.223 for bear, mountain goat, deer, elk, and moose.

100 yard shot on a whitetail went bad this weekend, the shooter sadly just missed his mark. 77 gr TMK's, the sound of the hit, makes me think he hit guts. Deer went 10-15 yards and stood behind a tree for 30-45 seconds and we could not get a follow up shot. Deer eventually wandered off. Went to the spot it stood and two different blood spots, each about 3-4 inches across, after that no blood trail.

Gave the deer a couple hours and then spent the remainder of the day looking with no success. Any thoughts on how long it will take for him to expire? Will he expire?
 
teamsprock said:
100 yard shot on a whitetail went bad this weekend, the shooter sadly just missed his mark. 77 gr TMK's, the sound of the hit, makes me think he hit guts. Deer went 10-15 yards and stood behind a tree for 30-45 seconds and we could not get a follow up shot. Deer eventually wandered off. Went to the spot it stood and two different blood spots, each about 3-4 inches across, after that no blood trail.

Gave the deer a couple hours and then spent the remainder of the day looking with no success. Any thoughts on how long it will take for him to expire? Will he expire?
Click to expand...

It’ll die for sure. How long is anyone’s guess. If you see blood then you’d think a day or less. With how much blood you saw I’d expect it was dead already if you waited hours.
 
Gut shots are always lethal, but it will take 6-8hr for them to lay down and die. If you bump them they’ll go a long way.

Gut shots rarely leave a great blood trail, so lots of patience required.
 
Reddish said:
Gut shots are always lethal, but it will take 6-8hr for them to lay down and die. If you bump them they’ll go a long way.

Gut shots rarely leave a great blood trail, so lots of patience required.
Click to expand...
To add to this: gut shots seem to be great at stopping bullets and preventing exits. I assume all the grass operates like sand in a backstop.
 
And before anyone claims that it’s because it was a 223, long time ago, I accidentally gut shot a small buck in muzzleloader season with a 240 gr XTP at close range, and he wasn’t going down too quick either. It’s just a bad deal all the way around
 
Thanks for the feedback. I hate that it happened, but yes, this stuff unfortunately happens. Everything went right until it went wrong. Just wanted to have some feedback on the gut shot, first time it has happened for me and my buddies.
 
This post is about 6 years in the making. Been lurking here for longer than that, and been reading this thread since its inception. Before that, I was shooting a 300wm on everything, mostly deer. Shooting barnes ttsx's and noslee accubonds. As the data points started to roll in in this thread, I started to question my "knowledge" of terminal ballistics. The stuff Form (and others) were preaching started to make sense.
So I bought a 6.5 cm and killed a few deer- it worked fine, and lots more fun to shoot than the 300. Then I bought a tikka t3x in 22-250, 8" twist. Loaded up some 80gr eldx, and took it deer hunting last year. First deer I shot with it was a young 8 point, about 70 yards. Missed the first shot, causing him to turn 180 degrees, but not run. Never lost him in the scope, racked the bolt and hit him, hard quartering away, right about at the last rib. He ran maybe 100 yards, pouring blood (easy tracking), and died in a field. Bullet under offside shoulder, heart and lungs soup. I was amazed at the damage. . . Just like if you said I would be.
Second deer was a die, 274 yards. Was right at dark, so I used Form's recommended shot placement forward in the shoulder. Deer dropped where it stood, didn't even twitch. Heart and lungs soup. So consider me a concert, sold my 300, and probably gonna get a tikka in .223 with a short barrel to go with my 6.5cm and 22-250.
 

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glock233 said:
Moving past the fact that almost anything will kill a deer, the question is about optimizing.

On the gold dot, I just disagree that a nearly 100% weight retention bullet is well designed for killing deer most quickly.

The Interlock is just ok, but people should just be using EDM for all of the reasons. It's not even a cost savings.
Click to expand...
Fusions aren’t anywhere close to 100% weight retention.

Here is a fusion you can see shed a ton of lead.

IMG_5323.jpeg
 
Treeman_MG said:
So I bought a 6.5 cm and killed a few deer- it worked fine, and lots more fun to shoot than the 300. Then I bought a tikka t3x in 22-250, 8" twist. Loaded up some 80gr eldx, and took it deer hunting last year. First deer I shot with it was a young 8 point, about 70 yards. Missed the first shot, causing him to turn 180 degrees, but not run. Never lost him in the scope, racked the bolt and hit him, hard quartering away, right about at the last rib. He ran maybe 100 yards, pouring blood (easy tracking), and died in a field. Bullet under offside shoulder, heart and lungs soup. I was amazed at the damage. . . Just like if you said I would be.
Click to expand...

Impossible! Everyone knows that you can't take a hard quartering away shot with a .223. /sarcasm

Great job and great buck! Congrats!
 
DadWil said:
I'd go with the 3-15... 3 for the close up and 15 for dang that's at the edge of my affective range
Click to expand...
I'm sure I would be happy with the 3-9x, but considering they are the same length and only adding ~3oz of weight, I think I'm going to go with the 3-15x. I'll sleep on it and make a decision in the morning.

I appreciate the feedback.

Hoping to get everything together before my wife's cousin is ready to head down to their property to hunt. Our freezers are full from an axis I was lucky enough to get a chance at, so I don't plan on taking a whitetail this year, but there are more pigs down there than there should be. Hoping to come across one bigger than I would bring home to eat to add more data points to this thread. Not that it really needs any at this point... the data seems to be in.
 
TX_Mike D. said:
I'm sure I would be happy with the 3-9x, but considering they are the same length and only adding ~3oz of weight, I think I'm going to go with the 3-15x. I'll sleep on it and make a decision in the morning.

I appreciate the feedback.

Hoping to get everything together before my wife's cousin is ready to head down to their property to hunt. Our freezers are full from an axis I was lucky enough to get a chance at, so I don't plan on taking a whitetail this year, but there are more pigs down there than there should be. Hoping to come across one bigger than I would bring home to eat to add more data points to this thread. Not that it really needs any at this point... the data seems to be in.
Click to expand...
The 3-9x is better glass, and I find the upper end of the 3-15 terrible.
 
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