Success In The Field

A Tale of 2 Bullets Recently I posted about the last buck I killed. It was a huge bodied 6 year old. Always embracing opportunities to learn and in turn to teach, I decided to wait until I could put together a good detailed account of the hunt to post the whole story. Some things went right and some things went wrong. Both are of equal importance. We will start with the hunt in general. The set up that evening was a hunting blind overlooking a corn field that has been harvested. This particular evening I carried a 44 Magnum Bisley Hunter. It is very accurate and the load I was shooting launches a 240 grain XTP a bit over 1400 feet per second. Plenty of power to take down a mature buck. In addition, I carried my .45 Super G21. The load in it consisted of a 230 grain JHP launched at 1149 fps. Also plenty of power to kill a big mature buck. The .45 Super was for close shots and the .44 Magnum was for longer shots. The scoped .44 Magnum was sighted in +2” at 100 yards which put zero at 125 yards. For the place I was setting this is the perfect handgun battery. About 2 hours after getting seated in the blind I spotted a doe coming out of the field to my left. I immediately recognized her as a big mature doe. She cast an eye toward the blind as she eased across the corn stalks. She would flip over some stalk looking to glean some left over corn from the picking then look over her shoulder. I could tell by her actions she had a buck in tow. I ranged her at 83 yards but her current direction of travel would bring him in much closer and the buck would follow her. Once she reached about 50 yards she turned to her right which would take her right in front of me. The buck would follow and give me a broadside shot. About this time I realized he had a huge body. My early weight estimate put him around 250 lbs. Live weight. That actually ended up being a bit conservative. It was a short waiting game but he finally turned and followed the doe. I raised the .44 Magnum and put the cross hairs on his heart. I had a good rest and could concentrate on hitting a single hair over his heart. Aim small, hit small. I made a quiet “meh” sound to get him to stop and I squeezed the trigger. He instantly collapsed. This was at 4:24 p.m. which meant the sun was setting. The blind is facing south east so the right corner of the blind was pointed at the setting sun. About the time I was going to celebrate he jumped to his feet and ran right into the sun, prohibiting me from getting another bullet in him. He disappeared from sight over the rise in the field. My first thought was give him about 15 minutes then I would go collect my trophy. The next thing I know he is traveling down the fence line at the end of the field heading to my left. He was 184 yards away. This was a deer I just dropped in his tracks. I watched him until he got out of sight. My son was at the other end of the farm and had taken a shot at a doe. We went to look for blood. We knew the direction she went and decided to go look for the buck then come back after her after allowing her time to expire. This is not even nearly normal for us. We normally shoot, load the deer, and drink coffee. We went to the last place I saw the buck but there was no blood. It had been raining for days so the ground was soft but no tracks. After scouring the fence line I told Matt that sometimes deer would head through a gap in the tree line between two fields. The field was very wet. I located tracks that I was sure were his. I decided to follow him around the little thicket that jutted out into the field. Expecting to walk up on the expired buck I got a surprise. I walked up on him but he was very much alive. Obviously hurt but certainly capable of taking off. I had my .45 Super on my side and drew and fired at his rump from about 40 yards. It had gotten dark enough that I couldn't clearly see my sights. There was an immediate reaction to the shot. He turned and crossed the field still about 40 yards in front of me. I had to fire at his silhouette once again without a good look at my sights. He made it into a tree line and couldn’t get out the other side. He turned broadside just as I reached the edge of the tree line offering me a clean shot. I had pulled out my flashlight and held it up to illuminate him which also allowed me a good look at my sights. I put them right on his aorta and pulled the trigger he tried to run but it was useless. He made it about 20’ and collapsed. Obviously not the perfect hunting story I wish I could tell, but as I always do I wanted to know what went wrong from the beginning. The first thing that went wrong was the shot placement. If you have read many of my posts or articles you know that I believe in aiming at the aorta no matter what angle the deer body is positioned. This shot placement gives you the widest margin of era of any shot. On a buck this size you have a kill zone about 13” tall and about 11” wide. This isn’t me relaying my experience on one deer. This is something I have done hundreds of times because it works. For reasons I haven’t determined yet the shot went way high making the most beautiful high shoulder shot you can imagine. Proponents of this shot placement tout dropping deer in their tracks. This is a prime example of why I don’t do it on purpose. The kill zone on a high shoulder shot on a buck this size is approximately 5” tall. If you are actually trying to hit that point it is about 4” wide at best. If you actually hit the spine it is instantly a deer on the ground. If you hit the junction of the scapula and collarbone with a powerful load it will break the clavicle, the end of the humerus and the coracoid process dropping the deer. Breaking one side alone means your deer can still travel on three legs. On a perfect shot you break both sides resulting in a deer that is down but over half the time will require a finishing shot. There are several areas around the intended aiming point that are commonly referred to as no man’s land. A bullet can pass completely through a deer and stun the deer due to the close proximity of the spine. If the shot goes high it may impact one of the dorsal processes which can shock the spine dropping the deer temporarily but 9 times out of 10 that deer is back on its feet in seconds and usually in a hurry to get away from what hurt it. How do I know? I have carried numerous kids hunting. If you want to start a library of bad shot placement this is the best way to do it. Some kids are real marksmen but some not so much. Some can shoot but due to instructions given to them prior to me taking them, are insistent on taking the high shoulder shot. I had one kid that in three separate hunts managed to wound three deer. This was a kid that I knew was a good shot. On the last one I asked him where he was aiming. I drew a picture of a deer and told him to mark what he was aiming at. He marked the high shoulder. My son can vouch for this. We trailed deer over a quarter of a mile three times and didn’t recover them. The next time I took him I laid down the law. I drew a picture of a deer and made him promise me that he would aim where I marked it. Heart shot. He did it and killed his deer. The next trip to the woods he did the same thing dropping his deer. Obviously I am not going to convert everyone but this recent kill provided the best evidence of this I have ever seen. The autopsy revealed that the bullet entered high on the shoulder passing through the scapula towards me before completely passing through the chest cavity. The bullet exited the chest cavity through the opposite shoulder passing through the off side scapula then lodging under the skin. On its trip through the chest cavity it didn’t even damage the apices of the lungs. If the bullet had done the damage it needed to do to the lungs, the deer might have still ran but we would have walked up on it dead. The .44 bullet had expanded perfectly and left a path of destruction but unfortunately it didn’t do anything that would cause the deer to expire. The gun that had been dead on the money that hit so high is still under investigation. I haven’t got to shoot it again since this happened and I also haven’t been back to the blind. Right now my hypothesis is that human era is to blame. I believe that I had the gun too low. While watching the deer intently I believe I lowered the rest too low and the bullet hit the edge of the blind throwing it off course. I had been hunting out of another blind and using a Trifecta rest prior to moving to this blind. The Trifecta stands up taller than the trigger stick alone. I will have that answer after this weekend. If the .44 bullet had of been 1" higher, 1" lower or 1" closer to the front of the deer this would be a different story. Now the good part. Barring infection the deer was actually going to live from the first shot. When the opportunity arose, so did the .45 Super. The actual killing shot on the broadside target was perfect. The gun and the ammunition did exactly what it was designed to do. The bullet entered the body right at the backside of the front leg. This deer was thick. The bullet punched right through the heavy muscle before passing though the chest cavity. Along the way the path through the lungs to the aorta was destroyed as was the exit. The bullet exited the chest cavity and lodged under the offside skin. Perfect shot placement coupled with perfect load performance equaled dead deer. I couldn’t be more pleased with the overall performance of the .45 Super. The holes through the rib cage were larger than a quarter. The back end of the lungs were destroyed. The aorta was destroyed. As I said I wish I had a prettier story to tell but the pretty part will have to be that I have another mature buck on ice and the .45 Super worked as well as it was supposed to. Fig 1. View into the chest cavity showing where the .44 bullet passed through and and lower in the chest cavity the entry and exit where the .45 bullet passed through. Fig 2. The .44 and .45 bullets. Both expanded perfectly and held together. You couldn't ask anymore of any bullet.