Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Most bullets flung at a game animal?

400 grain Speer .458" from my .460 going about 2500 fps.


Where I hit the bunny, it was @75 yards away.


Same bullet, but different bunny.

IMHO, I don't like you using underpowered weapons to shoot bunnies. Get you a 50 BMG.

Just need a .50 BMG now.

i was 18 or 19yo and over 6 or 7 years, i shot a number of deer. when it happened, i was using a Rem m700 Mountain rifle in '06 with factory ammo in (4) 180gr Rem. SP AND (1) 180gr Rem RN. i couldn't find 180gr Rem RN factory ammo, so i got the 180gr Spire Points.

anyway, i'm sitting in the woods and i can hear deer coming. then i see them. ok, a small group of doe, which it's buck season, doe season's in couple of weeks, so i let them go. they come on a trail some 20+/- yards left of me. then i hear a deer coming the same way as before. then i see a small 6pt. i let him go till he gets on trail about 20+/- yards away, broadside, then Bang!!! he stands there looking around, so i work the bolt and Bang! he turns around still looking for the shot. i work the bolt and Bang! he then walks a couple of feet and looks around. i work the bolt and Bang! he then runs about 15-20 yards and falls down. at this point, i'm mad and i'm telling myself that while i work the bolt. i'm wondering why and how my scope's off. when all of the sudden, i see him trying to stand up. well, i put crosshairs on the spine between the shoulders and Bang! dead deer. i then go to deer and try to find out what happened. 3 of 4 shots were a quarter sized group, while the fourth was back part in the lungs. the fifth shot i shouldn't have done, he wasn't going anywhere. it was on the spine and the hole it exited was like two hands fisted between the front legs.

the first thing i did was to go to the spot where i first shot the small 6pt. i looked around and i found some hair, but no blood. i followed the tracks a couple feet and i found some more hair. i followed the the tracks some more and i looked up and a sapling was hit by my bullet. that explains why my shot was back in the lungs. well its time to gut it. when i got to lungs, i found out why. it was like pencil went thru the lungs. the SP bullets did not expand, while the RN did(my last shot). i think that was when i was on the reloading bandwagon. a few months later i got Lyman turret kit my gunsmith(RIP) was my mentor.

i can only remember two shots on deer a couple of times, most of the time, one shot/one kill. my brother has one shot/two kills on deer, tho. although he did empty cartridges on deer...i didn't say fire, he just emptied the rifle...lol!!! he was about 12 or 13yo, he just got excited and pulled the trigger with the safety on and worked the bolt. i laughed so hard that the deer got away.

on shoulder shots.....yes, i believe the game got away. if you have a Nosler BT, you have the chance to injure game. i shoulder shot an 8pt at 12' (feet) with a Ruger #1 in 270 Winchester with 130gr Nosler BT and IMR4320 going roughly 3000fps. the shot was in the shoulder and then the bullet fragmented, but it made a mess of the lungs and heart (lung soup with chunks of heart). after i was done field dressing it, i looked at the lung cavity and there was bruise or holes on the exit side of the lungs, just a hole going in. i had to throw the whole shoulder away form bloodshot meat. now i download the Nosler BT and the Hornady SST to 2700-2800fps and then the bullet mushrooms no matter what distance it is. yes, i shot many shoulders at 3000fps, before i downloaded them. i could see that the HP, BT or SST could fragment on the shoulder and only go into one lung and thats the recipe for trouble. i don't like track wounded deer, so i make sure of my first shot.

mostly i use cast bullets (10 - 15BHN) for deer. they are FN, WFN, and LFN. i don't use RN, although i'm told to soften up alloy (7 thru 12 BHN), but i don't know just because i don't like to track wounded deer.

I video'd a feral goat being shot from 70 yards with a 6.5x55 11 times before she fell.
Astonishing to see, it is the only animal I ever witnessed that required reloading the rifle 3 times.
If you don't know feral goats, it is utterly foolish to compare them to deer in toughness.

Besides a couple running deer with buckshot, I've only had to shoot one deer more than once. One morning, with the sun barely up, I looked down a lane in the woods and saw a large bodied deer with its head down. I shot him with a Nosler 240gr JHP out of a Remington 788 .44 Magnum. After the shot, I saw nothing. I didn't see him drop, nor did I see or hear him run. I just figured he was laying in the tall grass so got out of the stand and slowly made my way to where he was. Nothing. No deer, no blood. I slowly started walking in the direction he was facing. After about 100 yards, I jumped him and saw this large, odd antler. He was limping visibly going away from me and I took a snap shot. He kept going. I should have backed out but was determined to get another bullet into him. I jumped him two more times without getting a shot and finally backed off. I went to my buddy's stand and told him what happened then drove home (less than 10 miles) and grabbed two shotguns.

When I returned, my buddy and I went into the thicket and I eventually jumped him again. I had a clear shot and my buckshot load misfired.... By the time I got another round in the chamber he was gone again. Eventually we decided I would go out and stand on the logging road while my buddy tried to push him towards me. Eventually I heard him yell "He's coming your way" and I heard crashing through the brush. Sure enough, he popped out on the road about 40 yards away. I threw up and fired and he dropped. When I got to him he was still trying to get up so I pulled my Colt Mustang out of my pocket and gave him two .380s in the back of the noggin. So it took two .44 Magnums, one load of 0 Buck and two .380s to get him in the truck. The first .44 passed through that area above the lungs and below the spine, just barely taking a small chunk out of the top of one lung, then breaking the offside shoulder. The second .44 harmlessly grazed his side as he was going away from me. It was a big bodied buck with the freak rack shown.

Happened to me. Early 90's. Shot an antelope buck square on the shoulder with a 165 grain Nosler BT out of a 300 Win Mag at about 3200 fts at about 150 yards. When the gun cracked hair went flying in every direction. Antelope stumbled off with a blown up shoulder but it never penetrated the scapula. Broke his shoulder but not one piece of that bullet made it through. Stuck the next one in his ribs and killed him. Saw a women do the same thing on an antelope hunt a year or 2 later with a 243 shooting 100 gr. Nosler BTs. Blew the shoulder apart and we chased that thing all over the state of Montana before we got it killed. Saw a guy shoot an elk all to pieces with 180 grain Winchester BTs in about 2008 with a 300 WSM. Another sheetshow. What a mess that thing was. Looked like it had been hit by a tractor trailer. I asked the guy why he chose that bullet to hunt elk and he said it was the most accurate one he tried.

Nothing utter about any of it. Saw it all with my own eyes.

Another complete and utter bullsheit story.

Armored antelope?

My own personal story is a buck my father wounded when he was old and near the end of his hunting career. He shot 4 or 5 times at it and broke its front leg. So my brother and I went after it. So once an animal is wounded the aren't any more bad shots to try and get it killed and recovered. Gloves come off then.

It was in Pa and it was on a large farm I was the manager of at the time. It crawled into every nasty spot of multiflora rose and autumn olive it could find and a couple of times it broke cover and was blazing through the brush with both my brother and I shooting at it. We were walking through the stuff with a gun in one hand and a machete in the other and every time it busted out, we would have to drop the knife and start shooting. It finally broke out across a cut corn field at long range and my brother, and I continued to shoot at it although now it had a broke front and back leg. It got across to the neighbor's property and we heard one shot. Walked over there and there the poor buck laid and was absolutely shot to pieces. Only fatal shot was fired by the neighbor boy. He shot once at it and hit it right behind the shoulder and killed it stone dead. He asked us if we wanted it. Haha. Left it with him. Wasn't enough left of it to trouble ourselves. Not even a big buck. Puny little 6 point buck.

I don't even know how many shots were fired at that deer, I suspect it could have easily been 20. Or more. I often wonder what the neighbor boy thought hearing all that shooting and then seeing that deer stumble up to him and then 2 hunters with no bullets, bloody hands and faces and clothes torn to pieces come behind to see the deer.

Probably thought those are some sorry ass hunters, because that is exactly what I would have thought.

Level III plates 😁

Not necessarily.

I had a 210NP .338 blow up on a moose shoulder blade, totally shattering the blade. Near side lung was peppered with bits of bone and lead, but no damage to offside lung. Never found the back half of the bullet. I was not impressed when that moose came up off the ground when I was 10 feet away, in front of it - well I was, but not by the bullet performance! (Never did that again either!) Never used NP210 again, tho I'm sure that was an anomaly. That was about 20 years back.

Gonna load up the remaining 25 or so 210s for caribou this fall if I take that rifle, just to get rid of them - should work on those critters.

Nothing wrong or spectacular about the antelope.

Poor bullet construction. You haven't hunted much outside of bama have you?

I've humted all over the country, I'm just not stupid enough to believe a 180 grain bullet traveling 3K just encounters antelope hair and just goes poof. Just stfu and quit making yourself look like a f'ing idiot.

Happened. Hit bone and exploded, not hair. Small point, but it was a 165 grain Nosler ballistic tip bullet not 180.

If you don't think that can happen, it exposes you as somebody that hasn't shot much or hunted much or seen much game killed outside of what you have shot out of your tree stand overlooking a pile of corn.

Just a big mouth now manifested with a key board.

Put the bottle down. Time for bed.

There used to be a huge buck that lived over on the neighbor place to ours. We didn’t know he lived there because he was pretty much nocturnal, neighbor said he had seen him a couple times but only in the headlights when he got home late at night.

Well opening morning of rifle season, and smack in the middle of the rut, that sucker is laying in the middle of a buffalo grass pasture with a hot doe. They’re in plain sight of the highway and there’s 7 other smaller bucks staying close by right out in the open. When the smaller ones would move in too close the big boy would get up and make a run at them and push them back before laying back down beside the doe.

We were done with the morning hunt and headed home when we happen upon all of this taking place. We’re watching it all go down when the neighbor’s nephew and his buddy come pulling up to see what we’re doing and we point it out. They quickly circle around to walk in from behind the hill and try to kill him.

We head back onto our place and set up on the hill to watch and see what happens.

As soon as they topped the ridge to the west of the deer the doe saw them and headed out. When the big bastard followed the bullets started flying. They were 3/4 of a mile from our fence line with a bunch of rough country in between. Deep rocky draws chocked full of wild plums, cedars, and briars. Every time the deer would come into the open, BAM BAM BAM they’d empty their rifles. The deer would get down in the brushy bottoms and hunker down until the guys would come over on top of them and throw a rock down in the bottom or get too close to where they were laying and the lead would start flying again.

Eventually they pushed the whole entourage of 8 bucks and what must have been the best smelling doe in the county across the fence where the giant and the next biggest buck died from one .270 bullet apiece fired by my mom and dad. When they caught up and we talked to them they had two shells left between them, they’d gotten out of the truck with a box each. One guy was completely out and the other had only gotten off 18 rounds!

That has to be the most ammo I’ve ever seen expended on one deer and I’ve been in on some rodeos.

Go shoot a piece of 3/8 inch steel plate with something as small as a 55 gr NBT, even at an angle and get back to me. Don't blame your sheitty shooting skills on a 165 gr bullet blowing up on an antelope 🤣🤣🤣

I haven't read the thread, but since shot, by definition, is bullets, I'm not sure. I have shot 3 12 ga 3"mag #6 shot shells at a duck and that is a game animal.

So, IIRC, there is 1 1/2 oz shot, in that shot shell and that's about 330 shot/shell. So, 990 bullets flung at a game animal.

And, might I add, that/those dead ducks flew away.

Bullet hit the buck on the point of the shoulder. Nothing wrong with my shooting skills. That was 30 years ago when you were still probably sheeting yellow in diapers. Nosler has cleaned that up since. Shooting a ballistic tip now at 3/4 inch piece of steel would prove nothing. But how would you know that?

The fact that you have a big mouth, a bottle and a key board proves that you know exactly nothing.

Rookie.