A short story bases on a friend's first time hunting with some cast bullets
Deer hunt 357 mag
The bullet didn't expand into the picture perfect mushroom seen so often in the glossy pages of gun magazines. It hardly deformed at all as it slammed sideways through the lungs; it had clipped a rib on the way in and started to tumble. The bullet had turned about one hundred and eighty degrees by the time it tore through the big arteries just above the heart, it continued spinning, and was facing the right way again as it slipped between the ribs on the far side. The bullet left the muzzle going slightly faster than 1700 feet per second, but after going through most of the deer it had slowed down to only a couple hundred feet per second as it cratered an exit wound through the far side of the deer.
Jeff levered another round into the chamber as the deer bounded away. He knew that the hit was good, his rifle, an older Rossi model 92, was a good rifle that hit where it was pointed, and the deer was only about 20 yards away. Instead of the usual 158 grain Hornady XTP Jeff had tried a 158 grain cast semi wadcutter bullet. He wasn't too sure about the cast bullet, he'd read that they were supposed to be heck on wheels for killing things and he was about out of the Hornadys anyway, so he'd had his buddy Chris load up two dozen (I was supposed to be 25 but Chris had botched the first one with to much crimp). The deer had humped up like they usually did when hard hit, but it was now trotting away at a pretty good clip. Jeff knew the hit was good, he’d heard it hit and saw a puff of dust on the far side of the deer and knew that the bullet had gone clean through it. The deer was going pretty much directly away from him and he was beginning to despair thinking that he might have to track this deer a long ways. The deer turned and began climbing up the hill broadside about 50 yards away. Jeff took careful aim but just before he pulled the trigger the deer collapsed and rolled down the hill flopping into a sagebrush.
Letting out a sigh of relief he lowered the hammer and automatically pulled it back to half cock. He stuck the gun, muzzle down, into the footwell on the passenger side of the jeep and climbed in putting the jeep in 4 low he creeped forward plowing through a bit of sage brush he pulled up next to the obviously dead deer and set to work. In less than 20 minutes the deer was broken down into quarters with the back straps & tenderloin in a cooler. There wasn't hardly any blood shot meat in the shoulders. It was a warm day for November so he tied the game bags to the roll bar of his Jeep where they could get some wind to cool them off and he went home.
