Well, being the constant experimenter, I had to switch teams this year and try something different. So I did the unthinkable and loaded up a mix of fast burning H4895 behind a new 150grain Barnes Triple shock bullet. I wanted that powder because I?m shooting an ultralight 300WSM with a 20-inch barrel.
Here are the results for you all to ponder.
I shot a doe the opening weekend with this combo and was less than impressed. I watched her walk into my field and she came to within about 20 yards. I was in a treestand shooting downward and she was quartering to me a slight bit more than I accounted for, I was aiming for heart. I shot, saw the bullet shock right where I wanted it. She jumped and ran. I was astounded. That?s the first deer of my life that didn?t pile up within just a few feet of the shot. She made it nearly 200 yards before she cut into the timber. I waited 30 minutes got down and trailed her. The blood was poor and spotty. Then I found stomach matter. I was worried to say the least. I tracked another 100 yards into the timber finding spotty lung blood, but she was at the end of the trail.
I field dressed her to find the damage and understand the stomach matter. I misjudged the quartering angle slightly. The bullet passed about 3 inches behind the heart taking out the bottom third of the left lung, clipping the liver and stomach, and then exiting the bottom of the midsection. I went back and dug the bullet out of the dirt and measured more than a foot of penetration into the moist, but hard-packed black soil.
The second deer was a 2.5 year old buck I killed the second Sunday of season. I was still hunting thru some river bottoms and saw this deer cut across a field into the timber. I moved slowly from tree to tree, and then caught another glimpse of deer about 80 yards out. I moved slowly to another tree and he was moving towards me. I had a clear shot at about 50 yards, but let him get a touch closer before I pulled the trigger at 40 steps. I put the crosshairs between his right shoulder and neck base on a very severe quartering to me shot. This deer dropped stone cold. I rolled him over and looked for exit wound, but found a lump under his left hindquarter skin. I cut the bullet out and kept it. The bullet hit perfectly and traveled through the right inside lung, heart ventricles, liver then above the stomach and rolled around the skin to the opposite hind quarter.
I?m still not sure about the stick-together bullet theory for whitetails. I think the doe wouldn?t have taken a step with a Ballistic tip and the buck wouldn?t have fared any different.
The buck field dressed at 150 and the doe was much bigger coming from the northern part of the state and probably had 30 pounds on him. I?ve decided that Barnes, or partition type bullets are meant to be shot into the shoulder, and ballistic tips for the lungs. I?m not a fan of shoulder shooting deer because of the damage, but dead is dead.
Neither of these bullets lost a grain of weight after expansion.
