Remington's 360 Buckhammer & Whitetails: Match Made In Heaven?

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An all-day sit in a tree stand is always easier for me to endure if I cheat a bit and climb down to cook breakfast on the tailgate of my truck. On the last day of November 2023, I was in a ladder stand overlooking a 3-acre turnip plot in Central Illinois, and I had just that plan in mind. It was opening day of the second firearm season and the rut was mostly over, according to the calendar, but I’d nonetheless seen steady deer action all morning, including a couple of starry-eyed young bucks that cruised through the plot looking for does.

But the action had waned around 9 a.m., and so I decided to climb down at 10:30 for an intermission. At 10:25, just as I’d gathered my pack, a doe and two yearlings strolled into view and began feeding in the turnips. I admit to being slightly annoyed. I was, after all, ready for some sausage and eggs.

It crossed my mind to shoot the doe and punch one of the two deer tags in my pack. She was a perfect Midwestern specimen – corn-fed and thick, with deep black eyes and a tuba of a nose that looked as though it could snort for an hour straight. She looked up at me a couple times and glared, and I thought a fiasco was imminent. But instead of blowing out, she and the yearlings bedded within bow range of my tree and chewed cud in the sunshine. I decided to hold off shooting, despite knowing there’d be no 10:30 breakfast.

ILLINOIS LEGACY

I was hunting Schuyler County in the famed “Golden Triangle” of Illinois, a skip and a jump from legendary counties like Pike and Brown. The property I was on was a part of the Performance Outdoors operation, an outfitting service operating on 4,000 acres of prime Illinois farm country. Most of the properties, including the one I was hunting, are purposely set up for undetected access on QuietKat electric bicycles—a brand that, conveniently, was founded by Justin Roach, who is also the owner of Performance Outdoors. E-bikes are new equipment to me, but their potential as deer tools is undeniable. They provide fast and silent access to remote stand locations, can haul all the gear you need, and can be hidden behind a shrub.

Some say Illinois’s big-buck reputation is a shadow of what it was years ago, but the record books—and the local taxidermy—don’t lie. The Land of Lincoln is still one of the best places in the nation to kill a big whitetail. The habitat and genetics are part of the reason, but the hunting season structure plays a big role, too. Firearms seasons are concise and fall mostly after the traditional rut; the usual framework is a three-day season in late November followed by a four-day season over the first weekend in December.

Adding to the Hunter’s Arsenal

Traditionally, Illinois gun hunters were limited to shotgun slugs and muzzleloaders, but a regulation change in 2023 added some single-shot rifles to the list of legal equipment. The rifles can be chambered for bottle-necked cartridges of .30-caliber or larger with cases of less than 1 2/5 inches (like the .300 Blackout), or for straight-wall cartridges of .30-caliber or larger, provided they’re available as factory loads with published ballistics tables showing 500-foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle. As Illinois gun laws go, the change is a liberating taste of freedom. The straight-wall cartridges in particular provide decisive advantages over slug guns.

On this hunt, I was shooting the new straight-wall Remington .360 Buckhammer using Federal’s 180-grain Power-Shok ammunition, which is a basic cup-and-core soft point that’s been flattening big bucks for decades. My rifle was Henry’s Single Shot, which is a short and handy blued-steel break action. It sports walnut furniture, weighs just 7 pounds, and is American-made. It’s the type of gun you’d want for a grandson’s Christmas gift. I topped mine with a Bushnell Trophy 1-6x24 scope, which is compact and perfectly matched for the Single Shot, but also has a 30mm tube and illuminated reticle that’s ideal for low-light encounters with whitetails.

Straight-wall regulations in several Midwestern states led to the creation of Winchester’s wildly popular .350 Legend in 2019, and the success of that round no doubt influenced the .360 Buckhammer. I’ve hunted with the Legend extensively, and have been consistently impressed with its performance. The Buckhammer is a similar cartridge, but rimmed for reliable feeding in lever-action rifles. Ballistics are similar to the .35 Remington, but with a bit more punch. The Buckhammer thumps harder than the Legend, too. You can expect a 180-grain bullet to leave the muzzle at just under 2,400 feet per second in the .360 Buckhammer, while a bullet of the same weight leaves the .350 Legend at about 2,100 fps. The Buckhammer recoils a bit more than the Legend, but it’s still a mild kicker overall—especially compared to a slug gun.

I sighted my gun to hit an inch high at 100 yards and felt supremely confident to 200 yards, at which point the bullet falls 7 inches. The turnip field I was watching was 164 yards across. I figured if a good buck stepped out, he’d be in trouble.

MIDDAY ACTION

It was nearly noon before the doe and yearlings finally stood and ambled across the field and out of sight. I snuck down quickly and soon had breakfast sizzling over the Jet Boil stove at my truck. I was back to my stand by 12:45, with a belly full of greasy protein and recharged spirits.

It was fortunate I didn’t complement breakfast with a nap. Shortly after settling back in the stand, I saw deer legs moving through the timber just off the edge of the turnips, 120 yards out. The ghostly gait suggested a decent buck, and the deer left no doubt when he stepped into view. A quick check through my binoculars confirmed long beams, 10 good tines, deep tarsal staining, and the muscular body of a 4-year-old animal—all I needed was to cross my left leg over the right one and balance my elbow on my knee for a steady rest. The following sounds were cathartic; the click of the hammer on the single-shot rifle, and a meh to stop the cruising buck. I squeezed the trigger.

At the shot, the buck spun and ran low and frantically off the field, tail tucked and breaking brush. Silence followed, as if a speaker had been unplugged. Less than a minute elapsed between spotting the deer in the timber and pulling the trigger, and the adrenal effects were taking hold. I exhaled and smiled, broke open the rifle, and slipped the spent brass, still smoking slightly, into my pocket.

I knew waiting 30 minutes would be just a formality, but once on the ground, I nonetheless closed the breech on a fresh cartridge and cautiously walked to where the buck had been standing. The blood trail was easy to find and follow in remnant snow, and it led me to my buck within 50 yards, laying still on the same trail where I’d first seen him. I couldn’t have asked for a better last day in November, a better first day in Illinois, or a better experience with what I believe will become a new classic whitetail cartridge.

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