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Lost my Deerginity today!
EDIT: Kenfu came to my rescue by routing my cell phone pic on post#37. Give me a '97 Winchester with a jillion parts and I'm comfortable, give me something more complex than a start button on a PC and I meltdown. . .
Yeah, y'all want me to post pics, and for this, I may have to endure another tooth-grinding attempt at learning how. For the moment, however, I'm just back from three days in the field, and my brain is muddy with fatigue and happy endorphins.
I just started my third consecutive year of stomping around the same general area of what is typically a 3% success rate, bucks-only hunting zone. First day out, I decided to climb a particular peak that I'd yet to assault - mainly to see if THAT was where the bucks lived. The REAL success of that day was that on the way to that peak, I found a possible way to sneak into an area that I know to be full of deer, but has been difficult to enter either quietly, or into a spot that gives decent visibility.
Second day out, I checked out that path, and found a decent place to set up before dawn. Saw a couple of does come out of a gully in front of me at about 275 yards, followed by a small buck of indeterminate antler configuration. Figuring that he was most likely a non-legal spike, I opted not to burn my position by following him. Nothing else showed, but I decided to check out the gully. Found LOTS of tracks and a spot with good visibility.
Came back to that same spot this morning. A couple of does showed at first light, then they came back with three more, followed by a small buck. From 210 yards, he looked like he was probably a spike, so I continued to watch to see what else might happen. No bigger buck in tow, but the group crossed broadside through what was originally my 6:00 at 140 yards. At this point, I went prone and watched the buck, confirmed that he had a fork, and dropped the hammer. He staggered briefly in a circle, reared up on his hind legs, and fell over backwards - within about 10 seconds and about five yards from where he was hit. He's only a 100-pound 1x2, but he's legal and mine. I am the happiest of campers!
LESSONS LEARNED:
1. Persistence pays. It took me two seasons and three days to learn the area well enough to come up with a plan that worked. A lot of folks leave after the opening weekend.
2. Watch your hit, and then burn the landmarks around your hit into your brain before you move. I THOUGHT I had done this, but as one scrub oak looks pretty much like another, we ended up having to do a bit of reconstruction to determine which of two angles I actually fired on.
3. I like Barnes bullets! Today's load was a 168 grain TTSX leaving my .30-06 at 2900fps. . .Autopsy with the skin off showed the bullet breaking through a rib just behind the shoulder leaving a small entrance wound, a quarter-sized hole through the back third of the heart, and a silver dollar sized exit hole breaking through a rib just behind the opposite shoulder. Totally straight-line penetration - not that there was much in this case to divert it. Still - very happy with what the slug did today.
4. Heart shots - not as much blood as you might think. While there was easily a quart plus sloshing around in the chest cavity and blown out his nose, there really wasn't any kind of "trail" (not that he had time or distance to leave one), because there was no heart there anymore to pump blood out. This guy bled out from.
5. I REALLY want to try this gun and load on an elk. That's coming- stay tuned!
I'll see what I can do for pics once I dig through Kenfu's brain, but for right now: :zzzz:
Yeah, y'all want me to post pics, and for this, I may have to endure another tooth-grinding attempt at learning how. For the moment, however, I'm just back from three days in the field, and my brain is muddy with fatigue and happy endorphins.
I just started my third consecutive year of stomping around the same general area of what is typically a 3% success rate, bucks-only hunting zone. First day out, I decided to climb a particular peak that I'd yet to assault - mainly to see if THAT was where the bucks lived. The REAL success of that day was that on the way to that peak, I found a possible way to sneak into an area that I know to be full of deer, but has been difficult to enter either quietly, or into a spot that gives decent visibility.
Second day out, I checked out that path, and found a decent place to set up before dawn. Saw a couple of does come out of a gully in front of me at about 275 yards, followed by a small buck of indeterminate antler configuration. Figuring that he was most likely a non-legal spike, I opted not to burn my position by following him. Nothing else showed, but I decided to check out the gully. Found LOTS of tracks and a spot with good visibility.
Came back to that same spot this morning. A couple of does showed at first light, then they came back with three more, followed by a small buck. From 210 yards, he looked like he was probably a spike, so I continued to watch to see what else might happen. No bigger buck in tow, but the group crossed broadside through what was originally my 6:00 at 140 yards. At this point, I went prone and watched the buck, confirmed that he had a fork, and dropped the hammer. He staggered briefly in a circle, reared up on his hind legs, and fell over backwards - within about 10 seconds and about five yards from where he was hit. He's only a 100-pound 1x2, but he's legal and mine. I am the happiest of campers!
LESSONS LEARNED:
1. Persistence pays. It took me two seasons and three days to learn the area well enough to come up with a plan that worked. A lot of folks leave after the opening weekend.
2. Watch your hit, and then burn the landmarks around your hit into your brain before you move. I THOUGHT I had done this, but as one scrub oak looks pretty much like another, we ended up having to do a bit of reconstruction to determine which of two angles I actually fired on.
3. I like Barnes bullets! Today's load was a 168 grain TTSX leaving my .30-06 at 2900fps. . .Autopsy with the skin off showed the bullet breaking through a rib just behind the shoulder leaving a small entrance wound, a quarter-sized hole through the back third of the heart, and a silver dollar sized exit hole breaking through a rib just behind the opposite shoulder. Totally straight-line penetration - not that there was much in this case to divert it. Still - very happy with what the slug did today.
4. Heart shots - not as much blood as you might think. While there was easily a quart plus sloshing around in the chest cavity and blown out his nose, there really wasn't any kind of "trail" (not that he had time or distance to leave one), because there was no heart there anymore to pump blood out. This guy bled out from.
5. I REALLY want to try this gun and load on an elk. That's coming- stay tuned!
I'll see what I can do for pics once I dig through Kenfu's brain, but for right now: :zzzz:
WWJMBD?
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
Replies
My experience with .30-06 heart shots on three different deer (with Nosler 165 BT) are about the same - the heart pretty much becomes jelly, and not much blood on the ground, except at the point of impact. The good thing is that you don't ruin the shoulder, and he ain't going nowhere. A 'grid search' within a 50 yard radius always seems to be sufficient, if he does somehow manage to 'bolt.'
I always like to see that 'stallion' reaction, as I call it. A lot of you guys know much more about the overall biology of this stuff, (tell me if I'm incorrect) but I'm told that the typical mammal has about 20 seconds worth of oxygen circulating in its system. So, when the heart gets terminated the countdown begins. I always felt it was helpful to have them use up a few of those seconds right after the hit, where I can still watch what they're doing.
Again, congrats. :up:
Now, learn how to post dang pictures!!!!!
Your bullet seems to be a little inappropriate for the size of the game, however. It basically drilled a hole, with little expansion or energy dump inside. I'm more in favor of a lighter, faster bullet and more expansion. My "go-to" load for Tennessee deer with my .30-06 is a 130 grain Hornady spire point at around 3100 FPS. Over the past 30-something years I've dropped 35-40 deer with it, and virtually all of them were bang/flop kills. The chest cavity ends up looking like Jell-O, with a golf ball sized exit wound and lots of blood trail- - - - -if the deer moves at all. So far, my furthest tracking job with that load combo has been about 15 yards. There's something about velocities in the 3K FPS range that seems to have a lot of shock effect and puts 'em down in a matter of a few feet.
Jerry
My opinion of the 30-06, and don't get me wrong, I'm not backing off a bit on my opinion of the .270 Win., is that it is as good a killer as God saw fit to allow man to invent. I killed a hog not long ago with mine and it penetrated length wise from butt to chest cavity and put that hog down on the spot DRT. And the miracle of it all was that it didn't blow the back strap to smitherines and didn't tear the guts up. That bullet penetrated on a straight line between guts and meat. That made me a true believer in the old 30-06.
-Mikhail Kalashnikov
Well done!
Gun control laws make about as much sense as taking ex-lax to cure a cough.
That's pretty much what I've learned regarding defensive handgun shoots - 10ish seconds from a serious arterial hit to collapse. I figure the "stallion" reaction comes from an attempt to keep balance after the gyros have been seriously compromised. I called up dad on the radio about 30 seconds after shooting and told him "Deer down!", and he was a little surprised to hear victory claimed so soon - but the deer's reaction didn't leave any doubt.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
I guess I'm more Elmer Keith that topic than most. This bullet did EXACTLY what I wanted it to do - destroy everything in the path I intend for it without a lot of peripheral damage, and keep on truckin' out the other side (I neglected to say that the sucking chest sounds as we moved the carcass around were quite satisfying). The other side of this equation is that I want a one-bullet solution to my big game hunting problems, and I am taking this same rifle to Colorado in a couple of weeks for a mixed deer/elk hunt. Pig may also be on the table soon, and while I don't mind sorting through my rifles like a bag of golf clubs for the appropriate tool, sorting through multiple loads for each of those rifles would have me buried in ammo boxes in short order. I figure an elk bullet will work on deer a lot better than a deer bullet on elk. . .and it certainly seemed to.
I WILL however, be loading up some free-acquisition 130 grainers to expend on the local coyote population. A Barnes is an expensive missile for pest control!
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
No. . .I'm outside the Condor Cuddle zone, but since our bunny-hugging legislature recently voted to change the name of the California Department of Fish and Game to the "California Department of Fish and Wildlife", I figure it's only a matter of time before that's the entire state. Still, I'd heard enough good about the bullet's performance that I actually see having a lead-free slug for my "standard" load as something of an advantage - if I get the urge to hunt in a lead-free zone, I don't have to hustle to figure out new ammo.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
Glad to see that you didnt give up like the rest of the hunters. Everytime I pick up the rifle and head out hunting is a learning experience.
I do have to say I was a little scared to open this thread when I saw the title, You know there are a lot of southerners here and.... well,,, just satin ya'know.
AKA: Former Founding Member
― Douglas Adams
"The Un-Tactical"
Nicely done.
Does smoking the deer count?:tooth:
A few things made this more satisfying than I could have hoped for:
First off, aside from the two year-buildup of figuring out the zone, this deer was the product of three days of strategic formulation, tweaking, and final execution. I'd guess a lot of deer kills - especially first deer kills - are random "traffic accident" situations of the deer coming into the wrong place at the wrong time. This one gave me something of a feeling of kinda/sorta knowing what I'm doing.
Second, it was a rifle kill. There are better zones in SoCal, but this one is close and convenient, and with the two last seasons of striking out (plus three or four less-dedicated seasons in years past), taking a deer out of this area became a something of a moral imperative for me. Thing is though, I wanted to go through the process of kill/gut/transport close to home before having to deal with a Colorado monster in much less familiar surroundings - so I also got an archery-only, either-sex tag for an area much easier to find them in. Satisfying as that would have been (and will be, when I fill it), I'm a RIFLEMAN - making my first kill with a bow would have just been. . .weird.
Third, Dad was along for the ride, and actually was the one that found the body. He being the guy that borrowed his friend's Colt Woodsman to get me hooked on this stuff at the age of about 4, it was very sweet to have him hunting alongside me when I finally connected at 41. Now we have to get him one.
Maybe not "best day ever", but very high on my list.
"Nothing is safe from stupid." - Zee
I'm just gonna let that one go.
AKA: Former Founding Member
I'll see what I can do for pics once I dig through Kenfu's brain,
Must have had a hard time finding it