Gave deer a heart attack??? odd one...

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hipoint

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Hey folks, just wondering if anyone else has ever heard of this before... I have a depredation permit on my farm for nuisance deer removal, just wanted to say that before anyone calls me a poacher ;)

A few days ago, took a shot at a deer with my .30-30. Dropped it in it's tracks, not one step. As always I do a follow up headshot whenever possible. So, the deer was dead as dead gets by that point. I had quite a busy day that day and went about doing some other chores before I went up the hill to go get the deer (it was cold out and the deer wasn't going anywhere). Went to get it in an hour or two, brought it into the garage to dress it out. The ONLY hole I could find was in the head where I did my head shot!

My little marlin is new to me and has a pretty substantial trigger pull, I would not be terribly surprised to know that I missed the deer (although I was accurate enough to make a clean follow up head shot from the same distance)...

I really think I might have missed that deer with the first shot, I was in a hurry so I did not completely dress out the deer (meaning gut it) I removed 99% of the meat and then had to go do other business that day...

Would a .30-30 make a small enough hole that I could have missed it and no blood come out? (was aiming for the heart) or is is plausible that I just gave the dang thing a heart attack or scared it so bad it just laid down, then the head shot took care of it?
 
If I had more time that day I would have completely dressed it out. (all I wasted was rib/belly meat)

I would have like to known. both shoulders were intact, no fragments in either.

I was using a 170 grain winchester superx bullet.

very odd, but I am new to .30-30 is it common for them to not exit? I usually use .30-06
 
Sometimes you won't get an exit wound, and an entrance wound can at times be hard to find. If you skinned the animal even an entrance wound would be easy to see from the inside.

When I was in HS back in the early 70's one of my friends was messing around in the woods with a BB gun when a small 4 pointer wandered close by. Just being a stupid kid he decided to shoot it in the butt with a BB gun from about 15 yards. The deer bolted, ran about 25 yards and ran head first into a tree, broke it's neck and died.

My friend told too many people and word eventually got out to game wardens who took a dim view of his experience.
 
it was quite odd, I looked it over fairly well both pre and post skinning. I did leave the neck on the deer as well and only skinned it to in front of the front shoulders but I sure didn't see anything in the chest area where I was aiming.

not having much experience with a .30-30, I can't say for sure but I would think if I made a neck shot the bullet would have exited?

well, regardless it's keeping the others company in the freezer now :D I'm just curious if anyone has ever heard of missing a deer and having it drop in it's tracks with no movement.

The damage from the head shot with the 170 grain .30-30 round was pretty extensive, that's what makes me think I missed it on the first one.
 
Maybe not a heart attack but scared to death. You may have stumbled on to something here. Maybe we can just use very loud blanks to scare our prey to death and not ruin any meat at all. But it all honesty...I hope you are just giving out "food for thought" and not serious about giving a deer a heart attack.
 
no, I have a depredation permit, these things are a serious problem on our farm... I am sincerely curious as to why this deer would have dropped from what was quite possibly a total miss...

I understand hunting ethics and using all the meat etc... but here it's a little different, these things literally ruin my income for an entire year so they have to go.

I think anyone who has hunted alot can claim they have missed an animal at some point or at least not made the shot exactly where they intended to place it.

It is possible I assume to hit one and have a very small entrance hole with no blood at all that could close up within the time it took for me to actually get out there and bring it home. This one just left me perplexed...

I don't want anyone to think I'm an "unethical hunter" for what I do here on the farm, but I think if the deer were literally eating your 401k it may change outlook...
 
Was there blood in the body cavity? I know of a deer that dropped dead after being chased by a dog, but that's a different story.
 
they are such a problem here that the game wardens themselves come here to help cut down our population...
 
I don't want anyone to think I'm an "unethical hunter" for what I do here on the farm, but I think if the deer were literally eating your 401k it may change outlook...


I am sorry but I do not believe in controling deer in this manner. In order for you to control farming damage that way you must be killing numerous deer on your property for two or three deer killed is not going to make a bit of difference in your harvest. There are non lethal repellants to keep the deer away. Just my personal opinion but you asked.
 
fdashes, when you go to killing deer in a depredation program, they get trained to begin avoiding your protected area. Noises, bad smells, people moving around, all that sort of thing. You also get a reduction in their eating of a crop, just from reduced numbers. And, generally, such a program is more than just two or three deer.

Raccoons and crows can be rough on corn farmers, just as much as deer.
 
I met a guy with such a permit. He owns a large piece of land in a rural area that's surrounded by smaller plots with homes. There's so many deer in the area they're a hazard to people in their yards and traffic on the roads, and they eat yards and landscaping. So he gets special permits to thin them out, since he has a large enough place to do so safely, but he's limited as far as gun size and firing lanes, because there's homes all around him.
 
I wonder if you hit the deer in the head with the first shot and missed cleanly with the second.........
 
In my opinion:

1. A 30/30 could easily make a very difficult to detect wound.

2. Depending on the angle at which it entered and on what it hit I can easily understand that the bullet might not exit. I've seen that happen with rifles with even more power.
 
Quite a few years back, the neighbor who lived across the street came and got me to come have a look at his friends first buck. When I got over there the boy was grinning from ear to ear with his 5 or so inch wide 6 point. I congratulated him on it and told him it was a fine buck. Then he proceeded to tell me all about his hunt.

Then my neighbor say's "you haven't heard the best of it yet". He told the boy to get on with the "REST OF THE STORY".

THe kid says, well I was sitting there about half asleep waiting on my ride back to camp when I heard something brushing up against my stand. I could feel it rocking back and forth just a little with each rub. I peeked out the window and here was this buck just going to town on the corner of the stand with me in it.

I could see horns and I had to stand up in my chair in order to even get my rifle in a position that I could shoot down at that angle. When I shot the deer ran out about 15 or so yards, stopped, turned and was looking back at the stand. I was just about to shoot it again when it simply piled up in a heap.

They had the hide rolled up and still attached to the head as he was going to get it mounted. We stretched it out and no matter where or how you stretched it there were no holes anywhere. When we pulled the ribs, shoulders, hams, and back strap out to cut them up, same thing nothing bloodshot, or even resembling where a bullet might have gone through.

With the deer being so close to the stand he could only see from the back of the shoulders out to it's but and he said he aimed between the shoulders. He as shooting a .243 and had there been an impact at 3' or less there would have been a mess for sure, and easily seen somewhere.

This is the only case I know of that is similar and in that the deer could have actually had a heart attack, from being only a foot or so from the muzzle when it went off. Initially I called BS but no matter where I looked, or how I stretched out the hide there wasn't a single hole in it anywhere.
 
A spinal shot would have dropped him right there. I believe that was a massive heart attack - a .243 going off a few from my head would give me one :what:
 
This same thing happened to me several years ago with a 75 yd shot on a trotting little 6 pointer with a 25.06. Not one sign of blood anywhere, no entry or exit hole. I suspected a heart attack (I know this does happen with rabbits) but I finally concluded that the bullet must have entered one ear hole and exited the other though because it folded into a ball mid stride. Very strange though.
 
A hunting buddy did that once. No entrance or exit wounds. The only thing we could tell is that the Mossberg he was using shot high and he hit it in the base of the antler and broke its neck. The antler(s) were broken off.
 
Hitting a deer with a glancing shot in/off the head often results in the old story: "He dropped dead and came back to life when I started to skin him" or " he dropped like a rock so I went to drive the truck closer and he was gone when I got there."

I shot a spike this year from 150 yds. He dropped. I walked to the truck, drove up to the spot and he was gone. There was blood but it stopped after 20 yards. I got a blood-trailing dog and the dog just followed different deer paths which means no more blood. No buzzards in the vicinity later that day or the next so it had to clip the top of his spine and knock him down/out temporarily.
I checked the bullet's trajectory at 150 yards and it was 3 1/2" high. The gun was sighted in for 250 yards.

You probably hit him in the head with both bullets.
 
Was the deer fat? I shot a large, fat mule deer clean through the lungs once and the deer had no visible entrance or exit. The fat sealed up the holes. The deer was DRT with no blood outside the chest cavity.
 
It's impossible to hit a deer in the body in such a way as to kill it on the spot and not leave some fairly noticeable internal damage.
I'd guess you hit it in the head/neck with the first shot and simply missed with the second.
 
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