GuyWithGun
Member
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2012
- Messages
- 55
Hello all,
I have a Remington 7600 that started life as a .308 Win, but after test firing it to make sure it worked I had it rebored into a .358 Win which was my plan when I bought it.. Shot an elk and a whitetail with it, didn’t do anything I thought a .308 wouldn’t do, plus factory barrel wasn’t good and never grouped well with either caliber. With that, had it rebarrelled back into a .308. Shooting just a touch over MOA now with a peep sight, was pretty stoked about hunting with it this year.
Shot a biggish for the black hills whitetail buck (probably 180 pounds on the hoof) yesterday with a 180gr Federal Power Shock at about 40 yards heavily quartering to me. Held and hit in the point of his near shoulder, Hit looked good and the deer staggered with the shot and ran off about 60 yards with an obviously broken leg and laid down, followed quickly by laying his head down. Assuming he was dead, I took my time getting down to him and was trying to find a blood trail just for practice. Saw a bit of hair, but no blood. Thought that was weird, but didn’t think not having an exit wound with that shot was all that strange, so I started foot tracking him waiting to find blood. After about 30 yards and still no blood, the buck jumped up looking surprisingly healthy, bounded about 4 steps and stipped with his rump to me. He looked sick once he stopped, but wasn’t going down. I’ve seen this before and it doesn’t go well so I decided if I needed to pull a Texas heart shot to put him down then it was better than spending the next 5-6 hours foot tracking this thing so I pulled the best shot I could and squeezed it off. Very clearly hit the deer hard, but again did not go down. Next shot same thing, but went down on the one after which looked like a spine shot. Had to load a 5th round to finish him, but at least he was finally dead. When I cleaned him, the first bullet in the shoulder completely blew apart and had what looked like fragments entering the chest cavity in a pattern about 3 inches long and between two ribs. Similar finding on what turned out to be a hip shot, an upper leg shot, and a low spine shot with none of them penetrating well past the bone impact.
I was shooting heavy for caliber bullets for this exact scenario and was very disappointed in the results. Going to copper bullets now because I don’t want that to happen again with not killing the deer, but destroying a lot of meat and filling what is left with lead fragments. Have already decided to change bullets, so not looking for advice really, just curious to see if anybody else had this experience with that ammo.
Thanks.
I have a Remington 7600 that started life as a .308 Win, but after test firing it to make sure it worked I had it rebored into a .358 Win which was my plan when I bought it.. Shot an elk and a whitetail with it, didn’t do anything I thought a .308 wouldn’t do, plus factory barrel wasn’t good and never grouped well with either caliber. With that, had it rebarrelled back into a .308. Shooting just a touch over MOA now with a peep sight, was pretty stoked about hunting with it this year.
Shot a biggish for the black hills whitetail buck (probably 180 pounds on the hoof) yesterday with a 180gr Federal Power Shock at about 40 yards heavily quartering to me. Held and hit in the point of his near shoulder, Hit looked good and the deer staggered with the shot and ran off about 60 yards with an obviously broken leg and laid down, followed quickly by laying his head down. Assuming he was dead, I took my time getting down to him and was trying to find a blood trail just for practice. Saw a bit of hair, but no blood. Thought that was weird, but didn’t think not having an exit wound with that shot was all that strange, so I started foot tracking him waiting to find blood. After about 30 yards and still no blood, the buck jumped up looking surprisingly healthy, bounded about 4 steps and stipped with his rump to me. He looked sick once he stopped, but wasn’t going down. I’ve seen this before and it doesn’t go well so I decided if I needed to pull a Texas heart shot to put him down then it was better than spending the next 5-6 hours foot tracking this thing so I pulled the best shot I could and squeezed it off. Very clearly hit the deer hard, but again did not go down. Next shot same thing, but went down on the one after which looked like a spine shot. Had to load a 5th round to finish him, but at least he was finally dead. When I cleaned him, the first bullet in the shoulder completely blew apart and had what looked like fragments entering the chest cavity in a pattern about 3 inches long and between two ribs. Similar finding on what turned out to be a hip shot, an upper leg shot, and a low spine shot with none of them penetrating well past the bone impact.
I was shooting heavy for caliber bullets for this exact scenario and was very disappointed in the results. Going to copper bullets now because I don’t want that to happen again with not killing the deer, but destroying a lot of meat and filling what is left with lead fragments. Have already decided to change bullets, so not looking for advice really, just curious to see if anybody else had this experience with that ammo.
Thanks.