Unless there is something unique about the doe, they all look the same, not much need in posting pictures of them.

Congrats to you James for a few good days of hunting.

All the time, I'd rather shoot does than small bucks.

Friday after Thanksgiving. Had to wait for legal shooting time, caught him in a field feeding.

Though only a spike, he had good size, body-wise.



Yesterday's results, took about 15 seconds. Ambushes are effective...




Busted the old guy first, knew it was a good hit, so I zoned in on Junior. Stopped him with a bleat and it was all over but the cryin'.

Blood trail to the Old guy. Minimal skills needed....

Now that's a blood trail!

WOW, looks like he rolled out the red carpet for you vic, that's good work. What were you chootin at em?

Nice Vic, filled all your buck tags there! Congrats! !

Da Pumkin.

I made it into a .308, and changed the VX-2 2-7X33 to the same format except with CDS.

Load was enough IMR4895 to get just over 2700 fps with a Sierra 165 HPBT Gameking.

Thank you, sir.

And in two weeks I go on vacation for another two weeks with nothing to do for the first week.....

Hopefully, the tag soup will be kinda thin this year. (grin)

The Spike I shot just after Thanksgiving was with a Savage Weather Warrior 16 I bought from a member not very long ago, no more than a couple months.

Loaded up some Lapua brass with IMR4895 and some Nosler 165 Ballistic tips. That Savage shoots good!

Put a Leupold VX-3i 3.5-10X40 CDS on it.

The Halloween gun!! Very nice... I remember when that was a .243 I believe.

I'd say you set it up right, it sure did a number on the big boy.

Those Sierras will instigate some amount of leakage....

That blood trail is huge. Looks like you hit him with a truck and drug him underneath it. Where did you hit the deer?

Post that picture of your 15 if you can, Ford! Been an interesting year on my end. Got a really nice 9 out in Suffolk, who was about 21.5 wide. Currently at the taxidermist. He got a 150 grain Remington Core Lokt .30-30 through both lungs and dropped in about 40 yards. Almost zero blood trail.



Entrance wound:



I also got a cow elk out in Montana, who the guide estimated to be between 550 and 600 live weight. She took a 165 grain Federal Fusion PSP .300 WSM round that passed, as best we can ascertain, through where the heart would have been. We opened the vital cavity while dressing, and there was nothing left... everything was completely macerated. Walked about 15 yards and dropped. Weird part: almost no blood trail, either. I guess the round must have just disintegrated in the would channel? You can see where at least part clearly exited through the far side in the second picture. Entrance:




Exit, on her right shoulder:



What gives with the lack of blood trails this year? Whitetail was about 120 when I shot him, and the elk was at about 90. Not a big deal if they keep dropping like these two, but a little disconcerting in the event that a track job had been necessary.

That's a nice buck there OXN, nice cow too, you should get some nice steaks out of that. Blood trails can be a weird thing sometimes, you put everything where it should be and then nothing. I shot a doe once w/ the shotgun, tracked her 200 yards across an open field just barely dribbling blood. When I got to the edge of the woods where she fell, it looked like someone had been slinging blood from a 5 gallon bucket, very weird.

Thanks, dude! I can see it with the .30-30, but one would think a .30 caliber magnum round from inside 100, through the heart, would produce a pretty apparent trail.

The more I hunt, the more I find that there's really no way to predict it. Deer are very strange, tough, resilient animals- all you can do is your part to ensure an ethical kill shot, and exhaust every avenue of recovery if it gets weird.

I think you summed it nicely, all very true.

I shot him low in the chest at a pretty severe angle. I was about 30 feet up in a tree, and he was about 25 feet from me. The exit was just above the sternum.

Two years ago, late season, I hit a big-bodied deer with a .30-30 high in the lungs at a fairly shallow angle, meaning the exit was about level with the entrance. There was virtually no blood trail until I got about 20 yards from the dead deer. He had been bumped out by another hunter and was running by when I shot him. He continued for another 110 yards, and when I opened him up, both lungs were destroyed and all of the blood had pooled in the lower chest.

This is it. It was a buck that had already dropped its' antlers



Here is another blood trail from a deer I shot with a .308 and the Sierra 165 BTHP GK.

Fairly confident this is what happened to both of the animals I posted. Both were shot at a time of year when they had plenty of time to put on a dense winter coat of fat that may have plugged entrance and exit wounds. Either way, both ended up being happy stories, and both were harvested with firearms off the website!

Nice buck OXN and nothing like an Elk for the freezer.

I agree with you. I failed to mention "nice animals" earlier, and that Surry buck is a great one!

And Elk is durn good eating, I like the flavor more than deer, but that could also be a regional thing dependant upon diet. Nothing wrong with the taste of our deer, but Colorado Elk is some kind of good tasting.

I think the idea that it could be diet dependent is spot on... a few years ago, I shot a doe way back in the middle of nowhere whose diet probably consisted almost exclusively of acorns and native forage plants. This is what I'd compare the taste of the elk to; some of the best game I've ever had the pleasure of trying, no doubt. The fact that both animals were 2.5-3.5 year old females probably also had something to do with it, but I'm definitely a believer that diet significantly influences the taste of game.

Do you think the elk cow didn't have a big blood trail because you destroyed her heart. Basically destroying the blood pump so it just wasn't spewing out like it would if you just hit an artery? If that makes sense. I shot a deer last year with a 180 gr .308 and it also filled the body cavity with blood and he didn't have blood trail till he laid back down. Very nice kills everyone.

That's certainly a possibility. No pump, no spew...

That's certainly possible! I would have thought there would be enough residual throughout the circulatory system of the body to produce somewhat of a blood trail, but in a case like this elk, you might just be right.

There are four of us who hunt together, with 3 dedicating a lot of time during general firearms.

Here's a pic of one that went down yesterday. It was traveling with two others, one of which was, the shooter said, noticeably bigger but didn't present itself very well. He took the one which was the surest shot. I then helped with the recovery.