This year the deer activity has been wonderful in my area. While scheduling didn’t allow me to hunt as much as I usually do, I and the other hunters in my group always had shot opportunities. About ten minutes into my first sit I had a doe come in much faster than usual, not running but determined. I was sitting there looking the wrong way, but was able to shift and raise a vz24 8mm mauser when her head was behind a tree (wnc woods, we have lots of those). When she calmed down and stepped out I took a heart shot. I hate heart shots but it’s all I had that wasn’t obscured by brush. She was close. She circled at the shot then ran down hill about seventy yards. No blood but even in the thick stuff she was easy enough to track by disturbed leaves. I found her piled up next to an old fallen down barn. A friend was hunting the field behind me, so I didn’t haul her out right away. I drug her sixty yards to a two track the opposite direction from that field and waited until he was done before going to get a four wheeler for complete retrieval. About five minutes later he shot a button buck so I broke in the new dump cart with two deer instead of one.
That night I let a button buck go, and my cousin missed a doe. We saw five deer in that sit.
Next morning I was after another big doe or a buck. I’m not an antler guy, although I admire them like most, but I have about three days to hunt this year so I wanted body size for the freezer. I got distracted by a sound and looked off to the left. When I turned back this guy was smelling where my cousin missed the doe the night before. It was sixty yards, and a Winchester 70’s .308 round covered the distance quickly. The shot went just behind the shoulder and exited behind the offside ribs. He ran in a circle and crashed after fifty yards (ish) just in the tree line. This was a load I’ve been wanting to test on game, so I’m glad I got the chance (load information below).
His antlers were really strange. Made for a decent picture though. The Winchester is a .308 Winchester shooting a 150gr Nosler partition. The bullet performed well passing through a good bit of deer, probably close to two feet. That’s what I hoped to test. Terminal ballistics: it obliterated two lungs and the liver and still exited.
The mauser shoots a 160gr Barnes ttsx. I’ve been using those in that gun for years and they have always worked. That one went through the heart taking out the ventricles (severing them from the atriums) and taking out the lungs.
I spent the rest of my hunting time with my son trying to get him one. He elected not to shoot a few times for safety reasons, and that made me exceedingly proud. He wants his first deer SO BAD, but I’m happy he chooses safety (in these cases, not knowing where the bullet would go after passing through the target).
sorry so long. Happy hunting!
edit: if you care both of those pics are exit side