So, I took my new Henry .45-70 up to Ohio to hunt with my dad this past Monday and Tuesday. The owner of the farm we were hunting requested that we shoot only does this year, as the population needed some trimming. We were happy to oblige.
Monday afternoon, shortly before dark, I connected on a decent sized doe at about 200 yards, quartering away. She ran about 100 yards, and I thought I had missed. Then she stopped and just keeled over. Postmortem examination showed that the Hornady 325gr. LeverEvolution had entered just behind the rib cage on the right and exited just in front of the rib cage on the left. Somehow, I had managed to miss both shoulders, the tenderloin/backstrap, and the guts...all of which was a good thing. It plowed thru the liver and created a lot of internal bleeding.
On Tuesday, in the same location, I took a shot at a nice-sized doe at 175-200 yards about 15 minutes before dark. She was quartering toward me, so I lined up on her front shoulder. At the shot, she dropped to the ground like I had hit her with a ton of bricks. She laid there for a minute, then started kicking. OK, that's fairly normal. She kicked for about 30 seconds and then stopped. At that point, I figured she was done. No sooner did we start to gather up our things, than she started kicking again. As we watched, she kicked her way out of the field and into the woods. I told my dad to gather up our things, I was going to go make sure she didn't crawl halfway down the hill. I walked down to where she had been, blood everywhere. I mean, lots of blood. I made a quick loop thru the woods, expecting to find her, but didn't. There were several large piles of brush in the area, and my first thought was that she had crawled up under one of them. So, we got out our flashlights (it's getting dark by this time) and spent the next 15-20 minutes looking into the brush piles. No luck. So I came back to where she had left the field and started working the blood trail. Lots of blood initially, but it just kept going. Apparently, she got back on her feet at some point. The further she went, the less blood we found. We trailed her for 200-300 yards thru the woods until we reached the property line. By that point, it had gone from profuse bleeding to just a drop here and there. At that point, we lost it altogether. I have no doubt that she laid down somewhere on the neighbor's property and bled out overnight, but I'll be darned if I've ever seen a deer shake off a hit that hard, and with that much blood loss, and walk away from it. I was kinda bummed about it all.
On the bright side, the Henry seemed to shoot very well at fairly long range. I will spend more time on the practice range with it to improve my comfort level with it, but I'm impressed so far.
Cheers,
Brian
Monday afternoon, shortly before dark, I connected on a decent sized doe at about 200 yards, quartering away. She ran about 100 yards, and I thought I had missed. Then she stopped and just keeled over. Postmortem examination showed that the Hornady 325gr. LeverEvolution had entered just behind the rib cage on the right and exited just in front of the rib cage on the left. Somehow, I had managed to miss both shoulders, the tenderloin/backstrap, and the guts...all of which was a good thing. It plowed thru the liver and created a lot of internal bleeding.
On Tuesday, in the same location, I took a shot at a nice-sized doe at 175-200 yards about 15 minutes before dark. She was quartering toward me, so I lined up on her front shoulder. At the shot, she dropped to the ground like I had hit her with a ton of bricks. She laid there for a minute, then started kicking. OK, that's fairly normal. She kicked for about 30 seconds and then stopped. At that point, I figured she was done. No sooner did we start to gather up our things, than she started kicking again. As we watched, she kicked her way out of the field and into the woods. I told my dad to gather up our things, I was going to go make sure she didn't crawl halfway down the hill. I walked down to where she had been, blood everywhere. I mean, lots of blood. I made a quick loop thru the woods, expecting to find her, but didn't. There were several large piles of brush in the area, and my first thought was that she had crawled up under one of them. So, we got out our flashlights (it's getting dark by this time) and spent the next 15-20 minutes looking into the brush piles. No luck. So I came back to where she had left the field and started working the blood trail. Lots of blood initially, but it just kept going. Apparently, she got back on her feet at some point. The further she went, the less blood we found. We trailed her for 200-300 yards thru the woods until we reached the property line. By that point, it had gone from profuse bleeding to just a drop here and there. At that point, we lost it altogether. I have no doubt that she laid down somewhere on the neighbor's property and bled out overnight, but I'll be darned if I've ever seen a deer shake off a hit that hard, and with that much blood loss, and walk away from it. I was kinda bummed about it all.
On the bright side, the Henry seemed to shoot very well at fairly long range. I will spend more time on the practice range with it to improve my comfort level with it, but I'm impressed so far.
Cheers,
Brian
