Thread: 223 on deer

I had the opportunity this past weekend to go fill the freezer with some venison and to help the farmer out with their deer 'problem'.

My usual deer huntin' rifle has no scope on it currently, so it's smaller sibling got to go out instead. I've got good loads with two bullets that are suitable for the job. Deer numbers one and two were poleaxed by a neck/base of skull shot and a head shot respectively. Realistically I could have taken these shots with the 53 V-Max I use on wobblies and smaller critters, but what I actually used was the Sierra 77g TMK as weilded very effectively by @Tahr. I thought if a shot on a fallow or red yearling presented itself I could slot one precisely through the ribs and would be fine. Circumstances meant I had perfect shooting position available and was able to take the very emphatic meat-saving head/neck shots - very happy with the outcome. I'll write up something about the weekend over the holidays.

Deer number three got smacked over by a different bullet - the Speer 75g Gold Dot. We had been told there was a good likelihood of seeing pigs in the area we went to Saturday evening, so the Gold Dot seemed like a good choice as they are reputed to expand well but not lose any weight of note.

After my trusty offsider @Pommy had ventilated one unwary fallow spiker with an Eld-M from his 284 his two mates appeared to run off. But spikers being spikers at this time of year, they reappeared out of the scrub and mostly seemed confused as to why their mate was taking a nap! Now I had to get off a good shot promptly before they ran off and Pommy had my pack, so prone off the elbows it was, threading the shot through the tall grass in front of us. At the shot there was a solid whump and the deer reared up on its back legs then tumbled over and died.

The bullet entered low in the chest smashing the near leg, travelling through the chest and popping out slightly higher at the back edge of the leg. I didn't gut it so wasn't able to examine organ damage. When we skinned and chopped it up there was considerable damage on the entry side including pooling of a clear jelly like substance. The exit hole seemed to indicate it had expanded nicely - perfect result really.