Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Shortest Recovery?

Since you asked .... 243 .... Sierra 85 gr HPBT ... without a doubt. Ben

I've killed well over 100 with a bow alone... almost every one shot with a gun that are not head shots, I"ve had to look for a bit...

Lots of it depends on where you shoot, IE I won't shoot bones and waste meat, and how destructive a bullet you shoot... that's been obvious to me over the years.

Its always been about the indian and not the arrow.

Recoil wise, I have never seen a lead sled. I've shot deer with lots of weapons. But due to the competition back ground, recoil is not a factor for my wife or I. We understadn the mental part of the game and manage it.

That said, for most folks less recoil is a good thing.

And I"ve often thought to myself, while I"d be happy hunting deer with a 22 rimfire, if legal, that in reality, a 243 is more than enough gun for almost any deer I've ever seen shot.

And I know a family that has a few book deer, and the last of them are all shot with a 223....

I tend to grab my 308 as a default round.... when not grabbing the 300/221 suppressed these days. As noted it just doesn't take much.

I tend to agree with that.

Do you get exits with these? Lung shots or where? Thanks.

Sometimes ... like any other bullet, it depends on how and where the deer is hit whether you get a pass through shot or not. However the bullets that stay in the deer cause so much internal damage (if you hit them in the vitals or close to it), that they usually either drop on the spot or never go very far. Several of my friends and I have used the 85 HPBT's with exceptional success for many years and all of us believe that the HPBT's kill deer much faster and cleaner then the 100 grain bullets do. I'm not going to brag about how may deer we've killed using this bullet, but I will say it's been quite a few ... and it's kind of nice to be able to use one bullet for both varmints and deer hunting. Also remember this is a Gameking bullet and is jacketed much heavier then a standard varmint bullet. If you don't believe me, ask Sierra. Ben

My go to rifle used to be a 7mm rem mag using 140 ballistic tips at 3200 fps. My experience mirrors yours, hundreds of lung shots that resulted in instant drops. I hardly ever recovered a bullet because they grenaded, but they hardly ever moved out of their tracks and there was massive internal damage. A couple of blow ups had me switch to tougher bullets.

Getting a DRT from a lung shot is different than the high shoulder shot. They drop from trauma to the spine with the high shoulder shot. A tough bullet won't give you a DRT from a lung shot, they'll go a long ways hit by a tough bullet through the lungs.

Having shot 257 wtby for some years, after wanting to try the velocity theory, at first I was about to bite. Then we had some deer run, some up to 100 yards or so. All identical hits, lungs only, nothing near the spine.

Last falls largest buck I've ever taken, I decided to shoot with the 257 instead of the 300/221 since he was at about max range for my suppressed loads. Even that buck managed about 40 yards.

I've shot quite a few with 300 wtby and exactly one dropped on the spot.

If I had to really think it through, I"d lean likely to a frangible bullet( those days are way past for me though basically) and as fast as I could drive it. Still having enough gun for an exit wound.

But I don't care if they run. No big deal. Gives Tiger some fun trailing and keeps him sharp for the real trailing jobs. LIke last fall, non vital hits on a buck, Buck was shot 3 hours earlier and it poured rain for those 3 hours... Took tiger a bit of time to work it all out in his nose and then we found the buck.

I digress.

The family I spoke of earlier with B/C bucks, used to all shoot 7 mags. They found the 223 killed those same bucks just as dead as quickly. In fact the last one that was around 177 was DRT from lung only and a 223 and 69 bthp.

Let me toss out one thing as I leave this post...( well obviously shot placement trumps everything regardless of caliber, AND know your limitations)
Family here for some reason, had a fellow that shot 220 swift all his life that I knew him. Shot all the deer in the flank. Family and he claimed never a one did anything but DRT. Did the gutless cleaning then on them... Not my choice and likely never will be, but YMMV. Poor shot location choice IMHO. But it worked. And I've heard of more than a few that had the same results 270/06/7 mag, 308/243 a few times

If you desire an exit, there is an 80 ttsx from Barnes that will give it every time. And it kills quite well from a round thats a bit slower than 243 even... in 243 it would be my go to. I really need to order some more of them and zero my 243 for it one day but the 243 hasn't shot a deer other than an experimental slow load around 1400 fps and an 80 BT varmint bullet about 50 years ago for low recoil for some kids, which worked like a champ BTW.

My dad was a 243 fanatic, and this was the only bullet he would use after much "trail" (pun intended) and error he told me. He was very successful with it.
I still use it in his rifles.

I finally got curious enough to look at my hunting notes, which go back to the mid-1970's, to see which bullet/cartridge combinations dropped whitetails at impact with "pure" chest shots, meaning no bone was struck other than ribs. The list is an interesting one, partly because not one whitetail dropped at impact from a pure chest shot from a .243. But none of the bullets used in the .243 was an 85-grain Sierra HPBT GameKing.

However, at least half my hunting, and a good portion of my wife's, takes place here in Montana, where there's often a chance of running into an elk. So we tend to use slightly larger and stouter bullets than 85-grain 6mm's. The smallest cartridge/bullet combination that dropped many whitetails right there was the .270 Winchester with 130-grain Nosler Partitions, and the largest the .338 Winchester Magnum with 200-grain bullets, either Speer Hot-Cores or Nosler Ballistic Tips or AccuBonds. Some 7mm and .30 caliber loads did the job too, mostly using Ballistic Tips, AccuBonds or other bullets designed to lose some weight.

The ONLY animal shot with any sort of super weight-retaining bullet that I can recall dropping on impact as the result of a pure chest shot was a pronghorn doe killed at around 300 yards with a .257 Roberts Ackley Improved and a 100-grain XLC, the blue-coated version of the X-Bullet Barnes made for a while before the TSX solved the fouling/accuracy problems. The bullet started at around 3350 fps, and landed high in the lungs.

Have also seen some animals other that whitetails dropped right there with the standard .257 Roberts, the most common bullet the 115-grain Nosler Partition. In fact a 115 Partition has done the trick at ranges from about 100 yards (a feral boar in Texas weighing around 175 pounds) to 275 yards on a Wyoming pronghorn buck.

But if I were going to pick one bullet for dropping whitetails quickly with pure chest shots it would probably be a Berger--and for the same reason the .243 apparently does the job with 85 Sierras--massive internal damage. Have seen a higher percentage of animals dropped right there with Bergers than any other bullet, ranging in size from around 75 pounds to 400+ on the hoof.

While relatively few were whitetails (for the reason mentioned above--most but not all of our whitetail hunting is done in Montana), some were other deer, or feral goats of about the same size--and goats are far tougher than any of the several species of deer Eillen and I have hunted.

Unlike most expanding bullets, the Bergers also have the virtue of penetrating a couple of inches before starting to open, which not only ruins far less meat around the entrance hole, but on deer-sized game insures that the bullet penetrates sufficently into the chest. They penetrate the same way on the shoulder bones of deer-sized game, or at least they have on the several dozen animals I've seen taken with them.

Here I must also mention something nobody else has discussed: Whitetails vary considerably over their range in North America. Here in Montana a mature doe will be about the same size as mature bucks in southern Texas, and I've shot mature does on culls in Texas that were the size of Montana fawns. A mature Montana buck will weigh around 200 pounds, or if from farm country even field-dress more than 200. Bucks from the Midwest and southern Canada tend to be even larger. On a hunt in Manitoba a friend killed a forkhorn whitetail field-dressing over 200. Body size does matter, and what will instantly drop a whitetail weighing 100 pounds on the hoof probably won't do the same to bucks weighing 200-300 pounds.

The one constant I've seen, however, is bullets retaining all or most of their weight rarely drop them right there with pure chest shots. Instead they've dropped most consistently to bullets losing some or most of their weight, and with bullets like Nosler Partitions a muzzle velocity of at least around 3000 fps definitely makes a difference.

I am a bit confused here. Are we talking double lung shots only? As in no shoulder or brisket was hit?

The .270 Win with 130gr frangible bullets, such as the Sierra Gameking, or the Nosler BT is 5 of 5 for bang flops, without actually breaking the shoulder. I tend to run them pretty fast out of a 26" barrel Ruger #1, pushing 3200 fps. But even with a 22" M700, it dropped a big spike DRT.

I did shoot a spike with a .223 and a 65gr Gameking a couple years ago. It separated jacket & core, which I found in the offside hide, and lost 50% of its weight. The buck only went about 30 yards. I've seen deer with bigger holes in them go further. Then again, I shot a deer last year with a .351 Winchester, with its 180gr Hawk bullet going a leisurely 1700 fps. That buck also only went about 40 yards. All were heart lung shots, not shoulder breakers.

Consistent drops at impact result from CNS damage (butt hits first then head). Baring direct CNS hits, the more tissue that is destroyed= the faster things die. With the right bullets you can and do get wound channels big enough due to fragmentation and temporary stretch cavities that will damage the spinal cord from pure rib shots.

When talking about terminal ballistics given two bullets- one with a long and narrow wound path (TSX, GMX, etc) and one with very wide yet relatively shallower wound path (AMAX, Berger, old NBT's, etc) as long as sufficient penetration is achieved to reach vitals with both.... The one that creates a wider wound channel will kill faster. Make that wound channel wide enough (temporary stretch cavity) and it will easily damage the spine consistently from broadside rib shots with no bone involved.


5, 10, or even 15 instances does not mean much. 40-50 instances start to show a trend. Between hunting and depredation I have shot several hundred deer- from 80lb does in Alabama to very large bodied mule deer and whitetails in Montana and the Midwest.

Using only those bullet/cartridge combinations that I have more than 50 kills with no bone being involved-


300WM-

1) 178gr AMAX. Despite well over 100 kills with pure chest shots this combo is still in the single digits of animals that have so much as twitched after impact. All but two were well over 400 yards of those that have moved. 95% + of animals have dropped at impact from this combo. The reason is simple- an extremely wide wound channel with a bullet that will fragment.

2) 190 and 220gr SMK's. Almost all run a bit despite extremely large exit holes. The reason being that SMK's tend to tumble after penetrating 5-8 inches and fragment rather than expanding traditionally.

3) 150gr and 180gr Corelokts. Most all ran.





308win-

1) 168gr and 175gr SMK's, most all run. Same reason as the SMK's in the 300WM.

2). 168gr AMAX's. Around 40% drop at impact. Here we see a frangible bullet that causes a wide wound channel, but due to velocity and less fragments does not create a wound channel wide enough to consistently disrupt the CNS. In contrast the 155gr AMAX starts to approach the velocity/frag necessary.




243win-

1) 95 NBT. Around 80-85% flop from chest hits. It's a little monster of a bullet.



223/5.56-

1) 77gr SMK's. Very few drop at impact from chest hits.





I've killed a bunch of deer with a bunch of different cartridges and bullets, some combos approaching 40-50 kills, yet the above are the ones that I have the most experience with.

2muchgun,

Here's the quote from the original post: "Under 200 yard shot trough the lungs, what cal. and bullet grain has been the shortest recovery?"

No mention of hitting bone, sternum, etc. Most of the responders (including me) have taken that to mean a double lung shot--particularly since it mentions "lungs," as in two.

I don't have white tail deer anywhere near me, but have shot/seen shot black tail deer, mule deer, antelope, and even a bighorn I can provide experience for some like sized animals.

The fastest kills I have seen with a double lung are:
130gr Berger target VLD. Cartridge 6.5 Creedmoor
105 Berger Hybrid from a 243WSSM

My muzzle loader with a 270 gr powerbelt platinum trumps all my regular center fire double lung down. Dropped like Clyde in Any Which Way but Loose, when Clint pointed his finger at him and said "bang".

.30-06 and 150's.

There are lungs behind the brisket?

Neck shots, regardless of caliber.