So, I screwed up this year, and despite telling myself I would not shoot this deer....I shot this deer. I'm kicking the shit out of myself for pulling the trigger, but to make matters worse, I never found the deer. I was shooting my new tack-driving long-range 7mm mag. I shot one other deer with it this year when a doe gave me a nice broadside shot at 404 yards. I wanted some meat, and I wanted to see what I could do with the gun at that distance, so I dialed the scope up, settled in on a not-so-great prone-on-the-side-of-a-hill hold, and touched off the shot. I heard the unmistakeable "whommp" of the bullet hitting its mark, and when I recovered from the recoil, I saw the doe was DRT.
Fast forward to the buck. I was heading home from an uneventful hunt, and I saw the buck standing broadside at 210 yards staring at me as I approached my truck. I was able to range the deer, set my gun up on its bipod on the back of my truck bed cover, and dial the scope up to 18x. I had a moment of weakness, and I decided to take the deer knowing there were other deer that would grow into giants hanging around the property. I was steady as I have ever been, and I touched off the shot. My gun is zero'd at 200, and I had just shot steel out to 370 the day before. There was the crack of the suppressed round being fired and then the "whommmp" of the bullet hitting the deer. I recovered from the recoil to see the deer running off to the left, and I figured he would be dead in the field when I got there. I went home and had a drink and celebrated with my fam before driving over to pick up my deer. When I got there, there was nothing. I waited until the next morning when I could see, as my flashlight sucked, but when I got there, I could not find hair or blood....nothing. I spent several hours looking where he was standing and around where he was standing, but I found nothing.
The area I am hunting is mainly open for thousands of yards with some small patches of thick cover scattered about. I searched every piece of cover in every direction and got permission to search all the neighboring land. NADA. The deer never showed back up on camera, and I'm fairly certain he is dead. I regret putting the crosshairs and the shot behind the shoulder for a double lung shot, as I love the DRT shot placement of high front shoulder, but I just wan't thinking about it...just naturally put it in the lungs.
After thinking about it for a while, I know there is no chance I pulled the shot and hit guts...everything was perfect. The high ballistic coefficient hornady 162 gr SSTs I was using are designed to fragment and cause massive hemorrhaging at long ranges...they are designed, from what I understand, to kill WT, Mulies, and Elk at longer ranges with tissue damage as opposed to hydrostatic shock like mushrooming bullets that hold together do. I've read enough accounts of people having issues with poking 7mm holes through elk and deer and finding the dead animals with no blood trail and exit wounds that are the same as the entrance wounds showing that these super hot loads and fragmenting bullets will punch through at close distances without expanding or fragmenting.
So, assuming that is what happened here, I'm wanting to shoot a bullet that will mushroom and kill with hydrostatic shock. My question is...what are your recommendations for a best-of-both-worlds bullet. I'd rather find one bullet that will do it all rather than having to develop a load for closer distance whitetail scenarios and a load for longer distance elk hunting scenarios and having to run two dope charts during hinting season. My whitetail hunts could produce shot opportunities from 20 yards to 700 yards, and the same goes with elk. Is there a best of both worlds bullet out there? Thanks in advance for your expert SCDucker advice. Meanwhile, I'm going to be sick about this situation for a while.
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