Funny, my Marlin 1894 .44 mag didn't kill deer any better than my .30-30. It kicked harder, wasn't as accurate and had much less effective range so I sold it and went back to using my .30-30. You had a freak occurrence with your .30-30. I once had a very similar experience with 12 gauge slugs. I did not conclude that 12 gauge slugs weren't good deer killers from that one incident and went on to kill dozens more with perfectly satisfactory results. Some deer just don't want to die in the usual expected fashion no matter what you shoot them with.
As I age, I've been able to put my history with the 30-30 behind me. It wasn't just one bad experience, btw. It was all sort of things going wrong for both my sons and I. Little by little a good deal of them finally got explained. The big watershed was Mooseboy finally fessing up years later that he'd been closing his eyes before pulling the trigger. That explained a lot.
I've acquired another rifle in 30-30, a Savage 340, and I'm currently working up a load for it. Eventually, I'll have 30-30 back in the rotation.
It's funny you mention 12 GA slug. For really close in work, I really could find little fault with my Rem 1100 with 12 GA Sluggers. When I was doing the majority of my firearms hunting out of my bow stands, the 12 GA was devasting. That's another project I've got on the back burner right now. The other deer gun I got out of Bob's collection was a Stoeger SXS. If you're looking for a quintessential old school Ohio deer gun, this is it:
![[Linked Image from genesis9.angzva.com]](https://genesis9.angzva.com/wp-content/uploads/wppa/2727.jpg)
Bob had this for decades, mostly as a conversation piece. He called it "Luigi;" as it reminded him of the shotguns used in The Godfather. He brought it out to the LGS to show it off. A fellow regular immediately saw the efficacy of using KAR 98 sights on an SXS shotgun and immediately went home and soldered up a similar rig.
