Here is something for you guys to read.
So the early season in SE Minnesota just ended Sunday. There were 5 of us in our hunting party and we managed to fill our tags. I managed to connect on two nice does and a nice buck with both my 45-70 and 30-30. I knocked the first doe off her feet with the 45-70 and the Barnes 300gn TTSX for the 458 SOCOM at ~ 1750fps right behind the front legs and took off the top of the heart from ~60 yards. She never regained her feet.
The buck came shortly before close of shooting time that evening. I was sitting in a ground blind watching a doe feeding in the been field that was clearly out of range given the lighting and red-dot on the 45-70 and lamenting the poor decision to leave the 30-30 back in camp. She suddenly looks up and a big racked buck bounds into view. She breaks across the field and closes the gap with him behind her. He stops at ~100 yards and starts to feed silhouetted against the trees behind him. I line up on him with the pistol on the bog pod, try to control my shakes and let fly with another 300gn copper pill. He drops at the shot but quickly regains his feet. I reload (twice) and let fly (twice) and miss him both times. All this time, his tail is down, his hips are swaying a bit and he is looking around trying to figure out who hit him trying to horn in on his doe. About this time my father lets go with a broadside slug from ~150 yards and I see smoke/debris come of the backside of the deer, high on the back.
He finally bolts toward the woods about 50 yards from where he stood. As I'm packing up (it's well after sunset, the end of hunting for the day) I hear some cracking branches where he disappeared. Strolling over, we find him ~20 feet into the woods on his back.


I hit him ~4 inches behind the rib cage on the left and exited ~4 inches in front of the last rib on the right. He was a bit of a mess in side with stomach contents and lots of blood. My father's shot hit above the spine and passed clean through the top of his back. While I like the Sig-Sauer circle-dot, it has limited range with no magnification and that range drops rapidly with low light.

The next Friday evening found me back in the field with my 30-30 and Leopold glass having learned my lesson the week before. I was watching a doe and a couple fawns feeding in the field waiting for a buck that never showed up. About 15 min after sunset with light dropping fast I decided it was time. I lined up on a young doe at ~60 yards and let fly. the 110gn black tipped TTSX left the barrel at ~2400 fps and hit the doe right behind the left leg, crossed the chest cavity and shattered the right shoulder. She jumped, spun and made it ~20 yards before piling up just inside the trees. I didn't locate an exit hole but never found the bullet. It may have ended up back in the lungs in the gut pile.



In the end, I ended up shooting 2.5 deer out of the 5 our group took. I got extremely luck and managed to be in the right place at the right time several times.