Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Need advice on bang flops

No doubt it's not a problem where you hunt. But there are areas/circumstances where a 50ish yard run could be a big problem: off a cliff, across a boundary fence, or into thick rattlesnake infested thornbrush.

I can see an issue of a cliff or boundary.

But I"ve trailed so many into thickets, including S Texas stuff, that it just seems like, and again its IMHO, learning to trail and trailing now and then is not a bad thing because no matter how good you think you are, sooner or later you'll have to trail to find a dead one or worse yet trail a live wounded one.

Of course those that are bowhunters have no choice and since we bowhunted almost totally for 20 plus years, trailing is no biggie and actually a fun part of the puzzle for me. Still is today.

But now, I ended up with a dog thats a super trailer and TIger goes with me to the woods all the time, and we have fun watching him trail. Sooner or later he'll calm down to where he'll lay still and follow close and slow when I roam around, but he has yet to spook a deer.... but I digress.

Shoot for them to drop on the spot if you want to, but trailing here and there is always good as a refresher.

Light and fast bullets, TTSX if I run that route, tend to have the shortest trails. But again if you really have to have it, the ONLY way reliably is CNS.

I"d hate to shoot a mountain goat in teh head to drop him, but even then, dropping him may not save him... same with sheep...

Try a 125 grain bullet out of an 06 into a cottontail.

A 125 from a 260 is pretty tough on a possum.

I found a few boxes of factory 125s in 06 years ago, stuffed em into one of our garands and shot pigs.

The only bang flops we ever got where CNS hits. But even lung shots rarely went very far.. The head hits with the 125s made a bit of a mess.

roost: to each his own. I've done plenty of tracking in my time. Don't think more practice is going to improve my skills at this point.

And getting my hands and knees bloody, crawling thru thornbrush, sometimes with a flashlight in my teeth, when the temps are often in the 80s and sneakysnakes are active, is something I have done my share of, prefer to avoid henceforth!

No doubt it's not a problem where you hunt. But there are areas/circumstances where a 50ish yard run could be a big problem: off a cliff, across a boundary fence, or into thick rattlesnake infested thornbrush. [/quote]

Yes. I'm taking the majority of my shots in the middle of 200 acres that I own. My big problem when I'm in freezer-filling mode is making sure they stay out in the middle of the pasture, so it's easy to run the truck right up to them. I wish I could train them to run into the truck.

What I can tell you is that even with the most care and the most successful shot, I cannot guarantee the deer won't run a little. I do not recommend head or neck shots, just because a slight miss can cause a disaster. I've also taken out the shoulder blade and had them run a bit, with just their back legs pumping. My best luck has been a completely perpendicular broadside shot where the heart and both lungs are involved. That usually gives me an instantaneous toes-up configuration. That's with a 30-06 and 165 grainers. I've tried 25-06 up to 35 Whelen, and have not seen an improvement.

A run of 300 yards? That's shot placement.
A run of 50 yards? That's a problem with expectations.

Crow Hunter i assume I am the "Bob" you mention above.

Yes in northern New England for some reason you are more likely to kill a buck between 8AM and 3 PM than you are earlier or later. I don't know why but suspect it's relatively light hunting pressure, thick cover, and big woods. The deer will move with impunity throughout the day and especially a buck in rut.

But you have other issues to deal with and they are low deer density and big thick cover. Plus no agriculture in many areas and food sources are not well defined. This sort of spreads deer out over big country.

Of course deer are deer and there are open areas near power lines, clear hurts and some agriculture. Deer do tend to sow early/late in these places but the latest I have killed them have been maybe a 1/2 hour before the end of shooting time.

But we have the same problems as everyone else in terms of grassing them quickly.One of my two biggest whitetails was killed at almost full dark in a huge Alberta field as he quartered toward me on a full run.A shoulder hit wth a 270-130 NPT dumped him in a pile.

I know it's conventional wisdom to go with fragile bullets for fast kills with soft tissue hits,but I have found high velocity with tougher bullets placed through bones and angled into vitals to give shorter trails and more dramatic results (mostly no trails at all). I especially look for those kinds of shots as distance increases, velocity drains and reduces bullet upset.

We talk about DRT with deer sized game but they aren't the real problem....that comes once you get into bigger, tougher stuff like elk. Watch a big bull take a hit squarely through the lungs at 300-400 yards and barely flinch at the impact and your first reaction is.....holly shidt did I hit him or do I need a bigger rifle?

Yes. I'm taking the majority of my shots in the middle of 200 acres that I own. My big problem when I'm in freezer-filling mode is making sure they stay out in the middle of the pasture, so it's easy to run the truck right up to them. I wish I could train them to run into the truck.

What I can tell you is that even with the most care and the most successful shot, I cannot guarantee the deer won't run a little. I do not recommend head or neck shots, just because a slight miss can cause a disaster. I've also taken out the shoulder blade and had them run a bit, with just their back legs pumping. My best luck has been a completely perpendicular broadside shot where the heart and both lungs are involved. That usually gives me an instantaneous toes-up configuration. That's with a 30-06 and 165 grainers. I've tried 25-06 up to 35 Whelen, and have not seen an improvement.

A run of 300 yards? That's shot placement.
A run of 50 yards? That's a problem with expectations.

[/quote]

A head shot taken correctly, has about zero chances of a bad outcome, unless a miss is a bad outcome. But thats my take on it, after being taught a method and learning to follow it period and never deviate. In all my years of head shooting I've had one issue, that took some time to sort out.

I hear ya. But practice is what keeps anyone good. I"m not old, only 51, but I think the only thing that will keep me from enjoying looking for one, is going to be the issue of not being mobile anymore.

My best buddy, a few years younger, has always run the other route, kill em and hopefully they fall into the bed of the truck or on a road preferably.

Its' usually not cool here, but I've also done plenty of 80 temps trailing. Hell I kind of like messing with the rattlers too.. they make it a bit interesting. Love spring hog hunts south, when its warm enough that they are out.

I have to say tracking is the hunting skill that is most atrophied. It's right up there with asking landowner permission. The latter is not so good, because I've been hunting the same plot for 15 years, and I'm the landowner. The only tracking jobs I have to perform are for other people, and I have two dogs that usually run out ahead of me and camp out at the carcass.

However, a lot of that lack of tracking is due to planning. If I know a deer is almost certain to run into an impenetrable cedar thicket when shot, I will probably hunt somewhere besides the edge of said thicket. I've pretty well abandoned a couple shooting venues, because every time I shot a deer, they ended up rolling down to the bottom of a ravine, and it was 6 hours of hard labor getting them out. At 45, that was sport. I'm 58. I ain't old, but I'm getting smart, and that kind of sport wears thin after a time or two. I've got plenty of places to hunt on the farm. Places like "Heartbreak Ridge," "The Black Hole," and "Soggy Bottom" I'll leave for the uninitiated.

Last year, #3 son, Angus shot two. The first was a nice buck, the second was a doe taken late in the season. He had to chase her into a creek bottom, and then drag her out about 60 yards to be available to the truck. He was bitchin' about having such a hard slog over a lousy doe. My advice was simple: Wait until she's further out in the field to shoot. That way, even if she runs, she drops before she crosses the barbed wire.

Aim between the two bright eyes...

.22 WMR works every time.

It's not the caliber/round, it's the candle power...

DF

It works just as well in the daytime too. We were actually using it on a crop damage permit to reduce noise due to a nearby housing development.

Crypes I never heard of anybody so scared of having to drag a deer. I'm 54 and have been diagnosed with hypertensive heart disease {enlarged heart} am being treated for high blood pressure, irregular heartbeat and moderate kidney disease yet dragged three out nearly a half mile by myself last season. Tell Angus it won't hurt him a bit.

He's not scared, but he's like his old man. He thinks about the big picture. As it was, we had weather coming in, and another 15 minutes or so, the field would have been too wet to get the truck out. If there had been no truck available, there would have been no mad dash to the processor, and the processor was not going to be open on Sunday AM. As it was we got there with 15 minutes to spare. Sometimes you have to bust a hump to be lazy.

Four wheel drive is a nice thing to have sometimes. I don't have to worry about getting anywhere on time after I kill a deer as I always process it myself.

You're right. 4WD is great. Except this was freezing rain on grass and a slope that only one of the 4wd vehicles could take without sliding when it's dry.

See, that's kind of my point. He could have just as easily tagged a doe out in the middle of a flatter piece of the property that night. He was expecting the rain to hit after 2100, and decided to hunt close to the house. Instead the rain hit 3 hours earlier, and immediately started to freeze -- just as he was locating the doe.

Back to the bigger point: I've been fielding questions like this for over a decade, and it's true there are head shooters and neck shooters that swear by their methods. They've never lost a deer and they all go down in their tracks. That's fine. I have no beef with them. The problem I see here is somebody has a 270 WSSM and does not have the experience to know why the deer run. This is still a beginner, no matter how many years he's been in the field. I'm not inclined to say switching to head shots is going to solve the problem.

I had a similar question a number of years ago in regards to my Whelenizer. The difference was I'd brought down over a dozen deer with it, and I was not seeing any improvement in performance on whitetails from my 30-06. Most deer were going down right away, but a few still ran. The consensus of the guys in this august forum, was that 35 Whelen was not going to be that big of an improvement on whitetail-sized game, especially inside 150 yards. I lowered my expectations accordingly and went on.

I think we all agree that the problem is not the bullet or the chambering being inadequate. I will leave to others whether use of 270 WSSM on whitetails may be a sign of incipient homosexuality. Either way, I would say the round itself is adequate. My question is the sense of someone who would take a do-or-die shot where no amount of running is allowable. That is just begging for an unwanted adventure. Were I faced with a cliff on one side, a rattlesnake infested thicket on the other and the immenent arrival of comanches on my rear flank, I might seriously consider forgoing the shot and finding an easier place to hunt. Kentucky comes immediately to mind.

Just curious cause I hunt the same area, also with the Whelen - what bullet are you using?

It's probably "overkill" for WT and some combination of shot placement and luck mixed in but every deer I've shot with the 225gr Partition has dropped right there. Not real heavy or real slow, about 2600 fps, and mid to high shoulder shots. The 225gr Sierra didn't work nearly as well, same for the 180gr Speer FP and 250gr Hornady RN. I'll stick with that Partition, it works for me.

I don't mind tracking them, it's no big deal, but sometimes dragging them out of the brambles in the dark is a pain.

I'd hunt brown bear with that load. Not surprised the deer died quickly.

Same with my lowly little Ruger Hawkeye stainless in 358 Winchester and 200 gr TTSX's at only 2700 fps, for the life of me, I can't figure out why nearly all deer so far have just dropped, I mean they said "fugg it," and just fell down, and stayed.