By Jim Dickson | Contributing Writer
A pistol is an indispensable tool for a woodsman and as long as you are in the woods you won’t find too many shots that are long range enough to cause you trouble.
Sometimes carried in a pancake holster that can be concealed under a shirt, most of the time it will be carried openly for convenience. It will be called upon to do everything a long gun normally does yet it must remain easy to carry. This pretty much limits it to the size of military service pistols. Extremely long barreled pistols pose to much of a problem when you have to sit. Smaller pistols are harder to hit with. You really need a full size pistol.
The pistol is the most important firearm you can have in the woods because it is the only weapon that you can have with you at all times. Any animal that wants to harm you, two legged or four legged is acutely aware of whether you are armed or not. Remember that when you lay a rifle or shotgun down to chop wood or whatever you are disarmed while the long gun is not being actually held. It can take more time than you will have to stop what you are doing and fetch it up when you suddenly need it. I have always said that if I could have only one gun it would be my M1911A1 because it does everything and I can always have it with me.
Defense is one of the first things that comes to mind and the pistol offers some significant advantages over a rifle or shotgun. Statistically, pistols have proven more effective than long guns against close range surprise bear attacks because the bear may knock the long gun aside, yet you can still draw and fire a pistol even if the bear has you on the ground.
You often don’t know whether a stranger you encounter far from civilization is a dangerous individual or not. There are some criminal types that target people in the wilds. You can’t go snatching up a rifle or a shotgun without being threatening and potentially invoking a self-defense response.
At close range where conversations occur there is no room to use a long gun without wrestling should things suddenly take a dangerous turn. If suddenly attacked you can defend yourself. If your new acquaintance says something about you carrying a gun just dismiss it saying that you always carry one and don’t discuss it further. If he says it makes him nervous and would like you to take it off then beware for this is a big red flag. Time to cut the conversation short and part ways. Don’t turn your back on him.
Wild canines have attacked people whether they are wolves, coyotes, domestic dogs gone feral, or even vicious “tame” dogs. A wild boar with a sow and piglets may attack without warning in some parts of the country. I have seen a small wild boar put a fat man up a tree as fast as a squirrel. I never would have believed that he could move so fast. He was lucky. A lot of unarmed people are not in that situation.
Some people say if you leave poisonous snakes alone then they will leave you alone. Well I remember going out on my front porch and encountering a fat rattlesnake at the foot of my steps. Upon seeing me he began rattling and launched a furious attempt to get up the steps at me. I shot him. As for letting one live around my camp or work site, forget about it.
Killing coyotes and other threats to livestock and potting something for dinner along with killing what you find in your traps if you are running a trapline round out the work with a pistol. Plinking with it is where play and skill building merge most pleasantly.
It should be remembered that game you chance upon while going about your day-to-day business in the wilds won’t wait for you to stop and go grab a long gun. When game is startled and flushed it’s over quickly. A handgun is up to that speed even when you are not expecting the sudden flurry of activity. Since I don’t like to go hungry this is important to me.
There are many guns and calibers used by woodsmen. I prefer .45 Colt and .45 ACP as these are the two calibers with the best balance of effective power and recoil. They have been used to kill everything in North America efficiently and the recoil level is low enough that you can get off rapid-fire. They make a big enough hole that you don’t need expanding bullets so you can use hard cast or FMJ bullets for better penetration on very large game.
The .45 ACP muzzle blast reaches 157 decibels, and the .45 Colt produces 154.7 decibels. This is considerably less than the 165 decibels of the .357 magnum, the 163.2 decibels of the .41 magnum and the 164 decibels of the .44 magnum. Decibels are measured logarithmically so every increase of 10 decibels is equal to a 10 fold increase in Sound Pressure Level (SPL). Since you rarely have time to don ear protection when using a pistol in the normal situations you find in the woods that means that you are far more likely to quickly get permanent hearing loss with the louder magnum calibers. This is why I don’t like the magnum calibers in pistols. I value my hearing. They also have significantly more recoil than a .45 so recovery is slower and that prevents the rapid-fire rates you can achieve with a .45.
Over the years I have used the M1911A1, the Colt Single Action Army, the Colt New Service, a Smith & Wesson, and the Ruger Redhawk with 4-inch barrels in these calibers and they all worked well. The best all-around choice for me has been the M1911A1. For anything serious this is my go-to gun.
When Betty and I had trapper’s licenses and were living in a one room log trapper’s cabin deep in the Alaskan interior we used WWII Remington Rand M1911A1’s with surplus military 230-grain hardball ammunition for everything. I would not change anything if I had to do it over again. We were subsistence hunters and the M1911A1’s delivered. We used WWII army surplus M1916 holsters which you can get new today from El Paso Saddlery.
I enjoy my Colt Single Action Army revolver and often carry it around my farm to shoot any coyotes I see. You usually get only a fleeting look at them, so you have to draw and fire accurately in one fast motion. An El Paso Saddlery duplicate of Wes Hardin’s holster keeps the gun secure without a strap and enables this fast shooting. The Single Action Army’s small trigger guard prevents using it with all but the thinnest gloves in cold weather and 5 shots with a slow reload make it less desirable for serious work though.
The 4-inch barrel Ruger Redhawk has a magnificent double action trigger pull and it’s stainless steel construction comes in handy during the rainy season in the Appalachian rain forest of the North Georgia. The Colt New Service and the S&W are traditional .45-caliber double actions that still get the job done. I particularly like the excellent pointing qualities of the Colt along with its big glove friendly trigger guard.
Accuracy is a very big factor in a pistol as only bullets that hit their mark count. In my experience, no pistol is as easy to aim as the German P08 Luger and this is why it has been successfully used by many woodsmen over the years. I know of two attacking grizzly bears that were killed with Lugers and I suspect there were a lot more. Still, I want a .45-caliber bullet when facing those giants. My favorite woods carry holster for my Luger is an El Paso Saddlery duplicate of the 1900 U.S. Army Test Trials Luger Holster.
The .38-caliber revolvers have also served as backwoods handguns. Often it’s a case of carrying what you have. A bit on the light side for the big stuff but they still have their adherents. Everything from top break S&W and Iver Johnson revolvers in .38 S&W to modern .38 Special Colts and S&W’s has seen plenty of use in the backwoods since 1877 when the first .38 S&W came out in the S&W single action Baby Russian model. A lot of small game and farm pests have been killed by them too. The old top break models are surprisingly accurate for such a small size gun and this has resulted in many rabbits bagged over the years.
In the late 19h and early 20th centuries, a lot of trappers carried .32-caliber revolvers and later .32 ACP automatics with FMJ ammo to dispatch animals in their traps. These were quicker and more humane than the .22 LR pistols commonly used for that today. This resulted in some interesting situations where even bears were sometimes shot and killed with the diminutive .32’s. Don’t think I want to try that, but it has been done. Colt and Savage .32-caliber pocket pistols were once common carry guns in the backwoods. It should be noted that guns this size are more difficult to hit with than full size pistols but these pocket pistols were popular for killing what was in your traps at ranges of a few feet. They made good concealed guns for defense against human predators but were not up to standards for defense against animals, hunting, or pest shooting.
The ubiquitous .22LR pistol is always popular. Guns like the popular-priced Diamondback revolver are used for plinking, hunting small game, and killing game in traps. They add a lot of fun to many outings. I always used to shoot 500 or 1,000 rounds through my old Stoeger .22 Luger every time I took it out. These .22’s are really fun guns.
Whatever you choose make sure that you carry a pistol when you go into the woods. Don’t go without one.
