Deer Season

[cwlongshot]

The Barnes110 did its job again

Meat buck. About 125# 4 pt.

135 yards quartering to me JUST behind shoulder about 1.5” above centerline. Bullet exited 2” behind last rib. Cought liver missed gut. Temp 15 degrees uphill shot. Shot from sitting position unsupported.

Impact took 80% one lung & 10% other.

Mule kick @ impact ran semi circle maybe 150 yards died 50 yards from impact. Animal called in high alert.

1.75” hole taking out one rib. Exiting with .50 cal hole.

Ruger American 16” chrono @2250 fps.




CW

[tallburnedmidget]

Nice work guys, I love this time of year and reading all the hunting stories

[ThreeHundredBlackout]

I shot a nice 3x2 muley at 230 yards with my 8" AR pistol on friday right before sun down.

Truth be told, it took more than one shot, I would give the load data I loaded up, except for the fact that only one of my bullets expanded. So I chased him down I'm in a nice half mile run the included jumping a creek, and finished him off.

I did shoot some bullets into water jugs at distance and they seemed to expand nice, but apparently on game not the case.
So next year I may go with the Controlled Chaos copper, or Barnes Vortex black tips.

I have said this many, many times. I give credit to those who test but water jugs do not simulate flesh well . it's like hitting a concrete block. sStill good on you for being the hunter and closing the deal. Congrats. Now pony up for some ballistic gel.

Yeah, I've been looking into some ballistics gel from Clear ballistics out of Fort Smith Arkansas, i talked to them a few months back about starting some bullet testing videos. I met them at the Hangin' Judge gun show there when they first started their company.

Definately would be very handy to have for testing bullets prior to using a different bullet that you havent used before.

The clear ballistics gel can be re-melted to remold a new block, which would be nice.

[Jim Timber]

After a horrible bear season (encountered the one in person, then only one other trail camera visit recorded); my archery deer season was full of bad shots, crossbow scope wonkiness (part of the bad shots), and bucks that were either too smart or just plain uncooperative (stayed out of range or behind cover).

I swallowed my pride and got a rifle license on the 3rd day of the 9 day season which meant it wasn't valid until the 4th. Friday, day 7 of the season, I decided to take a doe that'd walked up 25 yards behind me on the right (I'm right handed). I was weak-hand/weak-eye shooting across my chest with the .458S pistol - and I got smooched! I can't remember the last time I got scope kissed, but this one was pretty funny to me given my unpracticed shooting position. Doe fell over with a direct spine hit that sent shrapnel into the far lung before punching out a 4-finger hole on the back side obliterating one rib and severing 2 others. 300gr of .458 Ballistic Tip is pretty wicked! She was still twitching when I got to her, so I put another behind her skull to end any suffering if there was any (might have just been reflexes, but what's another bullet to be kind).

Now I get to do some trapping while I work on prepping the woods for logging (which is in jeopardy of not happening again this year due to odd weather, but that's another thread).


My real surprise this fall was how dang good Vinnie's nose is. I didn't need to track my doe, so I left him in the cabin while I fetched her. My atv's battery is toast so I used my tractor with the root grapple bucket to go pick her up and knock some snagged wind-blown trees over that were across the trail. I dragged the deer maybe 50yds before driving the tractor off the trail and blazing a new path to her the other 50yds and loading her directly into the bucket. Not much blood due to the quick kill, but apparently more than enough to get Furry Wonder Nose on site. I used a butt-out tool while she was still horizontal in the bucket and then noosed her off with a choker chain and hung her to get dressed out. I went back to get my truck from the cabin and collect my other tools, some Ziploc bags, and the pooch. He was Way too interested in the bloodcicle that'd formed out her rear while I'd been gone, and was getting dripped on, so I shortened his rope and threw him the guts to keep busy while I finished cleaning out the cavity and collecting the heart, liver, and lungs (for him). This was about sun-down on Friday night. We got the deer to the processor before they closed at 8pm and headed back to the cabin. Mind you, he's still never seen where this deer came from.

Saturday, we go to the dog park in town since he'd been cooped up in the cabin and most of the woods had been off-limits during hunting season. He runs 3 other dogs to exhaustion and has a blast.

Sunday it's getting time to head home, but I wanted to go see if my live trap that's out in the woods had melted the frozen leaves off it yet, and I wanted to get some exercise into Vinnie before the 2.5hr drive (and make sure he pooped!). First things first, we go to where the gut pile was to see if anything had been munching in the last 2 days - didn't look like it. Vinnie wants to get a round 2 on it in a bad way, but I held him out of the pile in duress. We start walking up the driveway (the one I've been building the last couple years) and he's not walking in his straight line like he usually does (he actually walks a lot like a coyote most of the time) but instead he's zig-zagging back and fourth with his nose 2" off the duff. I didn't think much of it since there's a pair of damn skunks holed-up under my cargo container and we've got a couple fox that cruise the area as well. We get up to the Y where the house site driveway turns off and he thinks that's where I'm going but doesn't lead me up there, instead he looks up that way, back at me, and then starts tugging me straight past it. I'm thinking "yep, we're not going up there today" and keep watching him sniff his way along... Then we get to a "+" in the trail where one side goes down my ridge to the neighbor's lot line, straight goes to the SW corner, and the other cuts across the property - he takes a couple steps towards the SW corner trail and then pulls hard towards the middle trail. Once again, I think "he's really interested in where the tractor was, but he's not following the tire tracks very close." Something to consider here in the story is that the loader bucket is several feet out in front of the front tires and swings on a different arc - he's following the bucket, not the tires; again, I didn't even consider he was tracking at this point - we're 1/4 mile from the kill site.

So we follow a couple more trails back into the South 40 and come up to where the tractor left the trail. Again, he took a few steps past where I turned, and then pulled me hard off the trail in the direction I'd come from with the deer. Now I'm wise to what he's doing, but didn't even know how good he was just yet. We came up to where I loaded the deer, he pauses, points, looks at me, then pulls off towards the disturbed leaves from where I drug it. He stopped where I first stopped dragging it, points, looks at me again, then pulls me off deeper to where I shot her and points, looks at me, then I'm all "happy poppa" moment on him and he turns around and starts pulling me off on the mist trail out the back side of the shot... Holy balls! Not only can he back track minimal blood drips out of a carcass 47 hours after the fact, but he can tell me what direction the shot came from!

I didn't have any treats with me, but he got a dried cow ear when we got back to the cabin.

So Vinnie's the real star of my 2017 hunting season and he didn't even know it.

Last bit from this super long post: Take your lungs and clean out any shot damaged tissue (toss it), then bake the rest for 45 mins at 350F in a lubed pan and turn the oven off then leave them in the oven until cool (I did the bake part before we went to the dog park and took them out when we got home). You'll end up with a fully cooked rubbery like chunk of lung that Vinnie thought was good enough to chew the glass pan trying to get the stuck bits off (I didn't lube my pan first ).

[Walkers Bay]

I'm waiting for a kill beside the road they I'm going to take a few of the internals to try some different cuts.

[Jim Timber]

The lungs are dog treats. I got a variety pack of beef parts that were all dried and they included some beef lung that felt like brown rice cakes, Vinnie went nuts over them so I tried giving him raw deer lung and he wouldn't touch it. Once I baked them things changed from no good to being consumed as fast as he could chew and swallow.

He gobbled up the diaphragm muscle I gave him raw, and ate the fatty bits of heart that I trimmed off before cooking that one for me. I'm not sure why the lungs needed cooking, but it was worth doing.

[Walkers Bay]

The lungs are dog treats. I got a variety pack of beef parts that were all dried and they included some beef lung that felt like brown rice cakes, Vinnie went nuts over them so I tried giving him raw deer lung and he wouldn't touch it. Once I baked them things changed from no good to being consumed as fast as he could chew and swallow.

He gobbled up the diaphragm muscle I gave him raw, and ate the fatty bits of heart that I trimmed off before cooking that one for me. I'm not sure why the lungs needed cooking, but it was worth doing.

I try and give my dog the heart or something like the kidneys or liver when he finds the deer but he normally turns his nose up and ends up eating the ass hole or wind pipe. He's a weirdo.

I'll take the liver heart kidneys and the lace fat I have recipe in mind. But I'm not so keen that in going to carry that all back off a mountain.

[Jim Timber]

I have a disabled buddy who's unable to hunt that I give my livers to. I'll never share another heart (Vinnie did eat up all the fatty bits I cut off it though). The kidneys are left in the gut pile. I'm not sure what all Vinnie was eating while I was busy getting the good stuff out of the top of the cavity, but he did eat some guts.

If I had to hump it all out on my back, I'd probably be a lot more selective too.

[rebel]

Apparently the neighbor dog crap is done. Got two bucks on camera the other night. Both 8 pointers. One scraggly and one decent. Hopefully they will show up in the daylight hours.

[tallburnedmidget]

Apparently the neighbor dog crap is done. Got two bucks on camera the other night. Both 8 pointers. One scraggly and one decent. Hopefully they will show up in the daylight hours.

best of luck on them!