpkin chucking with skeet. Shoot that pumpkin out of the sky!

    • If that pumpkin is flying a mile you’d have to be pretty quick. Dont know how fast that pumpkin would be going, faster then a pheasant ? Then add the height if the trebechet.
      I tried to shotgunm a model rocket once. It was out of range real quick.

  3. There is a serious punkin slinger up on the arm of the Hood’s Canal in Washington State. Have’t watched them yet, but I’ve seen their setup. And the mounds of pre-flighted punkins.

  4. Trump pumpkin head on left. BiDUMB pumpkin head on right.
    Is as it should be.
    You should wonder how I will do Harris and Pelooser heads.

  5. On a elk hunting trip, I had a large pumpkin with me & put it up on a stump, then used my Ruger 3 screw 8 inch barrel 44mag with 180 grain hollow points,
    Shot the pumpkin , was surprised it didn’t explode. Walked up to it and there was a hole in the front about the size of the bullet head, looked at the back & there was no back. The whole back of the gourd was gone. Pumpkin seeds were scattered everywhere. Ya, pumpkins are fun to shoot.

    • “We got so much food we shoot it for sport.”

      President Ronald Regan speech writer Peggy Noonan ( D-day 50th anniversary “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc” speech at Normandy) told the story (in the book about her years in the Regan administration) about talking to a delegation visiting Africa for the first time in the White House cafeteria one day where she asked one what was the most surprising thing he observed in his first trip to the United States.

      According to Noonan, with a look on his face of surprise and wonder, he replied :

      “Even your poor people are fat.”

      Whenever I hear Leftist Scum ™ vent their hatred of America, I think of that. A first-world problem, indeed… 🙁

  6. Don’t torture your pumpkins with one of those cheap carving kits that always show up come Halloween time. Just shoot ’em. Same results, faster, and a lot more fun. 😀

  7. “…..Shot the pumpkin , was surprised it didn’t explode…..”

    Pumpkins have too much void and not enough liquid to explode.
    The trick is putting a small hole in the top of the pumpkin and filling it with water.
    The small plastic piece used to fill water balloons (goes on a water hose) works great.

    I shoot water filled pumpkins with a 50AE DEagle fitted with a Romeo 4S RDS (Hornady 300gr XTP hollow points).
    They vaporize every time. 😃

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