How tough is a Whitetail Buck?

Polaris · Feb 17, 2016

OK, one more. Back in my school days I took a young lady hunting. Wanted her to use my .308 with mild 150 grain loads but she insisted on using her dad's friend's .243. Dad told her .308 was too much gun for his dainty little girl (he probably should have been more concerned about the young man taking her hunting, alone out in the woods). 100 grain green box. She made a good hit on a large buck. High lung, about 75 yards. Bullet did not exit. Fortunately there was fresh snow and not many deer tracks in the woods, because that deer ran over 100 yards with collapsed lungs, and only a few pepper grain sized spots of blood past the initial impact.

Northwoods deer are a different animal than the ones south of I-90.

35 Whelen · Feb 18, 2016

Well wrap your mind around this one, we had two hunters up here from NJ, claimed to be gods gift to the hunting fraternity, they went up on the mountain and got a shot at a big 10pt buck, the night before the one guy says "
I am shooting 200gr bullets outta my 06 cause they will bust brush a lot better than light bullets" I told him we had had ALOT of problems with heavy bullets from the 06/308 crowd punching holes in deer and them running off........................ he didn't want to hear that. Anyway he sees this big buck the next morning and opens up on him and claims he hit the deer behind shoulder [way behind????] and it charges down off the mountain with them in hot pursuit, they found lots of blood and hair and hide and rib bone were he connected, anyway they chased him around most of the day and he finally took out into Tomah Lake, and they watched him swim all the way across about a mile to the further shure. They went on and on about it and how tough that big buck was all that evening , it was pretty much what I expected from those big heavy bullets that would shoot thru and Elk or Moose on a 250lb deer............
So the next morning they go down to the area they saw him swim to and started looking around and appearently the buck had been hanging around that cold water all nite and when they showed up he jumped into the alders down at the lake shure to hide from them, they walked right by him, and he decided to swim right back to the mountain side. but one of them happened to look out and there he was , they both emptied their clips on him swimming out into the lake but never cut a hair outta him! He made the other side again and was never seen again! With a hole straight thru him he swam that lake TWICE.......... the lake froze over for the winter the next day!