Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Europe Back to the field...

After a forced truce of a month,consecutive to a very untimely fractured elbow, I have sufficiently progressed in my revalidation to handle a rifle, so that I could resume hunting last week (Roebucks are in full rut). The season being advanced, I gave priority to selection instead of trophies and was able to cull these 2 unpromising bucks :



BTW, with an eye on stalking Wild boar on a new hunting lease in another area, I had switched from my std. Roedeer .30-06 handload (165 Sierra GK) to a heavier 180 gn Norma Vulkan handload. Both bucks were shot with the latter and I was surprised by the rather violent expansion of the Vulkan on such light bodied game. I had expected smaller wounds from the Vulkan heavier and harder bullet.

Congrats Andr�, it looks like you have a very good recovery.

I use the 170 grains vulkans in a 7x64 bolt action, it expands very well on roe deers, even on foxes as you can see:



Female on the top was a clean kill but bullet going down on a 3/4 facing fox exited through the belly. The big male was hitted two times, through second bullet hitted no major bone you see the expansion... At 92 meters.

Both of you guys, with your pics, have helped to prove what JB ( Mule Deer ) has been saying all along, even heavier bullets expand immediately, then drive on through flesh, instead of the persistent myth of them needing a lot of " animal" to expand in, and " penciling on through"....

Nice shooting BTW...and the fresh venison gives me an idea for supper....

Ingwe

I guess bullet construction matters more than weight. A heavy fail safe probably won't expand on such games. But I'm sure I've got an expansion with .375 / 300 grains SAF on roe deers; unfortunately I have nothing more but holes to figure it.

It gave such holes, every time:

Barnes put out a slow motion demo of their TSXs...plainly showing them opening in the first four inches or so...and one of the gripes with Swift Scirocco is that they open too much, not allowing as deep a penetration as the A-Frames due to frontal surface area...
A .375 with a Swift A-Frame 300 grainer for Rose Deer...our Elmer Keith would LOVE you!!


Ingwe

It's simply part of the preparation for bigger critters and countries ... I lost one animal in Namibia, just one inch more to the left or to the right and bones would have been crushed and game would have been retrieved, that's part of hunting, but how many would I have lost with an unknown rifle / caliber and unused shoes ? I'd rather not to try it

Well GV, noting your description of the shot on the lost African game, it was and is really a case of the bullet hitting the critter in the right place to do the dirty work. Nice critters BTW.