Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting What 'cartridge' have you had the MOST --DRTs?

I've seen the 257 Weatherby in action on probably a half dozen big game animals. It worked just like a lot of other high velocity rounds. Shot in the right place, animals died quickly. Shot in the wrong place, they ran off and died somewhere else after some more shooting.

If you are ruining too much meat with BT's you are hitting them in the wrong spot or you like ribs and lungs! BT's are at their best with lung shots. They turn everything to soup. I expect the reason I get so many DRT kills is because I use more than enough gun and shoot mostly calm deer. However I have had DRT with a .260 rem and 129 grain Interlocks, go figure. However the deer was only 100 yards but feeding and totally unsuspecting.

My longest death runs were deer who were aware I was there. One was shot with a .300 Win Mag at about 50 yards with a BT. The other was shot at about 150 yards with a 7.5x55 and a 150 grain Interlock. Both deer were alerted to my presence and were about to bolt when hit.

PG that's what I sort of figured...... I don't believe in magic.

The effects of high velocity are pretty well known,and I don't see why they should apply any more to a 257 Roy than to anything comparable,or more potent. After all, it's only a 25....admittedly a fast one, but still just a 25 caliber.

375 RUM using 260 Nosler BT 's or 250 Sierra BT's

338 win mag using 200 gr. barnes ttx bullets I have never had a deer take more than two steps. So far shot 9 deer with this combination. A bit of an overkill some might say but I like not searching especially in this thick south Texas brush

I've refrained from posting on this long thread until now, but couldn't stand it anymore. My experience is the same as Jeff Rost's: A lot of cartridges look like magic killers until you use them a lot.

I went through a period during the late 1980's and 1990's when I thought the .338 Winchester Magnum was THE ANSWER. This was because I killed a lot of animals in both North America and Africa with it, using various bullets from 200-250 grains, and none went over 25-30 yards before falling, most a lot less. The animals included everything from doe whitetails to Alaskan moose.

Then one day I shot a caribou bull with the 210 Partition, right through the top of the heart and both lungs. Caribou aren't particularly hard to kill, but the bull went 75 yards with enough blood spraying from both the entrance and exit wounds to leave a double blood trail across the tundra, then stood there for a while before falling. In fact I was ready to shoot him again and was starting to tighten on the trigger when he finally keeled over.

If I shot enough animals, similar things always happened with other rounds I thought were magic (though never as certainly as with the .338) from the .257 Weatherby Magnum to the 9.3x62 Mauser.

Have seen more quick kills with bullets that fragment more than those that hold together more, but even then there can be LOTS of variation.

I would disagree on the 50 BMG being slow.
all depends on the bullet too.


12k+ ft/lbs is nothing to slouch about. and with a 750 amax at even 2600+ fps.... it'll leave a hole!

So does one experience out of many mean that the .338 isn't one heck of a round on deer? A good friend hunted whitetails with the .338 WIN and it stomped 'em. Just more gun that I want to shoot. Of course, not every shot is going to instantly put an animal down, but I've shot enough deer with various rounds to come up a good sample size. It seems that Rost had incredible bad luck out of the 257 WBY and 338 WIN on DRTs or he is sandbagging his results a bit. The "I aim for lungs, therefore I don't have DRTs" doesn't work for me. Both of those rounds will drop deer instantly with lung only hits at times. Not everytime for sure, but not to the point that it never happens.