I finally got a chance to take my new 44 hunting on thur. I just got it on last friday but have shot 3 boxes of shells with it and was pretty confident on anything between 20-30 yards. well I went to my stand about 4:oo and due to being a little under the weather i slept for about an hour(NO WIFE,KIDS,BOSSES,BILLS,BILL COLLECTORS NO PESKY LAB MORE READY FOR DUCK SEASON THAN ME)you know how it is when the season changes.anyway around 7:15 the sound of an approaching animal caught my attention, a few secounds latter a cow horn deer shows up just under my stand less than 5yds so i cock the hammer which yes he hears but decides its ok anyway. so he eases over to the food plot at which i grunt to stop him at my 20yd marker take aim then BOOOOOOOM the deer is knocked off his feet completely no B.S. he wheels away an heads to the swamp. when he passed the stand at around 150mph I saw the fur puffed up where it looked like an exit wound. welooked for that deer until about 11:00 with no blood trail or anything? what the world? I was shooting a 240grn. hollow point and sure that my aim was true. I beleive in not shooting what you cant hit and dont shoot what you wont eat(except varmits,tastes like chicken? H---l no)anyway im puzzled any answers. is there really a void over the lung area i think my shot was high. and also does a cold gun shoot diffrent and does cleaning change my zero. thanks for listining to me ramble on. I know you guys understand.

I've hit deer there with both rifle and bow with the results being the same , no deer.

I've been in the same spot. But think about this way, nothing goes to waste in nature.

One question, did you find any cut hair at the place where the deer fell down?? With almost all the 20 something deer I have taken with handguns I will find some hair from where the bullet entered or exited.

If the bullet did miss the lungs and the spine or just clip the top of the lungs it could bleed internaly and not leak much if any, as the blood will fill the lung cavity first.

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and also does a cold gun shoot diffrent and does cleaning change my zero.

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Depends on the gun. My 223 will shoot within an inch of zero with a claen barrel and then go right to shooting nice little groups. The 243 will make a pattern for the first 2 or 3 shots befor it settles down. I guees you will have to do a little testing to see what your gun does. As a general rule I will check zero right befor season and then not clean til after a harvest or season.

Don't be to discouraged that you didn't get the deer. There are a lot of variables in this sport. Cool thing is you got to drop the hammer and I'm sure the rush was great. In time your efforts will pay off, and the rush will be even better!!!!!

thanks for the replies I'm not discouraged im just upset that i didnt retreive the animal even though nuthing goes to waste its still to be pondered if the animal actualy died or does he just have a new orface? i guese it back to practice somemore

dang
i think of the possibility of one of two things. a complete miss(but skeeered his socks off).....or is it possible you just didn't find it? they are hard to find at times and a log, ditch, or a lil brush can hide one easily.

as long as you looked..........you'd think you woulda found it though
sometimes people just give up way too soon. especially if there is no blood trail to give the confidence of a hit.

good job on stickin with it to try n find it....n better luck next time.

i havn't found a cold barrel or clean barrel to affect things enuff to worry about. especially at a range of 20yds.

I feel your pain / disgust. I think any Handgunner (that is truthful with themselves) has been in the same prediciment before, and probably will be again. No it is not something we like or like to talk about, but it is a fact of life.

Yes indeed there is an area of which you speak on a Deer, above the lungs but below the spinal column. A buddy and I were in a pile of bales one afternoon many years ago. We had watched this particular buck for several afternoons and we were never in the right place. Finally we made a makeshift blind in the pile of bales and waited for the buck.

Prior to the buck showing himself we had flipped a coin to see who got the first shot (my buddy with his Remington Model 700 in 7mm Remington Express or me with my Remington XP-100 in 7mm I.H.M.S.A.). My buddy won the coin toss and I asked him how many shots he would need to kill the deer joking with him. He said he'd only need one, and my reply was being the nice guy that I am I'd give him two.

When the Deer appeared from cover and fed out onto the meadow John readied himself for the shot. The Remington 700 BOOMED, the Buck jerked his head took about 4 quick steps and started feeding again. Again the Remington 700 BOOMED, but this time the Buck jumped ran about 50 yards and again started feeding.

I was ready, and said that's TWO as my crosshairs settled on the Buck. At the roar of the XP-100 the Buck collapsed. There was no mistaking my shot, I drilled the Buck high in the shoulder causing lots of damage. However upon field dressing we found two 7mm Bullet Holes about 1/2" below the spinal column spaced about 2" apart horrizontally.

Yes indeed there is a void in that particular location in a Deer anatomy.

Keep you chin up, keep practicing and don't give up.

Larry

PS I to will clean my gun prior to season, go fire a group or two to make sure everything is as it should be and not touch it again until after season.

There is an area below the spine and above the lungs but with a HP bullet I doubt that you could get a bullet through there with out doing some real damage. It sounds like you were in a tree too. That would make getting an "over-under" shot nearly impossible because of the angle at 20 yards. You could have skimmed the bullet down the side and that's what you saw as the deer ran by. Next time you go back, have a look for hair on the ground where the deer was when you shot. The deer may not die either. I killed one last year that only had one front leg. Don't know what happened to the leg, but it was completely gone right at the joint on the upper shoulder. He was doing fine and hanging with a doe. There was no trauma to the meat & the hair had grown back over like there was never a leg there.

A lot has been said about the "void" between the spine and the lungs. Problem is, the lungs and heart must mostly fill the chest cavity. This is the only way the diaphragm can inflate the lungs by expanding. In fact, I've shot deer right behind the front leg broadside that must have been at the peak of exhalation because the bullet still went through the diaphragm and caught the stomach. It doesn't look like the lungs fill the chest when you cut them open, because you have broken the "sealed system", which allows air into the chest cavity around the lungs.

Also, right under the spine, starting just above and a little back of the heart, the aorta runs along the backbone and down through the diaphragm and into the abdominal cavity. This is a pretty large blood vessel and anything hit through it will die.

If you were shooting from a stand, and you think the EXIT wound was high on the far side of the deer, you may have shot OVER the spine, through the backstraps, and the deer may or may not recover.

That said, my wife shot a nice whitetail buck a few years ago that did much what you're describing. The buck was about 20 yards away and she was shooting a .44 Mag Ruger carbine with Remington 180 gr. HP bullets. I watched the buck as she shot (we were on the ground, same level as the buck) and saw the impact on the side of the deer, a little higher than I would have liked. There was about 4 inches of snow on the ground, it was snowing when she shot it, and the deer jumped over the side of the hill and disappeared. We found some hair, and a tiny little bit of blood on the far side of where the deer had been standing. No deer. No other blood or hair, and nothing to indicate what had happened. As we stood there, I started glassing over the side of the hill (pretty much straight down) and I saw a patch of white that didn't quite match the snow around it. That buck must have died immediately upon jumping off the hill, but there wasn't any blood anywhere, and he came to rest upside-down in the snow, so he was nearly invisible.

Odd things happen. How far away was he when you lost sight of him? And how high up in the tree is your stand? I think he could have gone quite a ways without leaving any blood, but still be very dead. Or, he might have a really nasty back wound, but not be fatally (at least not immediately - think dogs and coyotes) injured.

My stand is a bout 20-25 up a oak tree, do you think the angle made a diffrence? well i plan to go again tommorow for another try hopefuly without the same results. oh yeah there are no dogs/cotes, I've gotten lucky and am hunting one of thoses urban buck hideouts. it was bow only but after some convensing I got permission to use my handgun. Thanks again for all the replies at least i know im not alone on this one!

Okay, let's say you're 20-25 feet up the tree. The deer is 60 feet away, and you're shooting at a spot maybe 2, 2-1/2 feet off the ground. So let's say a height difference of 20 feet just to keep it simple. A little algebra followed by a little trigonometry says you're shooting downward at about a 28-29 degree angle. Call it 30. At 20 yards, this isn't going to make much difference in where your gun shoots. Were you using a rest?

good god have mercy that was deep. no i wasnt using a rest but i have good news i took a doe last night. boy i9 feel better now the only thing is the buck ran off and the doe dropped like a sack of taters.

Glad to hear that success is yours!!!

Very cool! Congratulations! Glad you're having fun and staying with it. I shot a doe last year with my .454 Casull. Very satisfying.

congratulations! now go get another one.

I have shot a caribou with a .375 H&H that was downhill from me. Flattened it. Got up and ran over the hill. Put a texas heart shot on it going away at bout 400 yards to put it down. On examination, I had shot high, hitting just above the backbone. The bullet hit a rib and exited only a few inches from entrance - effectively one lunging him. I am sure he could have kept going for a lot farther had I not got another shot into him. This may have been what happened to your deer.

My father once shot a caribou with a .300 Weatherby Mag. right in the scapula on a broadside shot. The caribou got up about 5 minutes later and started to walk off before I finished him off (I had been busy killing a second animal in the interim). That 200 gr. Bearclaw went below the backbone, but apparently missed the lungs. With a hollow point this should be difficult to do.

That being said, the one animal I lost in my career was a brown bear hit high behind the shoulder. Had a hard pointed bullet that I can only surmise glanced off a rib at an angle hitting only one lung. One of the issues of lower pistol velocities I have experienced is internal bullet deflection with hard pointed bullets.

I shot a buck several years ago that did the same thing. I was hunting from the ground and made a perfect shot on the buck at 15 yards. I was shooting my .44 mag. The buck did the dead mule kick as I call it and ran off. I knew I had made a good hit. I did find th smallest specs of blood though. I was able to recover the deer about 200 yards from the shot. The bullet enterd about 1/2 way up and passed between the ribs on both the entrance and exit leaving just 2 holes the size of the bullet. I was amazed. we didn't find any blood until we back tracked from the deer. It looked like he didn't start leaving a trail until his lungs filled with blood to the holes. By this time he couldn't go any farther.