Due to a catastrophic leg injury years ago and a bum knee on the other wheel, I have been increasing the intensity of my hunting over the last couple of years to see what I can take. I want to get back to the mountain hunts of my younger days. This year was a little practice hunt in the hill country of Wyoming. Five days of crawling up and down hills, over rocks and logs, and things held up half decent. I learned I can take pretty much anything if I pace myself and if I eat enough ibuprofen.
The spot my hunting partner and I picked had both mulies and whiteys. We were hoping for the opportunity to harvest a mulie buck, but all we ever saw were does. Whitetails were abundant. Most of the bucks were fairly undersized and there were lots of broken racks. On the walk in on the first morning, I spotted a nice buck skinning out into the woods (more correctly the buck spotted me first). A half hour later I glassed a really nice half rack 4x1 whose left antler was broken off at the base. The rest of the next 2 days, we saw numerous small basket racks, none of which were worth dragging back to the truck 4 miles away. It seemed like the bucks were just starting to move but otherwise no real rut activity was evident.
On the last morning of the hunt, I decided to set up on a natural spring to see what might happen by. A hour after sunrise, I was visited by 2 does and their 4 youngsters. They watered and quickly moved out to deeper cover. I did see that one doe had checked over her shoulder and looked up the draw a couple of times. She was pretty nervous. About 10 minutes after they left, antlers appeared. He walked close to the edge of the bottom of the ravine which obscured my view quite a bit. At one point, he looked right up at me and all I had to shoot at was his head and white patch on his throat through some light brush. Not a professional shot so I passed. He turned and took two leaps back to where he cam from. But then he stopped almost broadside and looked at me again. Now don't laugh, I was carrying my 325 WSM mountain rifle. I slipped a 180g Ballistic Tip over the lip of the drop-off and into his chest. A little wiggle and 3 staggering steps later, he landed in the spring.
I had loaded the 180 Ballistic tips over H4350 for a mild MV around 2850fps. The bullet produced a significant amount of damage in the chest, the impact hit one rib but fractured 3 additional ribs on the entry side, took out the top of the left lung, obliterated the descending aorta and vena cava, made a right turn, hit the right kidney, and lodged in the right hip. Might it be the magic bullet that killed Kennedy?
With all of that damage, the bullet still retained 103.9g of original weight.
The spot my hunting partner and I picked had both mulies and whiteys. We were hoping for the opportunity to harvest a mulie buck, but all we ever saw were does. Whitetails were abundant. Most of the bucks were fairly undersized and there were lots of broken racks. On the walk in on the first morning, I spotted a nice buck skinning out into the woods (more correctly the buck spotted me first). A half hour later I glassed a really nice half rack 4x1 whose left antler was broken off at the base. The rest of the next 2 days, we saw numerous small basket racks, none of which were worth dragging back to the truck 4 miles away. It seemed like the bucks were just starting to move but otherwise no real rut activity was evident.
On the last morning of the hunt, I decided to set up on a natural spring to see what might happen by. A hour after sunrise, I was visited by 2 does and their 4 youngsters. They watered and quickly moved out to deeper cover. I did see that one doe had checked over her shoulder and looked up the draw a couple of times. She was pretty nervous. About 10 minutes after they left, antlers appeared. He walked close to the edge of the bottom of the ravine which obscured my view quite a bit. At one point, he looked right up at me and all I had to shoot at was his head and white patch on his throat through some light brush. Not a professional shot so I passed. He turned and took two leaps back to where he cam from. But then he stopped almost broadside and looked at me again. Now don't laugh, I was carrying my 325 WSM mountain rifle. I slipped a 180g Ballistic Tip over the lip of the drop-off and into his chest. A little wiggle and 3 staggering steps later, he landed in the spring.
I had loaded the 180 Ballistic tips over H4350 for a mild MV around 2850fps. The bullet produced a significant amount of damage in the chest, the impact hit one rib but fractured 3 additional ribs on the entry side, took out the top of the left lung, obliterated the descending aorta and vena cava, made a right turn, hit the right kidney, and lodged in the right hip. Might it be the magic bullet that killed Kennedy?
With all of that damage, the bullet still retained 103.9g of original weight.
