I'm primarily an Eastern Whitetail hunter. I have never shot a deer beyond 175 yards. I've shot more deer inside 50 yards than outside 100. I'm also a good Methodist boy with strong Taoist leanings. Somebody says it's velocity that kills, some say mass, some say SD kills, others say BC. There's probably a vote for the color of the tip there somewhere.
I say there is a factor yet unexplored, and it is the same factor that leads so many Western minds to think Taoism is unreachable. Please bear with me for a bit. This gets deep, but I promise to drag y'all back to the shallow end before I'm done.
Taoism is all about getting with the flow. Taoism is not a religion in the sense that it does not conflict with Christianity. It's more of a worldview. You can be a Taoist Christian in the same way as you can drive either a Chevy or Ford truck to church. Okay, I know some of y'all are going to say that's a tremendous difference and the Dodge and Toyota boys are going to Hell, but that's beside the point. Even you get the idea.
To the Taoist, there are a myriad of forces at work in everyday life. The Taoist looks for harmony in those forces and seeks to ride on the balancing point. Here is the story of the Butcher as an example:
The Dexterous Butcher OK, Shaman, old buddy, you're really off the cliff today. Call the doctor, have him change the dosage.
Look, there's only so much animal there. With a 270 lb live weight buck, there's about 15 inches of deer I need to penetrate on a broadside shot. Maybe 18 inches if the beast is slightly off-broadside. Everything beyond that is extraneous. Furthermore, there is only so much a bullet will take before it fails and only so little before it stops expanding.
I have shot deer with everything from a 25-06 to a 12 GA slug. The thing that seems to kill deer the best is not velocity. In fact gunwriters do not even have a word to describe it. "Balance" does not cover it. "Flowiness" is not even a word. However, it is a mastery and harmonization of the forces in play that brings a nice fat buck into a toes-up configuration.
Think about it. We all talk about maximizing this or that, but what does excess buy us? More dirt flying up on the far side of the animal. A flinch that won't go away? We as Westerners can grasp accuracy, speed, and trajectory, but we stop abruptly before going any further. Part of the reason we have these threads is that we all glimpse what's on the other side of the intellectual chasm, but we just cannot describe it.
I've been sitting in the same luxury shooting box called Midway for 7 seasons-- good name for a Taoist deer blind. I go there for a few reasons. Midway is out of the rain and wind. It affords me a good view of a 1/4 acre spot in the middle of a pasture I call "The Garden of Stone." When I started hunting there about a decade ago, I'd put a small stone under each carcass before picking it up. Pretty soon, I had a whole mess of stones in that patch. I usually go there to fill my last tag for the freezer. This is well after I've done all the Man-vs-Elements thing I can handle for the year, and just want it to be over.
I've shot deer from Midway with a good part of my whole deer arsenal. This is about as controlled a situation as you'll find. I can usually wait for a broadside shot, and I like to aim such that I take out both lungs and the top of the heart. The goal here is to drop the deer as close as possible to the center of the Garden of Stone, so I can get the truck in for a quick and easy extraction. If it goes right, I can be to the processor and back and sipping scotch in the moonlight in 2 hours. The processor is a half-hour away. I give myself extra points if the deer drops touching a stone placed from a previous season. This is how a Taoist goes deer hunting.
On the small end, the 25-06 with a 117 grain bullet hits the deer at 150 yards at 2500 fps, give or take. The deer runs a bit, and piles up. .25 cal onside hole. Thumb-sized far-side hole. The last doe made it to the fence and got over before succumbing. That added about 20 minutes to the total process.
On the far end, my Remington 7600 Whelenizer spits out a 200 Grain Rem SPCL that hits the deer at 1700-1800 fps at 150 yards. The deer runs a bit, and goes down. There's a .35 cal hole going in and a 2-inch hole going out. The last doe I Whelenized made it to the fence and got downhill about 20 yards. It added about 30 minutes to getting her out and I had to follow a weak blood trail in drizzle, so that was another 10 minutes of tracking. No Taoist bonus points there, but plenty of nice venison in the end.
Now, let us turn to the Voice of the Tao, the .30 Briar, the 7.62X63 Light Magnum, my Ruger Hawkeye in 30-06. It runs a 165 grain Hornady SPBT. At 150 yards, it hits the deer at 2400 fps, give or take. In the last minute of legal hunting last year, I took a shot at a nice fat doe. The shot blinded me for a bit. When I looked back, it was too dark to see. I did not even bother to confirm the kill before getting on the walkie-talkie and calling for the deer wagon. She was toes-up in her tracks at 155 yards with a bloody rock already under the carcass. The holes going in and out were optimal. That palpable feeling of whatever-it-is was there. Balance? Harmony? I could feel it before I pulled the trigger.
