My 7SS Muley

Yesterday it was finally my turn. I have hunted hard and finally found a good heavy buck. After ranging and dialing, and not getting a shot while it fed in and out of brush and disappeared in a ravine, it finally came out on a mission and almost headed straight at me. I kept redialing and redialing. It finally stopped and presented a quartering to shot. I saw the buck do the leg kick and crash into the base of a tree 30 yards from the hit. I am done using 180 ELD M's on game. There was snow on the ground and I still couldn't find any blood until about 2' from the dead deer. Same for my wifes buck killed last week. No blood in the first 30 yards with snow on the ground.
Shooting platform

Buck

Where did you hit? Did you try and thread it between the neck and shoulder/clavicle area, or did you punch the shoulder straight on to get the offside vitals? Any bullet recovery?

Beautiful buck--congratulations!

Beautiful!

Great buck bubba, DRT, out of curiosity, not trying to start a s**tstorm, what caliber, distance, angle and part of body did you have, I use the eldm's & x's and understand every situation is a little different depending on what was going on in your world at the time you harvested

Very nice buck.

Where was the hit and exit if there was one?

If the buck only ran 30 yards I'd say the bullet did its job. Just sayin

Awesome buck! I too have a similar "no blood" experience with the eldm. Mine was a 225gr. On an elk and had very little blood trail. I watched him roll and knew he was down and the bullet did a lot of damage but no blood. And mine exited.

At least the bullet worked and it didn't pencil through. 30 yards beats 3000 yards of tracking

Nice deer.

I was solo and didn't take pics once I started cutting so no pics of my bullet hole.

I am shooting a 7ss @3000fps. 8 twist. 180 ELD M. 350 yards. Buck was quartering towards me. 15-20 degree down hill angle. I shot just in front of the shoulder. It looked like the bullet glanced off the ribs. It destroyed part of the front shoulder including part of the shoulder bone. At the angle it should have never even hit the bone there with where it entered. No bullet recovery cause I wasn't digging through guts. No exit.

I do have pics though from my wifes buck. Same setup but 413 yards. Almost perfectly horizontal.


As you can see from the pics that is a decent sized exit. I would have thought I would have found blood in snow in the first 30 yards? I looked at the spot again a few days after she shot and her deer ran about 70 yards after the shot.

Yes the animals all died. But what happens when I make a mistake and don't hit an animal perfect? What happens if I didn't see the impact on my wifes buck? We would have walked over and looked for blood. If I don't find blood in the snow I'm going to assume a miss.

I figure that I might as well shoot the rest of these at targets then I might try the 195's or something.

The JFK deer, and you were on the grassy knoll, and ... great trophy, good on you

dirtytough said:

I was solo and didn't take pics once I started cutting so no pics of my bullet hole.

I am shooting a 7ss @3000fps. 8 twist. 180 ELD M. 350 yards. Buck was quartering towards me. 15-20 degree down hill angle. I shot just in front of the shoulder. It looked like the bullet glanced off the ribs. It destroyed part of the front shoulder including part of the shoulder bone. At the angle it should have never even hit the bone there with where it entered. No bullet recovery cause I wasn't digging through guts. No exit.

I do have pics though from my wifes buck. Same setup but 413 yards. Almost perfectly horizontal.

As you can see from the pics that is a decent sized exit. I would have thought I would have found blood in snow in the first 30 yards? I looked at the spot again a few days after she shot and her deer ran about 70 yards after the shot.

Yes the animals all died. But what happens when I make a mistake and don't hit an animal perfect? What happens if I didn't see the impact on my wifes buck? We would have walked over and looked for blood. If I don't find blood in the snow I'm going to assume a miss.

I figure that I might as well shoot the rest of these at targets then I might try the 195's or something.

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With high hits and particularly without an exit you're just not going to get much blood if they die quickly.

Bleeding stops when BP hits zero.

If you hit them high they tend to bleed out internally rather than externally because the lungs and chest cavity has to fill before any significant blood leaves the body.

Now, I'm not a fan of using target bullets on game but in this case the bullet did it's job quite well.

I also prefer a bullet that exits every time because when you do have that not so perfect shot you need a good exit wound for maximum blood loss and blood hitting the ground so that if tracking is necessary it's pretty easy.

I agree you won't get much blood on a high hit without an exit. My shot was about at the line between the bottom third and middle third. I still expected to see a drop or two of blood.

What about my wifes shot? It seems to be right at mid level. Decent sized exit. No blood. And again these were both shot with snow on the ground. I could miss some blood obviously but its a lot harder to miss the red on white.

Again I am going to change bullets whether people think the bullet worked or not. I have never not had a blood trail especially in snow. I know a field tip will kill also. But there still isn't much blood trail.

dirtytough said:

I agree you won't get much blood on a high hit without an exit. My shot was about at the line between the bottom third and middle third. I still expected to see a drop or two of blood.

What about my wifes shot? It seems to be right at mid level. Decent sized exit. No blood. And again these were both shot with snow on the ground. I could miss some blood obviously but its a lot harder to miss the red on white.

Again I am going to change bullets whether people think the bullet worked or not. I have never not had a blood trail especially in snow. I know a field tip will kill also. But there still isn't much blood trail.

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In both cases I'd surmise the pump probably shut down immediately or almost immediately.

To tell the tale for sure you need to open up the body cavity and see how much bleeding there is internally. Less than a quart tells you the animal expired really quickly. A gallon tells you it took quite a while for the BP to hit zero.

Even with a low lung hit thee's quite a bit of room in the thoracic cavity to fill once air collapses the lungs.