Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What bullets from which cartridges have you stopped in a deer?

30-06 150 gr speer grand slam
.243 100 grain
.32 Win
12 guage Hornady sst

These were all quartering away shots with rifles into the far shoulder. The shotgun slug went in behind the ribs and acted like a blender on the lungs. Most shots just pass through though.

I don't consider it a bad thing as all of the bullet's energy is unloaded into the deer.

6.5x55 142ABLR in whitetail buck and in a cow elk just under offside hide, 6.5x55 140AB in muley buck jsut under offside hide. 300RUM 200 Aframe under offisde hide cow elk, 300RUM 180Swift Sco. in offside hide bull elk. 308 168 Berger VLD in pieces offisde hide antelope.

I don't keep track or recall all of them. I've had quite a few ballistic tips, game kings, corelokts, fusions, and federal blue box not exit. There's also been a few interloks not exit deer. Hitting at least one shoulder seems to greatly increase the odds. Mine would have been from 7mm-08,308, 25-06, and 30-06. I normally use bonded/monos north of 3000fps and I don't remember any not exiting. I don't really count frontal shots. It makes sense that cup and cores don't exit as often as the Barnes/Partitions. I haven't used accubonds much. Do they expand a little wider or faster than other bonded bullets?

Last fall's buck stopped a 200gr. Hornady RN out of my .35 Whelen on a quartering shot at 100yds..

This was a round ball from a 58 ca. MZ with 100 gr Pyrodex. It went through the upper scapula, hit the bottom edge of the spine and stopped under the hide on the other side.


The only other recovery was from a 300 gr. Winchester 45-70 that cut a clean half moon out of a maple sapling, it was deflected enough that it went through the deer on an angle & stopped under the hide of the opposite side rear leg.

I shot my first deer in 1964 (I think) and I have shot more then I can easily count. I have shot them with many guns, and some of these rifles were used with many loads and bullets.
So I am not able to list all of them, but I can remember many that stopped my bullets. I always prefer exits, but probably 1/4 of the deer I have killed didn't have exits.

I'll list a few here. All from deer only. No elk, bears, antelope or moose, and no horses sheep or cattle.

I remember two shot with a 300 savage with a 150 grain bullet when I was quite young that left the bullet under the skin on the other side. They were with factory loads, but I can't remember who's.

I shot a few with Sierra 130 grain boat tails from a 270 in the late 60s and early 70s and had them blow up badly and not exit. Same with a Winchester Silvertip factory load (even worse). I had 2 blow-ups with the old Norma 130 grian steel jacketed bullets.
I recovered a few (I think 4) Remington 130 grain Core-Lokts. Beautiful perfect mushrooms, but didn't exit.

From 270 Winchesters I recovered a 140 grain Hornady Boat tail from one very big mule deer in Nevada. I also recovered a 150 grain Speer Grand Slam from a Nevada buck. Both of those deer were shot at very long range.

I killed 4 deer with 150 grain 30-30s. One was with a Sierra, one was with a Hornady and 2 were with factory loads, one a Federal, and one a Remington. All 150 grain 30-30s stopped in the deer. In fact I have only shot those 4 deer with a 150 grain 30-30 loads and all the rest have been with 170 grain bullet both factory and handloads (Speer 170) and I have never stopped a 30-30 in a deer with a 170 Gr.

I shot one big buck with a 58 cal REAL cast bullet and was shocked to find it had turned 90 degrees and was found in the rump. The deer was broadside and I shot it in the front shoulder with a Hawken copy I made when I was a kid. That bullet was about 30" away from where I hit the deer, but at a 90 degree angle.

I had blow-ups with 6.5 Swede with 120 grain Remingtons and 120 grain Speers both.

Also I have had blow-ups with 100 grain Remington Core-Lokt 257 caliber, from my 25-06, and one blow up with a 120 grain Sierra on a large doe I shot at about 175 yards.

I have recovered three 170 grain 8MM Hornady SSTs from deer, 2 of which were only jackets and one was a beautiful mushroom.

I recovered a Remington 200 grain .358" bullet that I sized down to .356 and used in a 9X56 Mannlicher.

Another was a Speer 200 grain Hollow Point from a 44 mag Browning m92 carbine.

I have stopped 150 grain 30-06s with Sierra BTs and Speer Hot Cores quite a few times. I also had a Speer Hot Core come apart and not exit a doe mule deer when fired from a 300 Norma mag. I recovered a 180 grain Winchester Power Point from one big buck with the picture perfect mushroom. I was surprised that one didn't exit.

Same with a Hornady 139 grain flat base from a 7MM Rem Mag. Shot was about 250 yards away and slightly quartering toward me. Bullet came apart and I recovered about 1/4 of the jacket.

The 122 grain Factory Wolf 7.62X39 breaks up in deer. I and my Wife have killed 3 with that round and none exited.

Those are the ones I remember right now. I may come back and add more as I remember. Right now I need to get back to work.

The 180 game king I caught from my weatherby was a big buck. The core was loose but with the jacket. The 35 Game king I caught from my Whelen went lengthwise through a grown buck and was a perfect mushroom. The 30 165 gn CoreLokt I caught this year was a perfect mushroom just like the Remington commercials too. The 243 bullets I caught maybe 2 of them the jacket held the core the rest were blown up and separated. The deer died though. That was the goal.
I do like bullets to blow a hole through to bleed out of. Makes the ones that run easier to find.

Not a deer, but my dad stopped a 168gr Nosler Ballistic Tip in this guy at daylight this morning, from his front porch. Ran it through the shoulders at 2,900+/-MV from a 300SAUM M7. About 100yds to the impact and DRT. We've had really good luck with that bullet on hogs and whitetails, but I'm not totally surprised to see boar shoulders occasionally stop a cup/core at that speed, even one with a heavy jacket.

I just realized I forgot to include a .375" 270 grain Winchester Failsafe fired from my .375 H&H into a whitetail buck.

12 guage - 00, 0, #1, and #4 buckshot
30-30 - Rem 150 gr Core-lokts, Speer 130 gr FN, Sierra 150 gr FN, and Hornady 160 gr FTX
6mm - Sierra 87 gr HPBT
270 - 130 gr Rem Core-lokt and Sierra 135 gr MK

I have recovered a few from Moose and Elk.

But deer? Only one comes to mind

100 gr Hornady Interlock FB, shot into the front chest of a mulie doe at about 30 yards. Found it under the hide in the abdominal muscles, in good shape. I considered it good performance.

The only projectile I ever recovered from a deer had already passed through a broadside doe at about 15 yards back in Nov. 1997 in a foot of snow. It was an old 12 ga. Foster style deer slug. Back before I had a rifled slug barrel for hunting shotgun areas. The shot was on a slight downward angle as I was sitting on a hillside overlooking a flat "shelf" in the hill. Deer didn't go far and when I walked back to my sitting spot to retrieve my gear I paused to look at the deers tracks where I had hit it. Saw some blood spray in the snow and a few yards further saw a line in the snow that got deeper and turned into a small tunnel. That line in the snow lined up perfectly with my firing point. In disbelief I dug through the snow tunnel a few feet with my bare hands and plucked out a nicely mushroomed Foster slug. Still have it and if I were more computer literate I'd post a picture of it here. I once posted it on another outdoor / hunting forum but this site's a bit too difficult for dinosaurs like me. To date that's still my one and only recovered projectile from a game animal but I'm always looking for another one.

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.

Not many.

140gr old .270 BT failed to pass-through on close-range facing neck shot

100gr Sierra PH 6mm blew up the heart of a doe standing broadside at 100 yards

180 Core-Lokt factory .30/06 through the shoulders of a pretty big 8-point. That deer reared up like a horse and fell back, stone dead.

295gr Barnes T-EZ ML bullet over 80gr of BH lodged, perfectly expanded, in the spine of a buck between the shoulders after a frontal shot at 40 yards

130gr .270 Hornady IL bounced off the far-side chest wall of an average buck at 40yards. Knocked a tuft of hair off that far-side. Total destruction, but deer ran over 100 yards.

150gr Sierra .308 (forget which one) struck a buck going away, downhill, in the V of his chest. Found a little lead "button" behind his ear when I cut off his skullcap. That one's interesting.

Have actually only found a few inside, notably the Barnes ML, the lead button, and the Hornady .270.

Checked my hunting notes and found a bunch of bullets recovered from deer, plus a few antelope--which are about the size of small deer.

The bullets include Barnes X-Bullet, TSX and TTSX; Hornady Spire Point (both pre- and post-Interlock) and GMX; Norma Oryx; Nosler AccuBond AccuBond LR, Ballistic Tip, Partition, and Solid Base; Remington Core-Lokt and Core-Lokt Ultra Bonded; Sierra GameKing and ProHunter; Speer Hot-Cor; and Winchester Fail Safe.

The cartridges included .22-250, .243 Winchester, .257 Roberts,.257 Ackley Improved, 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.5x55, 6.5 PRC, .270 Winchester, 7x57, 7mm Remington Magnum, 7mm STW, .308 Winchester, .30-06, .300 Winchester Magnum, and .338 Winchester Magnum.

The lightest was a .224 70 Hornady GMX, and the heaviest a .338 225-grain Hornady Interlock Spire Point.

Most were recovered on angling or facing shots, but some were more-or-less broadside chest shots, primarily but not all through the shoulders.

I changed to barnes X many years ago and have never recovered one after taking 40-50 deer with them. This past year I too, 2 deer in WV with a 7x57AI with 120 gr TTSX and 1 with a 257AI with 100 gr TTSX. Took 2 in NC with 257AI with 80 gr TTSX. Working on a 9.3x62 with 250 gr TSX now for next season to try.

It has always amazed me how some people have never recovered a bullet of any kind as my experience, like yours, has been totally different.

I have recovered all sorts, the smallest being a few Sierra 55gr GKs from Roe Deers (55-60lbs) shot from a 5,6x50R and a 22-250, and the largest were a 300gr Barnes X recovered from a 190lbs Nyala (!) and a few 300gr RN Hornady Solids recoverd from Cape Buffalo, all of them shot from a 375H&H.

I suspect there are a few reasons:

Most hunters don't butcher their own game. Have recovered quite a few bullets when cutting up game, or even when eating it. Years ago I started chewing a round steak from a mule deer buck, and my teeth detected something hard--which I thought had to be a piece of bone. Instead it turned out to be an expanded Nosler Partition shot into the center of the buck's chest as it faced me in thick timber, which ended up in the buck's rump. Somehow my knife passed on either side of the bullet when slicing steaks! When bullets travel that far through an animal, they don't leave a big, bloody hole where they end up. Instead they're resting gently inside the muscle.

Most hunters don't shoot all that many animals. Eileen and I have recovered more Barnes X's of various sorts than many people, because we've shot a lot of animals with them, often at extreme angles, for over 20 years. In fact we recovered two 100-grain TTSX's from Eileen's .257 Roberts on consecutive animals, the first a cow elk, which might be expected. The second, however, was a doe pronghorn. It was almost directly facing her at around 150-175 yards, and once again we found the bullet in the rump.

Most hunters don't look very carefully. We are pretty obsessive about finding bullets that don't exit, because they provide interesting information. Still, there have been a few that we never found, even though there was no exit hole.

After learning how various bullets typically act, we're often willing--or unwilling--to take shots at angles, especially through bone, that others might not.

Also, in the U.S. about 95% of big game animals killed are white-tailed deer, and the vast majority of those are from stands where the shot placement and angle can be picked pretty carefully, often broadside through the ribs.

I also keep careful records of every animal killed.

John, What a morbid hobby! Just kidding, your efforts give insight into expected performance from many different bullets from many different cartridges, on many different game animals. Your work should be much appreciated by any big game hunter!

I do however, have a question. With your recovered Barnes X/TSX/TTSX’s.....were most considered “light for caliber” when compared to conventional cup and core? Or, where the majority consider a standard “weight for caliber” when compared to the accepted weight for a cup and core? Thanks, memtb

I was just thinking that 2 of the last 3 deer I shot were with a muzzleliader and 250 grain Shockwave. Recovered both bullets and neither expanded. One deer was 20 yards and the other 40. I use 100 grains of 777. Both were bad angles but [bleep] performance

Neither from a tree stand and I butcher my own deer