Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Best Savage Bear Medicine

Not to belabor this point but since we are on the subject, the picture below is a very nice mature buck I killed in Virginia a few years ago. It was shot with a 300 Savage 180 grain Federal soft point. Pictured is the entry wound. The bullet exited the offside right behind the last rib.



The bullet cleaned out his entire vital system. He was standing in a dirt cut cornfield right at last light. After impact in about 5 seconds, he took about 10 or 12 jumps and was off the cornfield, he crossed a dirt road on the neighbor's property, and he was gone. Try finding blood on dirt in the pitch dark even with a good light. Found one drop of blood on a stone in the dirt road. Had to track down the landowner and get permission to follow the deer. I knew I hit him good and told the landowner I was confident the deer was dead, I just needed to find it. Luckily, he gave me permission to go after it. After it got across that dirt road it got in the nastiest tangle of multiflora rose and briars and autumn olive you can imagine. Stuff that will tear your clothes off. He started bleeding a little better and after about 2 hours I found him. He travelled about 250 yards or so. Probably took 15 or 20 seconds for the deer to make that trip. The ONLY reason I recovered that deer is because I had 2 large holes to bleed out of. If I would have shot that deer with a 250 Savage with 87 or 100 grain soft point bullet, no way no how I recover that deer. He would have been just as dead, but never would have got him. Coyotes would have feasted on him. Not because I'm not a good shot or made a bad decision and an unethical shot, but because I took the wrong gun.