Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 6.5 vs 30 cal blood trails?

JW we have more in common than initials. grin

I certainly can’t remember the years but I clearly remember gun writers saying pre internet
days the the 243/6mm cartridges accounted for more than their share of instant
drop kills.

I personally have had more I D aka DRT with FAST moving bullets.... as long as they open up
and don’t “pencil thru”.

Now back to Blood Trails.

Jerry

I've seen both good and bad blood trails from .264 and .308 holes, from a plethora of bullets at various impact velocities.
The only constant I have seen is that snow makes the sparse blood trails easy, though the only times I have needed one is when I make a poor hit.

This was not a poor hit via 200 grain Speer Grand Slam (old style) at ~200 yards from a .300 H&H. Impact velocity what...2400ish FPS? That right side would be the exit hole, right at half way up the body, tight behind the shoulder. Notice there is no blood to the left (entry hole). This I would guess is due to the expanded bullet making a bigger exit hole and "pushing" everything that direction in the body cavity? Sometimes I see blood on both sides and sometimes just one. I can't explain it.



Discuss.

I have observed bigger differences in blood trails depending on the point of impact than depending on the caliber of the bullet.

For example, a hit low in the chest will give rivers of blood while a hit high in the chest may not leave a drop in the ground until the place where the animal fall dead.

BINGO!! I observed that quite a while ago. I've had deer cavities FULL of blood until it was down then blood, blood, blood.

tinman said,

"Half the time a critter runs closer to the road, not further so that argument is a draw for me".

I understand your situation. I haven't hunted close to a road very often since 1977.
Last year I spined a Doe before she crossed a property line with a < driveway> but that was unusual for me.

Jerry

Pretty country TInman...
I wanna say that 90% of the time I'm hunting with snow on the ground, I'm calling coyotes. Of the few deer and antelope I've shot with snow on the ground, I don't recall having to track anything

We also run into property line issues here when tracking wounded game. There is no "right to pursue" without landowner permission.
The buck I mentioned hitting with the Brenneke slug? Died looking at a fence that I couldn't have crossed, legally to retrieve him

I'll put a plug in here for the OnX Huntmap APP It makes contacting landowners easier.
But it can't change a bitter old woman's mind... (story about a buddy's lost buck)

When hunting in the south GA piney woods, we like a pass-through, we've found most "dead" deer run anywhere from 0-100 yards and finding them is a lot easier with a good blood trail. We like to eat them so we typically don't blow their shoulders out if we can help it.

Nothing is guaranteed when talking blood trails, but something that will generally exit with a decent-sized hole does increase your odds of finding your deer more easily if it runs. You still have to put it in the right spot (high lungs may not leak), and even then, you'll have oddball instances where you just don't get the leakage you think you should. Having said that, the law of averages says that wrecked vitals and a good exit will help out over the long run.

Fully concur Ted, mirrors my experience exactly.

We are meat hunters & try to stay off bone (generally), .243 - 30-06, 10-100 yards at most, average around 40 yards !

Here's the other thing I'd like to see discussed by those that need a blood trail:

We hunt the boreal forest of Northwestern Ontario. Every animal I shoot that does the death run, I can see the direction it goes & more often than not, I can hear where it drops (generalization).

When Deb & Doug (.243 & 100gr fed blue box) shot their 1st WT bucks, I put them on the blood trail & told them to follow it, then walked to the area I knew they had dropped & met them at the end of the blood trail.

Yeah, I've found several deer that didn't bleed but I heard where they crashed. Is handy when your shots are close-range like that. Pays to listen to the death run if you can.

I don't doubt that at all.
I hunt open areas often where I usually see the critter drop, but have hunted enough of the east coast, north Idaho/NW Montana and the Alaskan jungle to generally be confident that I can simply walk in the same direction that the critter took off to, and normally find them piled up just out of sight, to include bow kills. No blood trail needed. With poor hits, this is all off the table of course.

I generally avoid shoulders for the exact same reason as you. I don't exactly "need" the meat but I don't go out of my way to ruin what I legally need to salvage, especially when I see zero difference in how far the critter runs. This cow elk made it 20-25 yards with an obviously broken shoulder, which is about average distance I have seen them go when both lungs are punched (excepting hits to the back and top of the lungs). That gritty bone marrow blown all over is absolutely NASTY. The bullet stayed in her and I do not recall where I ended up finding it, but it didn't break the off shoulder despite being a perfectly broadside shot. She was hit with a .340 Wby and 200 accubond at about 300 yards and if there was a blood trail at all, it wasn't enough for me to recall, nor need.


Reason #2 to avoid shoulders on perfectly broadside shots.

Agree. We haven’t had to track/trail them but they tore stuff up.

Two of last three whitetail retrievals on our place have been complicated. One was mine. Middlin' buck doing the rut thing - start/stopping. Would not have fired but for it being a cripple, so worth the risk. 150 yds, naturally moved at the shot so hit farther back than I wanted. Appreciated the placement in recoil but figured dead, and knew it after seeing plenty of blood at site. But snowstorm had commenced and light was fading. An hour later had zip, a whiteout in darkness, with no way to track. First light took the chocolate bozos out, and they found it in mere seconds. Had run downhill, across, then uphill to a higher elevation than where it started. Nearly a 3/4 circle. Dead under a snow-covered deadfall less than 100 yds linear distance slightly uphill. I would not have found it - before other critters - without canines.

Following year a permitee shot a small 8 around 200 yds with a .270. He was pretty sure of placement, but not being sure about his skills told him not to persist in the dark. Bozos did the honors again at first light; he'd made a perfect heart shot, just under 100 yd run. It had done a downhill then somewhat back up semicircle.

Don't buy absolutes concerning blood trails, and their usefulness. They may not be needed, or they can be very handy. .30s usually leave blood more reliably than .22s. But there are anecdotes to the contrary.

Zone -- you omitted the REST of the story,

[quote=Sam_H]Two of last three whitetail retrievals on our place have been complicated. One was mine. Middlin' buck doing the rut thing - start/stopping. Would not have fired but for it being a cripple, so worth the risk. 150 yds, naturally moved at the shot so hit farther back than I wanted. Appreciated the placement in recoil but figured dead, and knew it after seeing plenty of blood at site. But snowstorm had commenced and light was fading. An hour later had zip, a whiteout in darkness, with no way to track. First light took the chocolate bozos out, and they found it in mere seconds.

** > Had run downhill, across, then uphill to a higher elevation than where it started. Nearly a 3/4 circle.<***

Dead under a snow-covered deadfall less than 100 yds linear distance slightly uphill. I would not have found it - before other critters - without canines.

Following year a permitee shot a small 8 around 200 yds with a .270. He was pretty sure of placement, but not being sure about his skills told him not to persist in the dark. Bozos did the honors again at first light; he'd made a perfect heart shot, just under 100 yd run.

** > It had done a downhill then somewhat back up semicircle.
-----------------------------------------


Yes,
Fellows, they don't always run downhill. A pard shot a dandy buck in Miss. Killing shot >> ran immediately UPhill.

Jerry

I have no problem with tracking a deer. Hitting them in the DRT spots is a plus, but it doesn't make a, through the ribs, double lung blood trail a bad hit. I may have to walk a little farther, but I haven't shot up much meat and the deer is just as dead.

Ribs are wasty junk, just like chicken wings.
Too much meat on the neck to risk messing
any of it up, or risk damaging a backstrap
with splinters of bone.
JMHO- I always go for the pump house.
Animals can't live without their blood.

Just like Arnold said, if it bleeds we can kill it

All that said, I let everybody hunt like they want
to and expect the same courtesy from them

I've been shooting a 260 Remington since some people were calling it a 6.5/08. I also shoot several 30 cal rifles. I haven't noticed much difference in the amount of blood that I could attribute to the calibre of the rifle. I decided a long time ago that a hole that goes all the way through makes everything easier. I have had no problem getting that with either the 260 Remington or one of my 30 calibre rifles. Like several have said, pick your bullets for the results you want as well as the location of your shots.

As it pertains to blood trails anything one does to increase the odds of an exit leads to smaller entrance holes and less internal damage. Less internal damage leads to the need to track an animal longer.
Personally I have had 180gr ballistic tips out of a 300 rRUM my fist size entrance holes with no exit lay down more blood than a TTSX out of the same gun that did exit.

Like bullets with like shot placement, the difference is negligible. A 6.5 Creedmoor with a 120 NBT and a 308 with a 150 NBT, both with lower lung shots, paint an almost identical trail to me.