I went out for the MN firearms deer, and intended on shooting almost anything, and I intended to use my 54 caliber muzzleloader. There isn't much to the story of this buck. I was sitting in a stand, and expecting a deer to come from either the left, or right of me, and also had a trail close behind me. As luck would have it, a young 5 point buck came dead ahead of me. This is not ideal because it is a large hill, the deer look straight down at you as they walk down. I had my rifle to my far right, and any movement would have been risky. There were no trees to block his sight. I didn't have to think too hard as I had my GP100 sitting on a shelf, with my hand on it. All I did was wait for the buck to come down the hill, lifted my hand, and I had a perfectly clear shot at about 30 yards, favoring heavily towards me. I shot him just in front of the left front shoulder. At the shot, he tried to jump, but his front legs were not strong enough, and he ended up doing an endover cartwheel. He didn't slow too much, and ran straight at me. He turned only 15 yards from me, and after jumping a log, I took a second shot broadside. I waited 10 minutes, saw a text that my uncle had a very large buck down, and I went to go help him.
About 45 minutes to an hour later we came back for my buck. I went to where I took the second shot, looked where he went, and he was right there. From the first shot, he might have made it 40-50 yards total. I noticed right away that there was an exit wound, which I was not shocked to see, but being a frontal shot, I thought I would have caught the bullet. I did not look that hard, but did not see an entrance hole for the second shot, so assumed a miss.
I'd like to jump back here, and talk about the load I was using. In the past I used a hollow point 143 grain bullet cast of 20:1 alloy. The only reason I didn't use it this time is because I did not have any cast, and I could not for the life of me find my 30 caliber gas checks. I ended up finding them 3 days later in a spot I checked. Anyway, I went to my target bullet, a 137 gr SWC, and decided to try some cast of 20:1 just to see how they shoot. They dropped at 139 grains. I loaded some up with H110, and to my surprise 12 gr H110 shot phenomenally well. Not a trace of fouling either. Since I had no intention of using the handgun, I decided I'd skip the hollow point, and just use it. I figured the velocity must be in the 1250 fps ballpark, and all evidence I saw was that this bullet would not expand at that speed.
Jumping back to the results on the deer, I am more than pleased. After skinning it, I found the first bullet had entered exactly where I wanted, passed through at least 1 lung, unsure of the heart, went though the stomach and likely other guts, and exited just in front of the rear offside back leg. It turns out the second shot did connect, and it had hit exactly where I wanted too. It entered the left shoulder centered on the leg bone, shattered the bone, went through both lungs, unsure of the heart (one of the two split it open), then exited just ahead of the front leg on the other side. Between those two shots, that front left leg was beat up bad, I'm amazed that deer could run. It was practically detached. There was a lot of blood in there too, so I must have got some kind of artery.
Here is a picture of the carcass on the entrance side. The holes through the ribs aren't all that impressive, maybe 3/8" in size.
The real impressive things were in the meat and organs. I did not take any pictures of the lungs as I was in a hurry to finish and get back to the stand. It left at least 1/2" holes through the lungs, and whichever one hit the heart ended up splitting it open, along with the hole it made.
This first picture is the front left shoulder where the first bullet entered. It left a decent hole through the meat, not quite 1/2", call it 44 or 45 caliber size.
The second and third picture is where the second bullet entered into the shoulder bone. It shattered the bone, left a massive hole, and I even found a couple tiny bullet fragments in the bone.
This final picture blew me away. This is part of the offside rear leg, apparently the first bullet did get into the first bit of meat for that leg. This is the exit hole, and wow, it must be coming up on 1" in diameter. If ever there was evidence that a 20:1 alloy bullet can expand at 1200 fps impact, this is it. Now I want to shoot one of these into gel and catch one to see.
Color me impressed. They sure as heck don't lack penetration, and while maybe a hollow point would have done a little more to the organs, this is certainly deer lethal.
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Originally Posted by koger
USAF RET 1971-95
