Muzzleloader bullet performance

[reynolds357]

Single bullet holes, especially if they are entrance wounds shot from an elevated stand, will not bleed till the body cavity fills with blood or the deer starts blowing it out their nose/mouth(lung shots). Even with an exit wound, blood starting immediately isn't always the case. Had they gone more than 20 yards, odds are if the damage was as massive as you claim, there would have been good blood to follow.

I think the damage is as massive as he claims. My son shot a massive bodied whitetail last season with Better 130 VLD from a 6.5x284. He thought he missed it. I was hunting 600yds away and heard the fluid thud so I knew he didn't miss. We hunted that deer for hours. Could not find a drop of blood. Finally drove home and got the dog. Dog went straight to it, but we never found a drop of blood for over 80 yards. About 20 yards before the deer went down, we found a river of blood. 1/4th of heart was gone and one lung was jello. Other lung had some jacket punctures.

 

[bamaranger]

dead deer

One gun scribe has posed the question. "At what point in the clean kill did the bullet fail" or words to that effect. And indeed, a dead deer is a dead deer.

In checking the velocities of .50-245gr/100 power belt loads it seems they will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1750 fps. I see that as a about the equal of a magnum bigbore handgun.....exceeding the .44 mag from a handgun, but not nearly in the same class as the .454 or the .480. If one is shooting sub caliber (.44/.45) saboted bullets, they are actually duplicating .44 mag ballistics. What a 245gr at 1750 fps mirrors is a .44 mag carbine.

I've had a good bit of exposure to a .44 carbine myself, having done a good bit of whitetail hunting with one , and observing my my Dad's results with one in the '70-80's. Without side tracking the thread, the .44 mag takes deer cleanly, but it is not a Zeus like thunderbolt, dropping whitetails in their tracks. In fact, my experience is that DRT kill may be the exception to the rule, especially if one shoots their deer "tight behind the shoulder", regardless of cartridge. Exit wounds when shooting JSP or JHP bullets in the .44 carbine were a roll of the dice, depending on angle and distance (arrival velocity). Bullets lighter than 240gr did not exit in my experience. Accepting that observation may put the OP's hunts in perspective.

Personally, I am very old school when hunting with muzzleloading rifles. Iron sighted traditional sidehammer rifles of Hawken pattern , with real
BP and heavy, full caliber projectiles. My shots are close, under 50yds, usually from treestands. The old 370gr Maxi does just fine with 80 gr of FFFg from Renegade/Hawken rifles, usually passing completely thru a whitetail regardless of angle. I'll add those 370gr Maxi's are increasingly harder to find commercially, and too dang expensive when you do!

While two holes (in/out) in an animal does not insure a better blood trail, theoretically, it should. But hide slip and the shoulder blade sliding across a wound in the chest cavity, as well as the height of the wounds in relation to the chest cavity (lower exits typically SHOULD yield more blood) make blood trails a roll of the dice issue as well. Hope for it, but don't count on it.

All of that to say that when hunting with a muzzleloader, regardless of style or load, one is still afield with a firearm of adequate but relatively modest performance when compared to a centerfire rifle in the '06 class. Pick your shots and angles, and use good sense in recovery and tracking if necessary.

 

[Scorch]

When hunting with ANY firearm, you should be able to track any game you shoot across any terrain you shoot them in. That is your duty as a hunter, to make a clean shot and to recover the game shot.

I hunted in norther NV with a friend many years ago, and tracked a buck for him across volcanic desert soil that he thought he had missed but I saw the hit. After about 50 yds, he was ready to give up until I showed him tracks and eventually blood, then we found the buck piled up about 150-200 yds from where it was shot. He was amazed, but I had showed him exactly what I was looking at to track the buck. It just wasn't important enough to him, he thought he didn't need that skill since most of his kills had been boom-flops.

I had learned to track as a teenager when I bowhunted on the CA central coast, where hard, rocky soil combined with thick brush can hide dead animals form sight even as close as 5 yds away. For me, tracking that buck across a rocky hillside was easy as reading a book, to him it was like magic.

 

[reynolds357]

When hunting with ANY firearm, you should be able to track any game you shoot across any terrain you shoot them in. That is your duty as a hunter, to make a clean shot and to recover the game shot.

I hunted in norther NV with a friend many years ago, and tracked a buck for him across volcanic desert soil that he thought he had missed but I saw the hit. After about 50 yds, he was ready to give up until I showed him tracks and eventually blood, then we found the buck piled up about 150-200 yds from where it was shot. He was amazed, but I had showed him exactly what I was looking at to track the buck. It just wasn't important enough to him, he thought he didn't need that skill since most of his kills had been boom-flops.

I had learned to track as a teenager when I bowhunted on the CA central coast, where hard, rocky soil combined with thick brush can hide dead animals form sight even as close as 5 yds away. For me, tracking that buck across a rocky hillside was easy as reading a book, to him it was like magic.

I know how to track. When you are in a Thicket full of briers that 30+ does bed in, it's a bit tough when they don't leave visible blood. Tracks everywhere. Hair everywhere. Broken twigs everywhere. Deer droppings everywhere. I can track. I tracked a deer over half a mile on opening season night. Still alive when I caught up to it. My 6 year olds neck shot did not work out so well for him.