Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Furthest death run

310 yards with no blood trail. Shot a nice doe broadside through the lungs years ago and she took off on an apparent death run. The shot was in the neighborhood of 125 yards. She would have been lost except for the fact she ran through some six year old planted pines that had relatively clean underbrush.....easy to see through.

No sign of the doe the first 50-60 yards and I became concerned. Searched all morning long and eventually found her. Perfect shot but zero blood leaking out of the hole. I took out my GPS and marked a waypoint there and backtracked to the spot where was shot, marking another waypoint. 310 yard straight line distance between the two, not accounting for any zig zagging. Their was no blood found backtracking her trail.

Winchester model 70, 1951, 270. Barnes TTSX. I figure that lot of copper they used must have been exceptionally hard as I shot a nice 8 pointer that season five times with that same rifle and load. Every shot icepicked through with no expansion @ 150 or so yards. Perhaps my strangest tale of terminal performance, as he went down but not out with shot #1....still kicking and tying to get up. Put the other four rounds through the same spot and he was still breathing when I walked up to him. One shot with my 1911 45ACP loaded with a Golden Saber bullet did the trick.

110 yards, double-lunged with a 170 Hornady FP from a .30-30, deer had been kicked up by someone else's movement so was on the run.

It showed no sign of being hit and I just couldn't see how I missed, so I just started walking in the direction he ran, found him graveyard dead....

I had shot from a treestand, hit was high in the lungs so it 60 or 70 yards before I saw blood.

Heart shots seem the worst to me. Every deer I have shot in the heart has run a long ways. Not very helpful when you hunt in steep country like I do most of the time. I like a dead center shoulder shot, but even then, a mature buck will generally make it a little ways.

About 600 yards; she was shot from a tower stand at 200 yards with a 95 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip in a Post-64 M70 chambered in 243 WIN. The doe and a spike buck came out into a small cotton field (200 yards across) adjacent to a large cotton field, just about dark, she was standing and I put the bullet right through her heart. She ran like she was shot out of a cannon, passed a stand that was 400 yards away from me and kept going. She circled, ran back and stopped still about 100 yards in front of me. I put a second round in her heart and she stood still a minute, then fell over like a piece of plywood falling over. The two rounds went in about 3/4" apart. I've never seen a deer run like that, before or since. To make matters even more strange, the spike ran around and stopped about 50 yards in front of me, I shot him in the heart and he ran 80 yards and died with his head in the edge of the swamp. Everywhere he bounded it looked like a pint of red paint had been sprayed across the cotton plants. That was the last time I used a 243 WIN, maybe it was the bullets.

Buck I shot this year. 250'ish yard shot. He ran probably 200'ish yards with a decent lung shot. I will say, it was a bit high, but there was plenty of blood. Deer are tough and do weird things.

I've had some LONG runs on lung shot deer. Good shots, good blood trails, and in most of these cases I've been HAPPY with the long runs. A lot of what I hunt are mountain sides and a lung shot deer can cover a lot of ground running downhill. If given the chance I'll choose my placement to let them run or drop them depending on where I want them to end up.....running's not always a bad thing!

I shoot coues deer. I havent seen much running. 0 with my 28 nosler. One buck I heart shot with my 257 wby sprinted about 25-30 yards directly into a mesquite tree.

Do pheasants count ?

I’ve had them fly 140-200 yards and fall out of the sky like they were hit by lightning

DITTO




Back of the neck works too. Walking straight away.





Jerry

Farthest I have ever seen a deer run after a chest hit was about 1 mile. 7-08 and the hit was on the shoulder blade, shot from a steep hill trying to make the bullet come out the bottom of the chest on the other side. Range was about 40 yards. Bullet was a Burger 140 grain. I was along for that hunt, not the shooter. The girl was 14 years old and her dad and I took her out for her 1st deer. It was not a good memory for her, but thankfully she still hunts today and she's now 29 and married with kids that also hunt.

Farthest run from a deer I ever shot was a weird one. Again about 40-45 yards away and the gun was a 9.3X57 Mauser with a 250 grain Nosler Accubond. Hit was as centered in the chest as I could want, and the bullet could not have been better placed if I could have touched the buck with the muzzle. The exit was the size of a goose egg and exactly where I would have wanted it to exit. Chunks of lung were found in the brush and on the ground. Yet that whitetail ran about 450 yards. One of those "impossible runs" but that's what happened. All other game hit with that gun and load dropped at the shot or within a few feet. I have no explanation at all.

Longest run I have ever seen from any animal was an elk and was the very first client I ever guided on my own guide's license, back many years ago in the Selway of Idaho. 7MM Rem mag, 25 yard shot from a steep slope and that bullet hit the ridge on the shoulder blade of a 6X6 bull. Almost exactly like the deer I wrote about first. I even told the hunter "you're good, he's dead" so he didn't he shoot again and THAT WAS A MISTAKE!!!! I SAW the round hit the bull and was sure he would drop in 2-3 seconds. Placement looked great. Penetration's was VERY poor we found out later. It was a Sierra 140 grain Game King. and the load was very fast, probably about 3100 FPS.
The bull jumped over a deadfall and took off down the hill. Those that have hunted in the Selway will understand what I mean when I say "downhill". The shot was at about 8:45 in the morning. We caught up with the bull, still alive and still moving at about 5:00 that afternoon. 2 more shots to the rear of the lungs and the liver put it down. On the map the length of the blood trail looked like a bit more than 2 miles long, but going the crooked path it took, I think the real run was about 2 lightyears. That's how it felt anyway.

If they don't drop SHOOT AGAIN if possible. I was young then and had about 6 years of experience. Now I am in geezerhood and I say SHOOT AGAIN if you can! Now I have over 1/2 a century of elk hunts behind me, so I think I can say from experience, if the don't drop, keep shooting.

I may be a slow learner, but I am a learner.

A young antelope buck, shot from approximately 200 yards, with a 243 and Remington 100gr CL low and through the heart, putting a hole through it, ran about 450 yards, all out, and then just tumbled.

Ever had 1 fly straight up? I shot one when I was a kid that had its skull opened up and it flew straight up, i bet it was 600 feet up when it folded. Its head was hanging down the entire time.

in the past i got tired of following blood trails so i started using a bigger rifle cartridge then i got tired of the recoil too. but i finally found a great old cartridge about 15 years ago that ended those dang blood trails or made them very short to follow with plenty blood .i now use a 257 Weatherby Mag. with good bullets in my handloads bucks started dying faster, much closer and many times right where i shot the animal and on the ground right away dead.

We hunt in an area where the hills are really steep and there are ravines that are straight up and down at the bottom. I've had two deer run just far enough to get stuck at the bottom of a ravine.They didn't run that far, but they got a run at it and ended up at the bottom. I had one roll down the hill towards me kicking and I had to jump up from my tree seat because he landed where my feet had been. He was dead when he got there.

You are right about that.Finding the right bullet for the cartridge your shooting does make a huge difference in the final outcome.

200-300 yards with a 243 and 85gr Barnes. My daughter has shot a ton of deer with that combo with fantastic results. One doe during an early youth hunt years ago took one through both lungs and went a good 200-300 yards before she died in some tall grass. Took me a while to find her as the blood trail wasn’t great.
My daughter can shoot and I watched the shot through my binos so I was sure she made a good shot but I was starting to have doubts before I finally found the deer. Shot was textbook and the internal damage was normal but that deer went a lot further than normal. I can’t explain the poor blood trail as the bullet exited and looked like any other she has shot with that combo. That one always puzzled me.

Heartshot with a .270 Wby -- doe ran 120 yards then piled up.

Guy I hunt with hit an 8 point broadside with a 7RM one morning. Deer went 175 yards with a softball size exit would and pumping blood like a horror movie so it was easy to find. It was the driest gutting of a deer I've seen.

I’ve never had a deer run more than a hundred yards when the bullet performed and shot placement was right. However I have had to trail several deer in my life over a hundred yards because I made a bad shot.

blackpowder72's 'need help with deer reaction to shot' thread buck is the longest run. That sonofabitch is STILL going, evidently.....