I got lazy this year and didn't cast any 400 grain bullets for my Green Mountain barrelled Renegade, decided to try out the TC 250 grain saboted plastic tipped bullets. I loaded them over 100 grains of Elephant 2F black powder and got 2" 3-shot groups at 100 yards, iron sights. The first deer was a yearling 4-point buck, dressed weight of 87 lbs, at 15 yards. The shot was down between the shoulders, just grazed the spine and into the vitals, no exit. He dropped and died quickly. I was troubled by the lack of an exit wound but decided to try it on another. Yesterday evening while on a two day management hunt I shot a doe ~ 120 lbs. The shot was ~15 yards into the left shoulder at a downward angle ( was 30' up a tree) that should have come out on the opposite side armpit or lower right shoulder. At the shot she stumbled then took off on a dead run, like heart shot deer normally do. When I got down there was no sign of an exit and no blood. I followed her tracks for 100 yards and then lost them in a swampy creek, after 1 hour I had to call it quits as it was dark and the management area was shutting down.
The point of this rambling discourse is to let y'all know of the fragility of these bullets. In the case of the recovered deer I could only find the bullet jacket,on the doe who knows what happen to this bullet. I'm going back to my heavy weight cast bullets as they rarely fail to exit and give a good blood trail.

[ 10-26-2003, 21:45: Message edited by: Lewis50 ]

Maybe at that range take a head or neck shot , i don't think they will go far .