First deer down with the kiddo at my side
Passed a bunch of deer on opening weekend of Missouri's rifle season (where my farm is). Didn't see any bucks I would've wanted to take. Could've taken a doe, but I wanted to wait for my 8 year old son to be able to join me for that. Yesterday, we sat in my elevated box blind overlooking an alfalfa field, and made it happen just before the end of legal daylight. I took this doe with an AR-15 shooting 65 gr. Sierra GameKing handloaded ammo at 200 yards. The rifle has a homebuilt lower receiver with a Rock River Arms 20" heavy-barreled upper receiver. It served as a varmint rifle for a long time, but shoots this handload recipe into sub-half inch groups at 100 yards. That makes for one heck of a deer rifle.
Next up: muzzleloader season in late December to try for a buck.
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Mike
N454casull
"The Un-Tactical"
Gun control laws make about as much sense as taking ex-lax to cure a cough.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
There was plenty of blood on the ground and where the deer went down, but the chest cavity was not a total disaster like you get with a larger/faster round.
Admittedly, I would’ve rather taken a much closer shot using a bullet this light. The doe stood upright for damned near 35 seconds after a perfect broadside hit. That’s too long for my taste, especially when I’ve seen arrow-struck deer go down a helluva lot faster. My guess is minimal bullet expansion due to shed velocity, but I cannot find my velocity data for this load. I need to re-test and see where it sits in the speed spectrum.