After writing endless waffle about shot placement, anatomy, bullet construction, longer range shooting, my love of the .243, the Sierra ProHunter, the Hornady 143gr ELD-X and blah blah blah... Here's the story of the one that got away.
Situation
Red deer cull, on the property I've written about many times before. We sold the property last year to a honey company, and part of the arrangement to maintain shooting rights was more aggressive control of red deer, goats and pigs. This because the new owners are planting new stands of manuka scrub to increase pollen production and thus make more honey. Goats and deer love eating the heart out of new manuka plants, which kills them. One mob can clean out a 5 hectare planting in a night. Animals were to be recovered for pet food, experience showed that on average, we could recover ~75% of animals shot, the remainder falling into gullies too steep to safely access. The goats were very few and far between by this time, as me and Alan had shot over 400 between us over this and the adjacent property between January and August. Pigs are the hardest to control, as they are seasonal feeders and they move deep into the native in early spring to feed on the berries, emerging only at night later in spring, to root the paddocks when the grass gets going.
The shot
Same as usual, though a little further than the average, which is about 350m. This was 497m to be precise, slightly up, with HCD applied by the rangefinder. We were after reds, mostly spikers and young hinds. Both me and my mate Alan were using identical rifles and optics - Howa Varmint 6.5 Creedmoor, bedded into Boyds stocks, 143gr ELD-X at about 2800fps, Bushnell Elite Tactical 6-24x50 FFP. The animal in question was a runty red spiker, a yearling. Standing still, broadside. Wind left to right from 8 o'clock, gentle breeze, Beaufort 3 assumed. Dialed up 3 mils and held left 0.5 mil, or as it appears on the animal, on the underside of the neck, halfway up.
The impact knocked the animal clean off its feet. Job done said Alan who was on the spotting scope, a Vortex 20-60x85. I pulled up off the rifle, and leaned back. After about 15 seconds, with the naked eye, I was shocked to see the animal get up and start to hobble off up the slope (which was very unusual, because normally they go downhill).
This was the big mistake. Rookie error. Really annoying. I struggled to reacquire the animal because the magnification was x24. I hadn't even ejected the empty case. By the time I was back on it, it was in scrub with no clear shot. Alan watched it and when it momentarily reappeared in the small clearings, he could clearly see the entry and exit wounds, what looked like bang on the shoulder, both bleeding moderately. Before we knew it, the animal was up and over the ridge-line and gone. Alan was mystified as to how it could still be mobile.
Aftermath
Very cross now, we waited for half and hour and worked out a plan. In that time it had started raining, not good. We went back to the farm and picked up Alan's dog, gsp-lab cross, a properly good animal on a good day and usually highly biddable, but prone to bouts of reluctance if not in the mood. Heavy rain generally resulted in the latter. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the position where the animal was shot, the rain was torrential. Whilst Alan moved the dog onto the sign, I inspected the shot site and almost immediately found the bullet, a shallow penetration into the soil of the cutting behind where the deer was standing, not even 3" in.
The recovered bullet:
Whilst I was delighted to find it, I was concerned that the bullet had not opened up and fragmented as much as others we have recovered at similar ranges.
Alan slowly traversed the slope up to the ridge-line, the dog working somewhat reluctantly in the heavy rain. The nature of the scrub and the grass there is such that moderate bleeds will sit on foliage and wash off quickly in this kind of weather. But nonetheless the dog was onto it and tracked up-slope in circles on the same bearing as we had watched the deer. On the other side of the ridge-line, the spur is largely cleared apart from a dense stand of manuka and gorse on the steepest part. This is the only cover for a long way and the dog made straight for it. Confident we would find the animal in there, we headed in, not nice for us or the dog, but had to be done. The ground was too steep and slippery for us to be safe so we hung back - the dog started to return to us looking fed up, and it got harder and harder to send her back in. After cocking around like this for a couple of hours, in fading light, we quit.
As we walked first up the spur to access less steep ground, then down to the track at the bottom of the spur, we crossed a fairly steep gully which was now flowing fast. This gully met a man made drain below a ~40ft cutting on the track, and there's quite a deep pool there. Stupidly - second big mistake - we walked straight past it without thinking why the dog was circling there. We were that wet and fed up by then that our brains switched off and we just wanted to get back to the bike and the homestead.
Conclusion
The animal was found 2 days later by one of the shepherds, dead in the drain. It had expired on the face on the other side of the spur, rolled down the slope and over the edge of the cutting and into the water, washed down a few yards and into some old timber. We completely missed it. It would have been underwater, which was rising fast. The young lad that found it didn't know the background, but could clearly see it had been shot "straight through the shoulder". He had taken the back legs off for dog tucker and left the carcass up there. Alan (his boss) asked him to go and have another look, with a specific instruction to take photos, which didn't go down particularly well. The message we got back, without photos ("I forgot my phone") was that the bullet had impacted a hair's breath under and slightly behind the scapula, and passed through the rear edge of the opposite scapula, which explained the pronounced limp.
Looking at the trajectory of the bullet on an anatomical diagram, the dreaded "gap" appears to have come into play. The gap sits above the lungs and below the spine. The fact that the animal was poleaxed suggests the spine received a heavy shock, but minimal damage, and the fact that it bled out and died relatively quickly (minutes?) suggests the top of the lungs were well holed. This is roughly where I think it was hit, from what the shepherd described and what Alan could observe with the spotting scope. However Alan remained convinced it was further forward but I cannot accept that the animal would walk like that with both shoulders shot through.
So, bottom line, slightly high, slightly too far back. Probably 0.2 mil less wind hold would have killed it outright. That's more than the scope will move with the heartbeat. An inch or two up, down or forward, and it would have hit either the spine, the brachial plexus or the major pulmonary supply between lungs and heart.
Sobering, annoying, but the rub of the green I suppose. I had three days to stew over the fact that it was the first deer I'd ever been unable to find. That it was found so close was a relief but also massively annoying. Not reading the dog right as we walked out past the drain was just plain silly, we clocked off too early. Still, we carried on with the cull the following weekend, only one fail in over 300 very dead animals now with this rifle and the ELD-X, the vast majority of them poleaxed permanently on the spot, it wasn't a statistical blip that demanded a change of method. This runty yearling is in fact the only proper runner that I've had with this rifle and bullet, the forward point of impact and bankable performance of the ELD-X has been so reliable that its become almost an auto-pilot process now. And therein lies the weakness - over confidence crept in... not reloading and pulling up off the rifle was a bad mistake.
So hope this story helps someone else mystified by how a deer ran away after what seemed liked a perfect hit. To those that occasionally berate me for never posting the 'fails' I must surely be keeping quiet about, being so irresponsible as to shoot an animal at such a vast an unethical distance as 500m, I hope this satisfies! But I will remind the naysayers that this is the way things are done here, like it or not, as it is elsewhere in the world.
Situation
Red deer cull, on the property I've written about many times before. We sold the property last year to a honey company, and part of the arrangement to maintain shooting rights was more aggressive control of red deer, goats and pigs. This because the new owners are planting new stands of manuka scrub to increase pollen production and thus make more honey. Goats and deer love eating the heart out of new manuka plants, which kills them. One mob can clean out a 5 hectare planting in a night. Animals were to be recovered for pet food, experience showed that on average, we could recover ~75% of animals shot, the remainder falling into gullies too steep to safely access. The goats were very few and far between by this time, as me and Alan had shot over 400 between us over this and the adjacent property between January and August. Pigs are the hardest to control, as they are seasonal feeders and they move deep into the native in early spring to feed on the berries, emerging only at night later in spring, to root the paddocks when the grass gets going.
The shot
Same as usual, though a little further than the average, which is about 350m. This was 497m to be precise, slightly up, with HCD applied by the rangefinder. We were after reds, mostly spikers and young hinds. Both me and my mate Alan were using identical rifles and optics - Howa Varmint 6.5 Creedmoor, bedded into Boyds stocks, 143gr ELD-X at about 2800fps, Bushnell Elite Tactical 6-24x50 FFP. The animal in question was a runty red spiker, a yearling. Standing still, broadside. Wind left to right from 8 o'clock, gentle breeze, Beaufort 3 assumed. Dialed up 3 mils and held left 0.5 mil, or as it appears on the animal, on the underside of the neck, halfway up.
The impact knocked the animal clean off its feet. Job done said Alan who was on the spotting scope, a Vortex 20-60x85. I pulled up off the rifle, and leaned back. After about 15 seconds, with the naked eye, I was shocked to see the animal get up and start to hobble off up the slope (which was very unusual, because normally they go downhill).
This was the big mistake. Rookie error. Really annoying. I struggled to reacquire the animal because the magnification was x24. I hadn't even ejected the empty case. By the time I was back on it, it was in scrub with no clear shot. Alan watched it and when it momentarily reappeared in the small clearings, he could clearly see the entry and exit wounds, what looked like bang on the shoulder, both bleeding moderately. Before we knew it, the animal was up and over the ridge-line and gone. Alan was mystified as to how it could still be mobile.
Aftermath
Very cross now, we waited for half and hour and worked out a plan. In that time it had started raining, not good. We went back to the farm and picked up Alan's dog, gsp-lab cross, a properly good animal on a good day and usually highly biddable, but prone to bouts of reluctance if not in the mood. Heavy rain generally resulted in the latter. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the position where the animal was shot, the rain was torrential. Whilst Alan moved the dog onto the sign, I inspected the shot site and almost immediately found the bullet, a shallow penetration into the soil of the cutting behind where the deer was standing, not even 3" in.
The recovered bullet:
Whilst I was delighted to find it, I was concerned that the bullet had not opened up and fragmented as much as others we have recovered at similar ranges.
Alan slowly traversed the slope up to the ridge-line, the dog working somewhat reluctantly in the heavy rain. The nature of the scrub and the grass there is such that moderate bleeds will sit on foliage and wash off quickly in this kind of weather. But nonetheless the dog was onto it and tracked up-slope in circles on the same bearing as we had watched the deer. On the other side of the ridge-line, the spur is largely cleared apart from a dense stand of manuka and gorse on the steepest part. This is the only cover for a long way and the dog made straight for it. Confident we would find the animal in there, we headed in, not nice for us or the dog, but had to be done. The ground was too steep and slippery for us to be safe so we hung back - the dog started to return to us looking fed up, and it got harder and harder to send her back in. After cocking around like this for a couple of hours, in fading light, we quit.
As we walked first up the spur to access less steep ground, then down to the track at the bottom of the spur, we crossed a fairly steep gully which was now flowing fast. This gully met a man made drain below a ~40ft cutting on the track, and there's quite a deep pool there. Stupidly - second big mistake - we walked straight past it without thinking why the dog was circling there. We were that wet and fed up by then that our brains switched off and we just wanted to get back to the bike and the homestead.
Conclusion
The animal was found 2 days later by one of the shepherds, dead in the drain. It had expired on the face on the other side of the spur, rolled down the slope and over the edge of the cutting and into the water, washed down a few yards and into some old timber. We completely missed it. It would have been underwater, which was rising fast. The young lad that found it didn't know the background, but could clearly see it had been shot "straight through the shoulder". He had taken the back legs off for dog tucker and left the carcass up there. Alan (his boss) asked him to go and have another look, with a specific instruction to take photos, which didn't go down particularly well. The message we got back, without photos ("I forgot my phone") was that the bullet had impacted a hair's breath under and slightly behind the scapula, and passed through the rear edge of the opposite scapula, which explained the pronounced limp.
Looking at the trajectory of the bullet on an anatomical diagram, the dreaded "gap" appears to have come into play. The gap sits above the lungs and below the spine. The fact that the animal was poleaxed suggests the spine received a heavy shock, but minimal damage, and the fact that it bled out and died relatively quickly (minutes?) suggests the top of the lungs were well holed. This is roughly where I think it was hit, from what the shepherd described and what Alan could observe with the spotting scope. However Alan remained convinced it was further forward but I cannot accept that the animal would walk like that with both shoulders shot through.
So, bottom line, slightly high, slightly too far back. Probably 0.2 mil less wind hold would have killed it outright. That's more than the scope will move with the heartbeat. An inch or two up, down or forward, and it would have hit either the spine, the brachial plexus or the major pulmonary supply between lungs and heart.
Sobering, annoying, but the rub of the green I suppose. I had three days to stew over the fact that it was the first deer I'd ever been unable to find. That it was found so close was a relief but also massively annoying. Not reading the dog right as we walked out past the drain was just plain silly, we clocked off too early. Still, we carried on with the cull the following weekend, only one fail in over 300 very dead animals now with this rifle and the ELD-X, the vast majority of them poleaxed permanently on the spot, it wasn't a statistical blip that demanded a change of method. This runty yearling is in fact the only proper runner that I've had with this rifle and bullet, the forward point of impact and bankable performance of the ELD-X has been so reliable that its become almost an auto-pilot process now. And therein lies the weakness - over confidence crept in... not reloading and pulling up off the rifle was a bad mistake.
So hope this story helps someone else mystified by how a deer ran away after what seemed liked a perfect hit. To those that occasionally berate me for never posting the 'fails' I must surely be keeping quiet about, being so irresponsible as to shoot an animal at such a vast an unethical distance as 500m, I hope this satisfies! But I will remind the naysayers that this is the way things are done here, like it or not, as it is elsewhere in the world.
