There has been a lot of talk about bullet damage lately & talk about not using a V-Max on deer sized animals. As said in other post I take head shoots so it doesn't matter much but my son may get to take his first shot this year & I would like to have an idea of what will happen.
I am also new to a .243Win but I have been shooting it a lot this year. The first box of bullets I picked up was 65gn V-Max & they shot great & I'm still playing with them so that is what I loaded for us to hunt. So I took a body shot to see what happened.
The 65gn V-Max is loaded for ~2900fps.
The deer ran about 30yds & crashed dead. There wasn't enough blood to call it a trail. The bullet entered the right side on the back of the shoulder behind the shoulder bone. It came through the shoulder just behind the shoulder bone & stopped on the left side just under the hide. All the blood was dumped in her chest(which was nice for hauling it since there was no blood to get on anything even after gutting it). Sadly the heart(my favorite meat) got tore up bad & both front shoulders are very bloodshot & will take a lot more work to make them eatable. The bullet retained 35% of its mass.
I will try to get some pictures up later.
I am also new to a .243Win but I have been shooting it a lot this year. The first box of bullets I picked up was 65gn V-Max & they shot great & I'm still playing with them so that is what I loaded for us to hunt. So I took a body shot to see what happened.
The 65gn V-Max is loaded for ~2900fps.
The deer ran about 30yds & crashed dead. There wasn't enough blood to call it a trail. The bullet entered the right side on the back of the shoulder behind the shoulder bone. It came through the shoulder just behind the shoulder bone & stopped on the left side just under the hide. All the blood was dumped in her chest(which was nice for hauling it since there was no blood to get on anything even after gutting it). Sadly the heart(my favorite meat) got tore up bad & both front shoulders are very bloodshot & will take a lot more work to make them eatable. The bullet retained 35% of its mass.
I will try to get some pictures up later.