In 50 years of deer, elk, and most everything else hunting, I have a jar with recovered bullets. Some of the more recent or unusual ones, I remember what I shot with them. I kept a journal on the elk that I've shot, and depending on the rifle and time period, I pretty much know what bullets I've used for elk. Also for the more "exotic" animals that I've shot, like moose, sheep, mountain goat, and on international hunts, I know which rifles I used and can figure out what bullet killed what animal. But for deer, I've used a variety of rifles with a bigger variety of bullets, so for most of the deer that I've shot I can't remember what bullet I used or if the bullet went through the deer or remained inside.
Some that I do remember were:
The last deer that I shot was a whitetail buck that I shot with a Nosler 115 grain Ballistic Tip that I shot with my .257 Ackley. The back portion (jacket) of that bullet is still on my kitchen window sill where I put it when I was processing that deer.
I also remember that I shot my largest mule deer, a 30" non-typical, that I shot with a hard cast round ball shot from my .45 caliber percussion muzzle loader. I found that ball inside the buck, and I learned why it should have been cast with pure lead as it hardly deformed.
And I remember finding a .35 caliber bullet lodged against a neck vertebrae of one of my first Montana whitetail bucks. Someone had shot that deer a year or more before I did, and the wound had completely healed around that bullet. I didn't know he had been previously shot until I found the bullet in his neck.
Another deer that I know the bullet stayed inside was a small muley buck that I shot while pheasant hunting one year. It was the second weekend of the season and I was hunting pheasants with my Miroku O/U 12 gauge shotgun my Handicap Trap loads of 3 dram 1 1/8 ounces of # 7 1/2 lead shot. I jumped that buck in the brush and he ran a few yards and fell down. When I approached him I could see a fresh wound on his back leg that had broken the femur. So I switched to the full choke barrel, and from about 15', I put that load of shot between his eyes, and that ended my deer season that year.
