Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Interesting experience today

I was filling doe tags today with my .260 Rem with a 130 AB and 37.5 gr. Varget behind it. I haven't run it over a chrono yet, but it should be around 2700 fps from my Ruger. The first doe of the day heard me walking to where I intended to sit and curiously came over the hill to check me out, then kept walking towards me. She was heavily quartering towards me and I touched on on the lower part of the chest cavity. I heard the big "whump" of a good chest shot and she piled up after a 60 yd dash. When I got to her, she was dead, and it looked like I had skinned her brisket! The bullet broke the lower end of the on-side leg and skimmed the sternum. When I gutted her out, I discovered the bullet NEVER penetrated the ribcage, not the fault of the bullet, fault of the shooter. When I cut the windpipe the frothy blood came pouring out. The lungs were bruised all to heck. All I can figure is the bullet hit hard enough to severely bruise the lungs and she drowned in her own blood. Anyone else had any similar experiences?

See, we told you those little .260s would bounce off a deer, now you got proof! d:^)

My dad watched the whole thing through his 10x Zeiss binos and wondered what all the white stuff that flew was - frost or hair. I went back to the impact site and actually found the furrow that the bullet plowed in the ground. So yes, they do bounce off of deer. However, I disproved that theory on a huge doe about an hour later, it didn't bounce off!

That just means you have to hit the deer "square on" for it not to bounce off - no angle shots!

The .260 almost bounced off a deer...

Rest assured, a .270 would bounce off...

I just shot a doe yesterday that came around the corner of the skid road and just stood there looking at me.
Quartering hard to me> I centered the crosshairs on the onside shoulder and touched off the .270 150 grain Core lokts and she jumped the road and disappeared. When I found her 30 yards down the hill and skinned it I found the bullet broke the front shoulder, a rib in the front of the ribcage and exited the rear of the rib cage breaking another rib. .270 has worked well for me on my elk early in thr year and now 2 deer.

Yes we all have made bad or hurried shots...

Shhhhhhhhh, don't say that too loud, I don't want that deer in the freezer to hear you. He might want a rematch with that .270 bullet.

pb: this is kinda an old joke around the fire..me and a few others take potshots at .270 shooters like this, and they return by belittling me and the old 7x57 cartridge I shoot on occasion...

Kinda like that.....

I've only kilt one deer with a 7x57, a scrawny doe. But she died quick. I got no fuss with the .275 at all.

If I didn't have so much .270 stuff, I'd be using the 7x57, no question about it. And if you turn your head 90 degrees to the left and look at this:




d:^)

You can see it's a smiley face wearing a hat.

Oh I see what fun you are having. I didn't know what you shot.
Anyway it recieved the Winchester Model 70 .270 last year at a family reunion It belonged to my Granddad. I decided to fill all the tags I could this year with it.
It has been A great year carrying his rifle and honoring his memory.

It doesnt get much better than that.....

Thanks, I had an incredible year just for that reason.
I need to call my uncle and talk about some of the hunts he remembers Granddad using in on.
It is very special to me indead.


Sorry for the off subject post
OP asked about poor bullet penetration.
Maybe just too much angle in that situation.

When you learn..fill us in on another thread...

Will do.

Two years ago I had a bad expierence with a 7-08 139gr hornady. Broadside shot on a doe at 175 yards. The bullet exploded on the second rib from front, blew off a patch of hair the size of a softball and never entered the chest cavity. Rib fragments and blunt force trama to the lungs killed her. This was not the way I wanted to break in a new hunting rig. I have it in my mind as Bullet Failure ??? We shot other deer with those same lot of bullets with no problems. You never know.

Well you hunt long enough and shot game long enough, you will see some strange things and make some mess's along the way. I don't have any experience with AB's so I will not comment on them. Now Nosler Partitions, Hornadays Speer's Swift A Frames Woodleigh's Barnes Originals and a few X's and Trophy Bonded Bear Claws from Jack Carter himself, I can make some comment. Bullets do strange things when they hit meat. You could spent the rest of your hunting life shooting the same load and bullet and never see it again. You collected your deer no harm done. We as hunters and rifle loons to some extent tend to over think this stuff, I made a bad shot, on the first day of my deer season, I collected the deer but it was a little bit of a mess, to high and a bit of an angle and well I took out most of one back strap. I been beating myself up over it all month. Funny thing was I when to the range and re sighed the rifle, and well the bullets when were they always go with that one. I just screwed the pooch on it. Live and learn. When you stop learning, you are not alive anymore!

Agreed! I'm not complaining about bullet performance in the least, it admirably took out a large doe later in the morning with picture perfect performance. Just a combination of an odd shooting angle and a bullet placed 1 1/2" lower than it should of been, aka, shooter error. Lord knows I'm not perfect, but I'm thankful that it resulted in a dead deer instead of a sorely wounded deer. Just wondered if anyone else had experienced bruising a lung so badly that it killed the deer. When I was younger we used to shoot turkeys with a very precise and accurate .17 Remington at 100 yds or less. We aimed for the wing butt, and the bullet would never penetrate, but it knocked the bird flat and killed it by bruising the heck out of the lungs. Same scenario, but on a deer. I've never heard of it or seen it, I thought I'd share. Thanks for the input, and yes, I'm thankful I wasn't shooting a .270, I would have had a wounded deer instead of a dead deer.