I hunted at my friend's place in North Carolina for 18 years. The last year there, I had my new .300 WSM custom. I was in a stand and a buck walked out at 450 yards. He had walked into the field from a hunt club. I put the cross hair on his nose and shot. I hit him in the center of the chest and he went down. The fog lifted and I saw a doe come into the field as well. I dropped her. I got back to clean the deer. The buck had a perfect .270 bullet, a 6mm bullet and 3 pieces of buckshot in him. He survived all of that and healed up. I had a .270 briefly that I shot 2 deer with: one at 75 yds and the other at 200 and it damaged more meat than I had ever seen before. The entire front half of the deer was grape jelly. It always struck me that a bullet that could do such damage would be sitting there in my deer without any expansion at all. Your case doesn't sound a whole lot stranger. Bullets do funny things once they enter the body, especially long thin ones that tumble and go off in strange directions. That was a big observation with the .223 when they developed it for the military. My buddy shot a deer with a bow two months ago and the arrow went in, hit a rib, turned and came out the deer's butt. You got an exit hole so you'll never know the condition of the bullet. That would bee nice to see. I wouldn't put a lot of thought into paunching the deer. I've shot a bunch square in the shoulder that blew the paunch, sometimes to green oatmeal. I've hit deer with the .300 perfect, and had everything inside scrambled.
