My bullet saved me from the worst shot I've made on a deer in 30 years yesterda

Suspenseful

I missed and gut shot a doe yesterday. If you knew me you'd be shocked or think I was kidding but yep, I gut shot a doe yesterday at 2PM in the afternoon right before the LSU/Ole Miss game came on.

We were sitting up at the camp which is on a hill about 60-80 ft above the bottom going down to the bayou on a rocky hill in Webster Parish drinking beer getting ready for the game. We were going to listen to it on the radio because well, ole miss... When I turn around and look down the hill and there's deer out in the field coming my way.

I drop everything and run to the truck and grab my 30-06 with Nosler Ballistic Tip 125 gr bullets some of you have heard me talk about before. I've never been able to stop this round in a whitetail.
And I take off with a tree between me and them and try to get into a spot where I can shoot 200 yard shots with a rest.

So I get up there and I'm huffing and puffing, old out of shape disease, and I see them and they're still coming but they aren't stopping and my scope is all over the place from the breathing and lack of decent spot to rest the rifle. So when I lose site of them, I move down the hill more and suddenly get busted when they pop back out in front of me.

So I'm stuck on the side of the hill in the open now trying to shoot off my knee at about 150 yards and still breathing too hard. And now it's getting to where I'm about to lose site of them. It's four does. So I do what I rarely do, and I took a shot that wasn't perfect and knew when the gun went off I'd hit too far back.

I look up as I'm doing the bolt as fast as I can and get back on her because shes laid out in the middle of the road acting like her back is broken. I'm worried she's about to get up so I try for a neck shot. Only center mass shot would have jacked up backstraps and by god... no. So I bang off a second shot to end it, only she's flopping around and I miss it. And when that bullet goes by her head she suddenly has a miraculous recovery, and in one move launches into the weeds in the field and disappears while the other three does go nuts running around.

I lose sight of her but never saw her leave the field so I've got hope. I decide to wait an hour before I even step down that hill. Plus, the game is coming on.

So it's first quarter, it's an hour later, and we drive down there with the hope that we can turn the radio up high enough to hear while we find this deer. We walk up to where she went down and BOOM, there's not a drop of blood. There's hair, but no blood. And I can't find any on the tall weeds she ran into. I've got a very bad feeling.

But ten minutes later, after spotting zero blood, we're dragging her out from the spot thirty yards away where she stopped and died.

So what happened?

I gut shot her. The bullet went to pieces like a hand grenade in her stomach when it hit the ground up acorns and leaves and whatnot, and not a single piece of it escaped with the only stuff I found, a piece of jacket or two in the opposite back ham.

Had I not shot at her the second time, she would have never gotten up from where it put her down. She'd have died in her tracks. From a gut shot.

When we opened her up it was just jaw dropping what became of her guts. There just wasn't much left intact. It was one big stew of blood and guts. She never bled outside, but she bled everything she had inside.

I'll post a pic of the bruise from the shock on this thing. It's HUGE.

So anyway, Yes, it blew up. Yes it would have been damn near impossible to track because it didn't exit, and yes that was a horrible shot because it didn't even hit a rib. Hit a half inch away from the last one. And had it been a bigger bullet, I would not have found her. She'd have run away.

So we got back from gutting her and hanging her at the camp and were back in the game before the second quarter started. And with our hearty imbibing of alcohol, and obvious blood sacrifice, LSU won the game!

Thank you 125gr. Nosler Ballistic tip doing 3200 fps out of a 30-06!
Geaux Tigers.

That's the entry hole. The discoloration is the broken blood vessels on the surface. The hydrostatic shock of this thing is just enormous on a whitetail sized animal.

It's not that big black hole, it's further down and forward.

You can see through it from inside where it hit. All the meat on the inside wall washed away with the water hose.

I didn't get picks of the gut soup because I was too bloody to deal with the phone but seriously, there were some bits of intestine that might have been still intact but all the stuff in there otherwise I just pulled out in pieces with my hand. Barely had to cut anything. Not a piece of it went through the diaphragm. Still had a vacuum on it.

Liver looked like it had been run over with a truck. Everything else was indistinguishable from the soup.

You're lying Geauxt they didn't have diapers when you were a baby

Yeah it's a really horrible round.



I haven't had to suffer losing a deer in over 30 years and this is the second time I can honestly say that it was completely because of that bullet that I didn't lose it. Last time this happened it went down in it's tracks the same way and I didn't shoot the second time because it fell over dead.

Here's where I found the piece of jacket that ALMOST made it out the skin.

quote:

---

And the answer is I'd have found her with the dog.

---

and that's why i put that edit in there immediately after i realized i needed to clarify "most or at least some kneebooters"..

quote:

---

She was dead in seconds.

---

agreed, but you know how far one can meander brain dead already.. Seems like I've spent half my life looking for kids and even older fellers than I's deer, where balistic tips have been used..
ford/chevy, choc/vanilla... i just prefer something that will blow up/expand and penetrate, like the PSP...