Do you generally prefer to have bullets penetrate fully? I've never really thought about it much,as I've generally hunted deer and rarely caught a bullet unless it was a hard angle. As long as the animal went down quick, I'm happy.

I finally got my first bull elk this week, and was a bit surprised. I was shooting a .375 Ruger with 260gr Accubonds,a bullet I haven't used before. Shooting commenced at 200 yards,and the first shot landed straight up the middle of the leg about mid chest. No reaction at the shot whatsoever. Since

I had kinda been trapped in an open wheat field with no rest,so I was shooting freehand and I'll admit that I got a bit frazzled then and sent the next to shots into the wild blue yonder. Gave myself a brief but loud talking to and settled down a bit.

He finally turned to start towards the tree line and turned to show me his opposite side,so I shot him there too. No reaction to the shot. He took maybe 2 more steps and then stood there,head down. I started to move up and got to about 100 yards to where I could rest on a tree. He was now quartered hard away so I shot him one more time, which resulted in a massive explosion of steam from the entry wound. Didn't even flinch. I watched for a few seconds,and finally he laid down.

I gathered my stuff and walked over to him. He was still making noise and kicking a bit, so I shot him in the neck,figuring it'll make it easier to take his head off anyway..

What I found most surprising was that none of the bullets exited. Now this is the first animal I've shot with this rifle and also the first time using Accubonds, so maybe this is the norm with these bullets. I'm certainly not complaining, as I could have stopped shooting after the first shot and been fine, but the lack of reaction made me second guess myself and I figured since I had bullets I may as well use em.

I've been wanting to try the tipped TSX's after seeing the stellar results others have had with them in smaller calibers. I wish now that I had cut him open to see the damage and try to recover some bullets, but it was going to be a warm day and I was a long way from home so i wasted no time. Do you think I would have had a different result with say a 270gr TSX? I should have taken better pics to show the bullet holes, you can just see the first shot in this one,and the quartering away shot. The load was 82gr of IMR4350,which shot very well.
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