jduckhunter
AH elite
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2012
- Messages
- 1,051
- Reaction score
- 2,425
- Media
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- Member of
- DU, JSA, NAHC( Life member), NRA (Life member)
- Hunted
- Namibia, Zimbabwe, USA (PA ,WY,TX,MT,AK,NJ,DE,VA,WV,SD,MA,NC,FL,MD,CA) Canada (QC,NF,ON,NT,NWT,BC), New Zealand
I went deer hunting with my Ruger Ranch rifle chambered in 300 BLK. I was using Hornady 208 grain Amax bullets, loaded to some where between 1000 and 1100 FPS (subsonic). I was hunting close to home and in a woodlot surrounded by houses, my rifle has a suppressor on it and with the subsonic loads the neighbors don't even know that I'm shooting. Not everyone in the hood shares my views on hunting so it's nice to keep things quiet. Any way, I knew that any shot that I would get would be a close one, the wood lot is very over grown and quite thick, so I wasn't concerned about a long range rifle. I wasn't hunting for more then two minutes when a buck steps into the trail ahead of me, he stops for a second, takes a quick look at me and turns to head on down the trail. I recovered from the shock of having him just appear like that out of nowhere and got off a shot just as he was quartering away and slightly downhill. To my surprise he went down with the shot and never got back up, I was a bit stunned. It wasn't the perfect shot for the setup I was using, but there he was down for the count. I couldn't wait to get the hide off of him to see what my bullet had done. Turns out that I got extremely lucky, the bullet entered his left side just behind the shoulder and about 1/3 of the way up his side. It just nicked a rib on the way in and turned very sharply upward just touched the bottom of his spine then turned again and smacked into the center of his right shoulder, but lacked the power to penetrate the bone. If that bullet wouldn't have hit his spine and paralyzed him I would have had a devil of a time trailing him in that thick cover. The entrance hole was very small, I think I only hit one lung and there was no exit hole, so no blood trail and I'm sure he would have gone quite a way before expiring. I was very lucky this time.
I've read a lot of pros and cons on the topic of hunting with subsonic rounds and I just had to find out for myself how well they worked. Now I know and I probably won't be using them again any time soon, at least not for deer hunting.
I've included a picture of the deer so that you can see why I was so shocked when I first saw him, I wasn't expecting to see anything like that, I've shot a lot of deer but this one got to me for a second. I've also included a picture of the recovered bullet, keep in mind that it passed almost through a mature deer at 43 yards, as you can see there is very little expansion, and the fact that it didn't exit I guess is what bothers me the most. So yes I did it, I hunted with subsonic bullets and yes I got a nice deer, but would I recommend that anyone else uses them for deer hunting, that's a big NO.
I've read a lot of pros and cons on the topic of hunting with subsonic rounds and I just had to find out for myself how well they worked. Now I know and I probably won't be using them again any time soon, at least not for deer hunting.
I've included a picture of the deer so that you can see why I was so shocked when I first saw him, I wasn't expecting to see anything like that, I've shot a lot of deer but this one got to me for a second. I've also included a picture of the recovered bullet, keep in mind that it passed almost through a mature deer at 43 yards, as you can see there is very little expansion, and the fact that it didn't exit I guess is what bothers me the most. So yes I did it, I hunted with subsonic bullets and yes I got a nice deer, but would I recommend that anyone else uses them for deer hunting, that's a big NO.