Improving hard cast blood trail?

[beltfed]

Simple answer for hard cast FP bullets:
Shoot them thru both shoulder blades.
They drop on the spot, and minimal meat damage
Has worked repeatedly for me.
For 45-70 M86, 385grGC FP 9+1coww/lino/ 1740fps
For 358Win, 250gr Lyman 358318,9+1coww/lino/ Paper Patched, 2350fps
Otherwise, for heart/lung shots most they go is 100yds, leaving good blood trail.
beltfed/arnie

[Texas by God]

If they are close enough and standing still, shoot them in the neck. Game over with a lot smaller calibers than .45 in my experience.

[country gent]

For my hunting it was the 180 grn nosler partition in my 300 win mag. Always effective and left a solid trail. But I never recovered a bullet. In cast I used a heavy for caliber bullet in a larger dia and let that do the work. The 45-70 with a heavy blunt bullet placed in the correct spot always worked for me. The energy dump is tremendous. A lyman 510 grn govt round nose cast from 20-1 around 1200fps just plain works. About the only bullets I have recovered have been round balls from my 50 TC renegade. These were cast from 50-1 ( just enough tin to aid fill out) When recovered from deer they were almost inside out from expansion. Not a the big increase in dia like a bullets mushroom.

Shot placement is most important then comes the rest. Another thing I have noticed over the yars the Skinny deer with little to no fat layer leave a much better blood trail than the corn fed big deer with the fat layer sealing up holes. AN 250-280 lb corn fed deer just dosnt leave a big blood trail, holes tend to seal up if vital areas arnt hit solid.

[BamaDan]

In my experience, when the deer is shot high, it takes a more than a few yards before a blood trail appears. It seems the body cavity has to fill to the height of the wounds before the blood starts coming out. Just my experience.

Similar to Pistol or Archery kills. Even on pass thru shots with mechanical arrow heads shot with a cross bow... You sometimes have to wait for the blood to fill up to the entrance hole of the arrow or bullet to get much blood. It's much easier if you are shooting down at an angle and have a pass thru shot.
Recovery is easier if you watch the Deer after the shot. If it does what I call a Mule Kick it's usually a fatal shot. I watch to see what the Deer does, and where it goes into tight cover. I generally watch, then wait 20 to 30 minutes before I start to trail the Deer. Funny thing is that sometimes a Dead Deer may cover 100 to 150 yards before it stops.

[GLynn41]

I have read most of this thread, but might have missed this being already mentioned... heart shots bleed right then... the deer run a bit though at least for me
hitting the arteries above the heart bleed right then,
Hitting about 2/3 up a broad side deer will normally drop them so fast they do not disturb the other deer
all in my experience of course. If this has been mentioned sorry.