6mm /.243 hunting success on Big Game

[Apex801108]

Great Buck!

Thank you sir.

I'd also like to thank Form for spreading the info and doing such a great job of educating the community.

Based on all the overwhelming evidence in some of these threads, and now my first hand experience, it's clear that bullets matter way more than headstamps. Hell, there's even an argument that some of these nasty little bullets cause too much destruction of tissue. Personally, I'd rather risk potentially losing a bit of meat rather than the whole animal by not doing enough.

 

[jamesmc8]

Keeping the train going with two other kills this year. Mule deer at 256 yards with Tikka 6 Creed 20" shooting 105 VLD @ 2920 MV. Hit right behind the shoulder. Photo is of the exit wound. Buck spun around in circles for about 10 seconds before dropping. Bullet was a full pass thru lungs had a good amount of trauma, perfect bullet performance in my view.

Second was a buck antelope at 310 yards. Using the same rifle & load as above. Buck was slightly quartering toward me. I held a bit too much wind hitting him farther back than I intended. Bullet hit the back side of the onside lung, hit part of liver before going thru the abdominal cavity and coming to rest under the hide where it was recovered (see photo). This was about 20" of penetration; the retained bullet weight of this 105 VLD was 60grains (57%). After being hit the buck hunched up and then ran about 40 yards where he stopped. I dialed another 0.4 mils and sent another round thru the high shoulder. This shot dropped him and exited.

So far have used the 105 VLD for kills on five different deer/antelope with perfect results. They have also been more accurate than Hornady ELDx/ELDM in both my rifles. I would like to try the 95 TMK if I can get my hands on some.

 

[Jake Larsen]

Keeping the train going with two other kills this year. Mule deer at 256 yards with Tikka 6 Creed 20" shooting 105 VLD @ 2920 MV. Hit right behind the shoulder. Photo is of the exit wound. Buck spun around in circles for about 10 seconds before dropping. Bullet was a full pass thru lungs had a good amount of trauma, perfect bullet performance in my view.

Second was a buck antelope at 310 yards. Using the same rifle & load as above. Buck was slightly quartering toward me. I held a bit too much wind hitting him farther back than I intended. Bullet hit the back side of the onside lung, hit part of liver before going thru the abdominal cavity and coming to rest under the hide where it was recovered (see photo). This was about 20" of penetration; the retained bullet weight of this 105 VLD was 60grains (57%). After being hit the buck hunched up and then ran about 40 yards where he stopped. I dialed another 0.4 mils and sent another round thru the high shoulder. This shot dropped him and exited.

So far have used the 105 VLD for kills on five different deer/antelope with perfect results. They have also been more accurate than Hornady ELDx/ELDM in both my rifles. I would like to try the 95 TMK if I can get my hands on some.

Curious if you tried the 108 EH or 115 VLDH during your load development? I like what I see from the 105 performance, just curious why you chose that one over the 108/115.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[khuber84]

108eh performed perfectly for me last year, 7 animals. This year I'm loaded with 112s, womans creed with 109eldm. We have 9 deer tags to fill in next 10 days, it's going to be a murderous festival till turkey day. I'll share results!

 

[jamesmc8]

Curious if you tried the 108 EH or 115 VLDH during your load development? I like what I see from the 105 performance, just curious why you chose that one over the 108/115.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mostly availability at the time, did my load development last year when a lot of options were still hard to come by so I have not tried either the 108 or the 115. 105 shoot amazingly well out of both my 6 Creed and 6 ARC. The 108 and 115 offer a slightly better BC but not a drastic difference. I imagine they would shoot & perform very well.

 

[kkp005]

105gr hornady bthp out of a 20” 6mm creed.
Impact velocity around 2640fps. Shot him right behind the shoulder. Bullet exited and left a pretty good size exit. Surprisingly there was 0 blood trail and this 238 lb whitetail made it a little over 100 yards into the brush before running out of steam .

 

[sickles107]

Few more notches on the 6cm/108eldm this past week.





4x4 bull, long story short, first shot was 100% a mistake on my part. I popped out of a timber patch and saw this bull cross canyon above me ~250yds walking straight up and away in timber, I rushed the shot with quite a bit of reticle movement, sitting on a steep down slope aiming up, shooting off top of pack, aiming down top of chest/back. Bull hutched up and disappeared. Later found out bullet entered top rear of left shoulder, barley skirted rib cage, completely blew up left shoulder/scap, exited bottom front of shoulder. Tracked multiple bloody beds and finally caught up 3 miles later, follow up shots in chest dropped him. Wish I took more wound channel pics but it was getting dark and cold, had to get the quarters taken care of and looong walk back to camp.

Came in next day with a buddies horses to pack out, 15 mile round trip. Pretty awesome experience.

Maybe a bigger gun would have done more damage, but at the end of the day I made a poor decision to rush a non ideal shot in a non ideal position. Not the gun or bullets fault. Bullet did plenty of damage where it was put, just was not put in vitals...













Found this buck while running ridges, he was ~300yds cross canyon bedded, body hard quartered away but head turned around looking my way. Immediately layed down and set my rifle length wise on my pack and slipped bino harness under butt. super steady might as well have been on a bench rest. He was too quartered to confidently slip a bullet into back of lungs, though with his head turned almost 180 felt very confident aiming at front of shoulder/base of neck. Waited a minute or two to see if he would stand and give me a broadside shot, though when he started getting fidgety I thought about the possibility of him darting straight up and out of my life, so sent a round into the shoulder neck crease. Bang flop, dead buck. Entered base/side of neck, blew up esophagus and bottom of vertebrae, galf ball exit front/side of neck.

About 5 minutes after I got up to him, snow storm hit and held steady for the rest of the night. 1 tripped him out 8 miles, 17 degrees in the dark. Quite possibly the most brutal pack out of my life.