The Search for IT(Bloodtrail)
I seldom see a blood trail within 30 yards of the shot, despite a lot of close range shots that take out the heart and lungs. However, most of my deer don’t go very far. About half fall within my sight or just DRT. The remainder run, but not all that far. We mostly shoot 30-06, 35 Whelen, and 308 Win.
There does not seem to be any pattern to it. One deer takes a single shot into the boiler room and falls down dead. The next one takes off with a blood trail that a blind man could follow. The next one may run 70 yards with no blood trail. Occasionally we get one that stands there and takes 2-3 in the chest with no perceptible effect and then casually wanders off. In the latter case, I’ve seen exit wounds the size of softballs. Needless to say, those leave blood trails.
I wrote this earlier this week in a post: I’ve given up trying to brain this out. I don’t want to hit shoulders– it ruins too much meat. Boiler room shots are IT for me. I use moderate loads with good cup-and-core bullets and put the rest up to God. I’ve seen way to much variability and way to much disagreement on this forum and elsewhere to form a conclusion as to what causes a pole-axing on the one hand or a good solid blood trail on the other. I’m sure y’all have mileage that varies from mine, and that’s okay.
Here are my conclusions:
1) It ain’t the quality of the bullet. Whitetails are just not that hard to kill. A Corelokt or a Hornady Interlock works just fine.
2) IT isn’t MV , KE, or any other common measurement. If KE were IT, my 35 Whelen would be working better than my 308 Win downloaded to 300 Savage velocities and actually the reverse is true. If MV were IT, then my 30-06 would be the comparative death ray. It does a good job, but again, it’s not heads above my 300 Savage-esqe loads.
3) I don’t think a 308 WIN downloaded to 300 Savage is IT either. It just delivers a quality punch with a reasonable amount of recoil.
4) I grew up in Ohio. If anything is IT, it’s a 12 GA Remmie Slugger fired from an unchoked barrel inside 50 yards. Of course no one wants to go there. Every time I try to raise that flag, I invariably get shouted down.
5) Fat may have a huge part in the variability of blood trails, but it is a fact of life. Until they find a round that does liposuction, I’ll stick with what I have.
I’m honestly done chasing IT for a while. I’m sure someone out there is going to say I have been going up the wrong path all these years. I need a 45-70 or a 7mm-08 or a 224-IWanmyNameonIt, but then they’re also going to tell me that hard cast lead is IT or that Kryptonite-tipped bullets are IT or that. . . my head’s spinning. Yes, thank you. One of those will do nicely.
This is not meant to tromp on anyone’s tulips. Quite to the contrary, I am writing to tell y’all that whatever you’re shooting, it probably is doing the job. If you’re unhappy with the current job that you’re doing on the deer, go back and check your freezer. If it’s full of venison, you need to redefine your criteria for satisfaction and not your selection of rifle or bullet. If you’re looking for IT, IT is there somewhere. I just don’t think achieving IT is a cost-effective way to find happiness. The search for the ultimate blood-trail system or the ultimate pole-ax or the dead-certain deer killer is illusory. Every country in the world poured its national wealth into the problem of killing human-sized animals with a centerfire rifle back in the late-nineteenth and early 20th-century. The closest they came to IT was something that resembles a 30-06 in some form or other. IT may be the 30-06, but IT is boring. What we are now doing is trying to find the SUPER-IT.
SUPER-IT will never be fully achieved, because we can only dump so much MV, KE, SD, or whatever at the problem before we reach the other side of the deer or the bullet fails. We will also never find SUPER-IT(Bloodtrail) or SUPER-IT(DRT) or SUPER-IT(x), because we will never be able to control enough of the total system to remove variability. We can overwhelm the system by cranking up one factor or another, but very quickly we reach the failure point of the bullet material or the other side of the deer. The path to SUPER-IT(ultimate) will only lead to a lot of unnecessary recoil and a lot of extra money.
I’m happy with what I’ve got, and y’all should be to. If you have an exit hole that’s bigger than your entrance hole, and you recovered your deer before it spoiled it is time to stop worrying.
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I stand behind my mosin ngnaat and its moderate-power 7.62x54r caliber.its just right for a variety of north american game, and if you’re allowed to use standard ball ammunition (rather than hunting ammo) you’ll be able to take down large, thick-skinned game too. it certainly has more than enough penetration, some 18 inches of flesh penetration to take down just about any large game. but maybe not an elephant though, that’s a bit of a stretch. with chamber adapters I can shoot lesser cartridges such as .32 pistol and 30 carbine for smaller game.an adapter for .327 Federal Magnum, which will also accommodate lesser rounds such as: .32 H R Magnum, .32 S W Long, .32 S W, .32 ACP. an adapter for .30 Carbine gives me just the right amount of power for game such as a coyote.