My stepfather (who just recently got into hunting) and I went out to a freind's property today to hunt meat does for the annual sausage supply. My stepdad shot a really fat doe at about 35yds with his 30-06 using Hornady factory ammo loaded with 150 grain Interlocks. I chose those shells as I figured they would work well on our little 100lb Central Texas hill country deer. Was I ever wrong! The doe was quartering toward him. He put the bullet through the foreleg, breaking the upper leg bone, obliterated the heart and shredded the off-side lung. Sounds good enough, huh? Well the doe ran 30yds, into a very dense cedar thicket. We had trouble tracking her. There was no exit wound. When we finally found her, what was left of the bullet amounted to a 40 grain chunk of copper and lead, only the very base of the bullet and a mushroom of about .35-.40 caliber. I have shot deer in Central Texas with 6mm Rem using cheap Winchester facotry ammo, Nosler ballistic tips in that and other calibers, regular Sierra bullets (not Matchkings ), I've pushed bullets of typical construction faster than was prudent for there design in a 300 Weatherby, and yet I have never had a bullet fail to exit and leave a plain spoor trail. All in all, we got the deer. I think I'll load him up 100 rounds of 150 grain Nosler Partitions so he won't ever have to worry about poor performance. If that shot had been a quatering away shot, I am confident we would have lost her.

Now for my deer. I have always wanted to hunt with an AR-15. I started putting together a 6.8 SPC a few months ago to use for our small local whitetail, figuring it would work well. The brass still hadn't come in so I was stuck with my 223. I would never have used that cartridge on anything larger than a coyote due to poor penetration with bullets of typical construction. However, I changed my mind about the 223 when I saw that Nosler made a 60 grain Partition. I loaded some up to 2950fps out of my AR cabine-length barrel and gave it a try. I took a broad-side shot at about 50yds on another fat doe. She was still walking slowly forward broad-side when I shot. I knew the shot was good when she started to run.

Now to see how that little pill performed. I walked to where she was hit, frothy bright-red blood everywhere. That told me that I probably hit both lungs. I tracked her about 25 yds and she was down and out when I got there. On gutting, I saw that the bullet had gone through a rib on entering the back half of the chest cavity, started to open in the first lung, shredded the front part of the liver, and took out a large portion of the off-side lung. The important thing to relay here is that the liitle 60 grain bullet retained enough weight to exit, taking a rib with it. The exit hole was about the size of a 50-cent piece but for a meat deer, it was perfect. I would have no qualms with using that combo again for a meat hunt.

For a trophy buck, I'd use my 338-06AI, NO QUESTION!