Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles This season's rifle loads....

Well leading up to the hunting season before last I had only ever lost 1 deer that I could confirm a hit on in the 19 previous years of deer hunting. That season I shot 7 deer and lost 2 of the 7. Of the other 5 they all ran upon the shot. 3 of those 5 I found absolutely zero blood between where they were shot and where they were found dead. 1 left a "decent" blood trail (good enough to follow without crawling on hands and knees to follow to the dead animal) and the other left a blood trail of small droplets about the size of pencil erasers for about 100yds until I found the animal. When cleaning the animals the chest cavities are full of blood and often the lungs were mush. After seeing what I saw by the end of the season I have to imagine the other 2 animals died as well but I just couldn't find them. After talking with my buddy (a much older gentleman who has been handloading for over 30 years) the only conclusion we could come up with is that maybe the petals are breaking off and only the shank of the bullet is passing through the animal leaving a smaller than pencil sized hole on both the entrance and exit sides therefore the animals are leaving little to no blood on the ground at all. That was the first and only year I shot those loads for hunting season. May try same exact load but change the projectile from TTSX to Accubond and see how that shoots.

Randall