Where was this buck hit?

[MTGamecock]

Can I blame it on the copper bullets?

I'd sure find something to blame it on!

FWIW, i was not offended by the thread. Occasionally, hunting isn't a one-shot-one-kill situation and it's OK to have a thread that reminds us of that reality.

 

[bobbydean]

From the original post, I always thought you had shot the buck. If you didn't know the answer, I would not think you would post the question.

 

[madtom]

I don’t think this was a pointless thread at all. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Doublecluck]

Idk.. but I knew it wasn’t shot with a vld anywhere in the body cavity cause you would have found it laying there where it was standing when you shot it the first time..

 

[jeremys4]

Kinda weird the buck would go uphill after being wounded?

 

[COEngineer]

Kinda weird the buck would go uphill after being wounded?

My arrows in the pic were not perfect. He went almost perfectly sidehill. That was the direction he was facing at the first shot and he just walked that direction.

 

[COEngineer]

shouldn't the bullet still effectively transfer its kinetic energy regardless of expansion.

Not sure I understand your question. If the bullet doesn't expand, it tends to 'pencil' through the animal, as it did in this case. Expansion is what allows the bullet to go from being an aerodynamic projectile to a non-aerodynamic lump of metal that causes hydro-static shock and hemorrhaging. If the bullet passes through and still has energy to 'ping' off the rocks, then it still had a lot of energy that didn't go into killing the deer.

 

[Northwoods]

Buck was standing broadside at 250 yards, facing to my right, and at the first shot. I heard what I thought was a hit, but it was immediately followed by the sound of a bullet ricocheting off a rock. The buck made no visible reaction, but started walking to the right. I was pretty confident I hit him despite the ricochet sound, so I shot 3 more times as he walked broadside to me. The blood from just behind the shoulder lines up with the blood spurts in the snow, I think. The gut shot was either the 2nd or 3rd bullet, and the last shot hit him in the right side femur, which took the last bit of fight out of him. When I got to him, I was upset that I gut shot him and ruined some of the rear right quarter because it was obvious (after the fact) that the first shot was fatal. Can I blame it on the copper bullets? Would have been great if the first bullet had expanded more and produced some visible reaction in the buck.View attachment 160467View attachment 160468

I could be wrong but I believe the orange arrow is pointing to your first shot. If the red arrow was your first shot that deer should have been spraying blood.

 

[SAJ-99]

Not sure I understand your question. If the bullet doesn't expand, it tends to 'pencil' through the animal, as it did in this case. Expansion is what allows the bullet to go from being an aerodynamic projectile to a non-aerodynamic lump of metal that causes hydro-static shock and hemorrhaging. If the bullet passes through and still has energy to 'ping' off the rocks, then it still had a lot of energy that didn't go into killing the deer.

That about answers my question. Would have been interesting to recover the bullet. The before/after should have looked like this. Maybe it wasn't partitioned correctly and didn't expand. If it had it would have transferred enough energy to kill if the shot hit vitals.

 

[GrantK]

I could be wrong but I believe the orange arrow is pointing to your first shot. If the red arrow was your first shot that deer should have been spraying blood.

I'd agree with this, even if the bullet penciled I'd expect a lot more spray out of both sides if you had a pass-through of both lungs, also in my experience he would have run hard and crashed, too far back usually results in the short jump and then stop...

 

[tzone]

Was there anything left to eat? Good lord, lol.

We've all been there. Somethings they're just tough.

 

[COEngineer]

What did the chest cavity look like? Full of hemorrhaged heart/lung?

We used the gutless method because of the gut shot, so I never saw the insides, unfortunately.

 

[COEngineer]

I could be wrong but I believe the orange arrow is pointing to your first shot. If the red arrow was your first shot that deer should have been spraying blood.

That is my conundrum and why I cannot be sure, however, I don't think any of the blood in the tracks had gut material (it was bright red) and the gut exit was not dripping blood.

 

[Losing_Sanity]

I think it was a good exercise. Kind of gets you thinking. And maybe learn from others who know this stuff pretty well. You may have left out some important information, but hindsight is easy.

 

[dsek21]

I had a similar scenario bow hunting a couple of years ago where my shot was a little low and the deer didn't lower down to bound away after the shot. I just knicked the back of her leg and lower chest. Had hair and just drops of blood similar to yours. No real pooling anywhere. Waited a couple of hours and tracked for almost a half-mile only finding very small specs in the snow until there was nothing and lost her in a bunch of fresh tracks. I would guess it was something along those lines. This in my opinion is the toughest part of hunting.

 

[kit_man_du]

This is a good thread to learn from. I didn't realize a heart/lung shot can leave very little blood trail. What bullet were you using?

 

[rjthehunter]

Back when I was about 10 years old my dad and I were walking in to a spot to hunt for the evening. On our walk in we saw a deer walking and my dad pulled up and shot it. Perfect shot, you could see it bleeding but it just looked at us and walked away. Backed out for an hour and went and found it. Turns out it had a tag in its ear and had escaped from a deer farm a couple days earlier. It looked like a doe when he shot it but it was actually a really nice buck. The farmer had cut its antlers off already. Bummer he didn't get out before he lost his antlers!

 

[Pondera]

Watched my son shoot a doe at 50 yards, bullet passed through and I thought he had missed. Deer ran up hill maybe 15 yards and tipped over dead. Never hunched or kicked. Looked almost copy to your diagram. Heart and lung cavity was soup.

Nearly every deer before and after that has been the typical hunch. My last buck didn't but I heard it hit and was a bit high lung. It did a walking death spiral for 15 ish yards and fell over.

I like this thread.

 

[devon deer]

Take a look at table 2 in this link http://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/uploads/guides/128.pdf
It's in relation to our deer in the UK, but it will relate to Mule deer and Whitetail's, not sure about Elk as I have only shot 2 bull's,
It might help some.
Cheers
Richard

 

[COEngineer]

Take a look at table 2 in this link http://www.thedeerinitiative.co.uk/uploads/guides/128.pdf
It's in relation to our deer in the UK, but it will relate to Mule deer and Whitetail's, not sure about Elk as I have only shot 2 bull's,
It might help some.
Cheers
Richard

Good info and seems to match my observations over the years. But this buck just didn't seem to react at all. Table 1 Bright red blood (arterial) matches what I saw.