Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Frontal Diameter correlating to exit hole/blood trail

I don't know if I have shot enough deer to claim to be an expert. But my impression is fast bullets tend to lead to more bang flops and DRTs, but big slow bullets leave more blood.

My guess is that about 99% percent of the time a decent deer cartridge shooting a bullet of reasonable weight and construction will lead to pretty near the same result. maybe 1 percent of the time would a heavier bullet or a bigger caliber or a faster bullet make much of real difference.

If you want to shoot a 358 win or 338fed, and it will give you more confidance.. go for it. But as we all know well placed bullets kill well, and its rare event when a bullet of cartridge bail you out of a poorly placed shot.

I do a good amount of hunting in thick places like you showed and a little carful triming preseason can help a lot.

i agree on the trimming i just moved my stand here last week

bja105,
maybe with the big bores like a 458 there bullets are not designed to expand on a thin whitetail, but need something like an brown bear or musk ox, after all if they expanded on a WT I would be pooping when it came to a water buf or elephant and using the same bullet

First of all, the .260 rem/130gr accubond is a good combination, and adequate for any deer. Ultimately, shot placement must have been a problem. However, if you wanna look more into the topic, this is well worth looking thru if you have the patience:

http://www.rathcoombe.net/sci-tech/ballistics/wounding.html

This is good data. In short, you get an exponential increase in volume of a wound as you go up in calibre . Greater sectional density doesn't necessarily mean better penetration. In fact, many very long, high sectional sensity bullets actually penetrate less well because of the fall in velocity with increasing mass.

You need to balance your bore-to-cartridge capacity according to your expected range. In heavy timber, i have definitely learnt that there are big advantages in moving towards the bigger calibre, smaller cartridge capacity part of the spectrum to make a maximum of hole and maintain manageable recoil. As an example, if you were using a 130gr tsx out of a .308, instead of a 130gr accubond out of a .260, you would find there was little difference in recoil, but a huge difference in the wound tract you created. I won't say i think calibre was your problem, but it is worth thinking about, especially in heavy timber.

Hi 260Rem fan,

Hunt in France and southern Europe, even in northern countries, involves lot of heavy bushed places and dense forests. When we hunt game there most guy use bigger diameter cartridges, not because they stand better when you hit twigs but the bigger the hole the faster the bleeding (if bullets are same and adapted to game). Some shots are taken in not so perfect ways and the more blood you get easier the tracking. It seem that better frontal surface with good bullet structure gives us better results: shock transfert at the impact, wider diameter permanent wound cavity (not temporary)and more and faster bleeding when placement is a bit so so...
The 6,5x55 in Scandinavia has great success ratio on game heavy as moose but more and more hunters goes to 30-06, 9,3 or even 8mm.
In France the 9,3x62, 9,3x74R and 35 Whelen are more and more used in dense bush zone because they make bigger hole and more blood trail in case of a bullet turned by a twig or a bad shot.
But and it's a big but, if your game is hit in the upper spine bone extension (i don't no the english name: apophise in French)and you can't double it immediatly it is lost whatever the caliber you use.
Hunting in your woods i would use a 30-06 or a 35 Whelen to stay american.

That's only a frog's point of view.
Dom

well there is no tellin where the bullet hit. I reckon that it might have even been tumbling when it hit the deer... im not saying the a 308 wouldve killed the deer if it hit the branch, im wondering if it wouldve given more blood, thats all

It's what i tried to explain may be not clearly: generally wider bullets make more damages and more blood trail.I don't condamn your shooting because it can arrive to every body and, most of time, hunters spoke of their one shot kill, never of their miss or lost. Asking, listening, learning and trying to improve is right way to go and you choose it. That's the most important thing.
Dom

I don't think the caliber and the 130 AB is an issue. Poor shot placement is. Find out why placement was poor. Could be twigs, scope, shooter etc. and then go from there. This has happened to near all long time hunters, so analyze, correct and move on.

How is your 260 sighted in?

You weren't good enough with your first shot with all the [bleep] in the way, after that all bets are off and attempting to throw another one or seven in there beats hell out of watching said deer flop for 2 minutes. Seems the first was a wing and prayer, why not go with a few more when things got bad?

Guessing you were in a treestand, hence not being able to move? More reasons trees are for squirrels and not people.

If that is a twig, I hope you don't whip your kids with a switch.

yes in a climber. once he went down, i thought i had made a good shot. i didnt know i hit a branch until later. the first shot seemed clear through the scope. i didnt see that in the line of sight

Stuff happens. Learn from it and try to not make the same mistake again. I have hit branches before in �openings�. An advantage of magnification is the ability to look through thick stuff; unfortunately it can also cause you to overlook stuff when concentrating on the target.

Larger caliber would not have made a difference IMHO.

so your sitting there watching this deer thrash around, it gets up and you have no shell in your chamber? I suspect you are new at the game and you learned a sad but valuable lesson. Too bad for the poor deer, the coyotes will literally "eat it alive"

Agree and disagree

Yes in theory, any proper shot placement and your critter should be dead but critters don't always follow the same logic and hunting in real life isn't always like it's shown on shows where everything is perfect.



When in doubt, shoot again.

That's simply not true. Having shot a dozen or so deer with the 130TSX at 308 velocities, the wound channel and exit wound are no bigger than what I get with a 243 softpoint. If you want big exit wounds, you have to use widely expanding/violent bullets, in any caliber.

Agreed though, that the caliber had NOTHING to do with the success of this scenario. If you hit a branch with a big caliber it would have had just as many problems. At that point, it's purely luck in what happens. Also, if you've got ammo left in the gun, you should have been shooting again and again. You've nothing to lose at that point, except the deer itself.

A great quote: Overkill is an greatly underestimated characteristic. Sounds like a case where a 2nd shot might have solved that problem.
AS to the original question, not so much a question of frontal diameter as it is a question of bullet placement and construction. On a whitetail, there are dozens of calibers starting with 257, shooting any of a bunch of expanding bullets starting with a CoreLokt.
I think perfection is a 270 with a 130 gr Partition. Having said that, I used ETips over the last 3 seasons with no complaints and a nice string of one shot kills. Liking the minimal bloodshot meat.
I do like a blood trail, as I hunt some pretty thick stuff. Sometimes tracking 30 or 40 or 50 yards can be tough work given massive amounts of multiflora rose and marsh grass.
Some years ago I shot a whitetail thru both lungs with a 12 ga slug. He somehow managed to run several hundred yards, leaving a heck of a trail. I cannot imagine a blood trail is ever being a bad thing. Might be a fine point that BobinNH & I disagree on.
One last point, I have killed several deer with 3 diff 35 Whelens. This caliber has produced as least as many DRT kills as I have gotten with 270's.
However, I have had my share of heart/lung hits with both that resulted in adequate blood trails, but usually not to far before they ran out of gas. So I don't see a larger frontal area being a panacea.

I think if you read the entire thread it states the when the deer fell it was in an area that was behind brush thus no shot

My thoughts on the whole mess are that nobody knows where in the heck that bullet hit that deer, Stuff like that happens. I've had a golf ball heading for the green suddenly veer off like it was on a bungee cord. It turned out that there was a runty, bare sapling directly in the way. That one little 1/4" stick was the only thing between me and the green and I managed to center it. I'd imagine the OP would have shot again if he could have. Stuff happens.....

The question is: does a wider bullet makes better blood trail: to make it short,all thing being equal, bullet, shot placement, game: YES!
Like water hose, the bigger the hole the more it flows.

That does'nt mean you must shoot on the fringe or use cannon shell but when the schhit it the fan it can help. If one hunt enough he had chance (not exactly the word)that a thing like that arrive to him. No need to bash the hunter. He learned a lesson, will cut bushes and place his stand to another place, that's good enough. Life is all trials an errors before doing it good.

A question: do you have in the US blood trailing dogs? In France and Germany we use such dogs. In France their owners are regrouped in an association. When a bad shoot arrive and game flee, mortaly wounded or not we can call one of this dog owner. They work for free (we give them good tips even if game is not found)and most of time they have an average of 30 to 50% game recovered, depending on species, wounds, bleeding. These people are really dedicated to the follow up and are very good trackers and hunters.

Have good season.

Dom

Most states don't allow blood trailing dogs. The rationale for that position has always eluded me. Go figger.