Hunting Pistol

The Hunting Pistol is a .50 caliber (or 12.7mm) revolver featured in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames.

Overview
It is the rarest weapon in the game, normally occurring only once and it is the most powerful gun aside from the .50cal and 12.7mm sniper rifles. It is used exclusively by Blanco.

The Hunting Pistol is quite possibly one of the most powerful weapons in the whole game. It is not only able to kill infantry in just one hit to any part of the body, but it is also very accurate and has very little to no spread. The only main weakness of the pistol is its low ammo count of 5 bullets, which means constant reloading, however, most likely, if you have good aim, all 5 of these shots will also mean 5 dead soldiers. This weapon is the signature side arm of traitorous Mercenary Blanco. During The Betrayal, Blanco attempts to use it to kill the Mercenary after he/she takes down Carmona but the Mercenary is able to quickly subdue Blanco before he gets a chance to fire it.

Being the rarest gun in the game, there is only one point without using cheats that the Mercenary can obtain this weapon. After learning the whereabouts of Blanco's meeting, the Mercenary heads over to the oil rig. Blanco is located inside a small office. After the Mercenary interrogates a VZA officer about Solano's location, Blanco destroys the office with a grenade and he and the Mercenary barely escape. Outside the player will find Blanco trying to escape; at this point he is holding the hunting pistol, however, the only way to obtain it is by killing him. You must KILL him, not capture him or else he will not drop it. Tying him up and killing him will not drop the Pistol either. After Blanco has been killed and you have grabbed the pistol from his corpse the player can then finish the mission and enjoy their shiny new gun.

There are two ways to obtain the pistol while also capturing Blanco without any compromise, but could be considered as cheating:


 * Kill Blanco, take the Hunting Pistol then cancel the contract.


 * With the use of a glitch, there is one more way to obtain the Hunting Pistol. If the player saves and quits (works best with non-auto save files) while on the oil rig; after Blanco has come out of the room and load the game save. This will restart the contract but a 'Blanco' skinned VZ soldier will appear wielding a Hunting Pistol on the Oil Rig near where Blanco was. This 'Blanco' clone does not count as the HVT so it is possible to kill him for the gun and capture the HVT Blanco.

Tactics
This gun can be considered very useful since it has very high accuracy, making it one of the only guns that shoot bullets towards the center point of the reticule (if someone played enough Mercenaries 2, they should know that the center point in reticules for weapons are almost useless). It is also paired with very high power; one body shot can kill a VZ regular troop and severely hurt stronger types of troops. The only more powerful portable weapons are launchers and Anti-Materiel Rifles.

Unfortunately, this gun's window of '1 hit kill' opportunity is relatively small, almost as soon as it can be obtained (without cheating in supply drops), the Allied Nations and China invade. This brings in stronger types of infantry, reducing the effectiveness of the pistol. By this time, the damage inflicted against the stronger troops will not be as effective as what it was against weaker infantry, though the accuracy can still prove very useful for varying reasons. For example: quickly taking out distant soldiers who are reporting the player's hostile acts. It is also useful if trying to hijack a Rogue-series helicopter, as the pilot can be killed very easily with little damage to the copter (unless it is up in the air).

This gun has great accuracy, and therefore it can be coupled with the scopes of laser designators or snipers with the scoped weapon switch trick, effectively making this gun a sniper rifle. Scoped Weapon switch trick: equip something with a scope (i.e. sniper, laser designator), aim through the scope and swap weapon, this will allow the player to zoom see the sniper reticule for any weapon (accuracy is not affected)). This can be quite useful since this gun is more powerful than early snipers.

As a tradeoff for such high accuracy and power, the gun has a slow rate of fire and low ammunition count which can sometimes be a problem, despite it's extreme rarity, it actually has unique animations/reload sounds.

Real Life
This weapon appears to be based on the Smith & Wesson Model 500. It is currently the most powerful production revolver in the world, firing the .500 S&W Magnum round at ~602 meters per second (1 975 feet per second).

The Hunting Pistol in real life would not be used to hunt, but rather to defend oneself while hunting; for example, if the hunter is attacked by his target. The .500 S&W round is powerful enough to take down large game such as bears at close range.

Trivia

 * Using the cheat to unlock all supplies will also unlock a secret drop called "Blanco's Favorites." Inside is a Hunting Pistol, a grenade box, a full box of ammunition and a med kit. This is another way to get the pistol if you missed out during the fight on the oil rig, or if you just want it before the mission to capture Blanco.
 * Due to lack of cheats on PC, Blanco dropping the revolver is the only chance the player will have to get it.


 * The text on the barrel reads "TEX & HAWK" a reference to "Smith & Wesson".