odd bullet behaviour

[kyska]

Out this morning looking for roe bucks, had a great chance of a 6 pointer, near to some thick brush so decides to pin the shoulder with a nicely presented front qaurtering deer.

 

Not too far, 120 ish yards.

 

The shot put the animal straight down, bit of thrashing but I was already reloaded in case.

 

The thing got up and ran twenty or thirty yards away and stopped, looking down the scope i saw a huge exit wound, lump of flesh from the saddle missing. I honestly thought id really, really pulled the shot.

 

knowing it could run I took another shot and it went down.

 

Once approached the first shot was sound, just behind the shoulder but had literally connected and gone almost 90 degrees to leave the animal from the saddle on the same side of the entry wound!

 

In the grand scheme of things I'm not hugely experienced with deer shooting, I've done a bit but never seen such a deflection.

[robbiep]

History is full of remarkable incidents of bullets behaving oddly. I recall one US policemen was shot in the shoulder with a pistol - no idea what calibre. The bullet ended up under the skin on his forehead !

[TONY R]

It happens on shoulder shots at times, its a good way to grass deer they are not going far on three legs but bullets can and do deflect off bone if they hit a non fleshy part first ot if they get damaged tip on initial impact.

This is what you read on alldeer and other such forums, and i have no reason to doubt a word of it bassed on what i have seen over the years, the argument bigger bullets buck brush better is i feel not the whole story, but one thing i do feel relative is plastic tipped bullets they can get sideways on bone an uncomfortable amount of times i found this with nozzler balistic tip hunting heads.

and as for bucking brush and handling bone barnes x bullets have the gold star for me, i never had a single deflection off bone with Barnes bullets, ok i could have just been lucky but ive been using them 15 years and i have had good results.

I had a similar result by the sounds of it to you on a roe a year or so ago and it was with a 100 grain boat tailed speer in a .2506, i only used that box up i tried mostly on paper i have not bothered with them anymore,.

Some say slowing bullets down helps with bone, i have never tried this and bone deflection is so uncommon genraly it would be pretty hard to prove or dissprove if it worked or not, you could set up some elaborate test i supose but it would not be the real world and realy thats what counts.

My advice is move on dont overthink this event, it happens it goes with the teritory of killing things, dont get hung up on stuff like this too much, its not realy avoidable as such but its not a huge problem anyway.

[kyska]

Tony

 

A salient point I was using a ballistic tip 25-06.

 

Thanks for the encouragement.

[TONY R]

There you go then. If you dont want an expensive bullet like the Barnes try the 87 sierra varminter on your Roe, they do a great job and are not the meat mashers people say they are give them a try.

bigger deer go Barnes or Nozzy Accubonds in 110 grain, they are a great bullet on hill reds in the .2506 and you dont loose out on speed to the 100s as much as you would think and not as pedestrian as the 120s by a good margin. take a look at the 110 accubonds i dont think you will be sorry.