If you've seen my "Sheriff Seeks Second Sinful Sister" report you already know I've accomplished my goal of putting a 250 grain Gold Dot into a deer.
It's inappropriate to draw conclusions from one experience, but here's a report of my experience and thoughts.
The bullet was launched with 95 grains of GOEX FFFg. While I have not chronographed that load in this gun, my experience chronographing similar loads in other guns leads me to believe the muzzle velocity is probably just over 1600 fps. If that's correct, velocity at the 125 yard point of impact would be just below 1200 fps. That's about the velocity of a very hot loaded 45 Colt cartridge out of a beefy Ruger revolver
at the muzzle.
Here's where the shot hit.
The bullet clipped the rear of the right leg, center hit a rib going in, took out the top half of the heart and everything around it, center hit a rib going out, entered the inside center of the left front leg, blew the leg bone apart, and lodged in fragments under the skin of the off side shoulder. The deer traveled 40 yards after the shot (perhaps a tad less) and left no blood trail that I could detect.
Here's the tissue damage.
How an animal could run with that kind of damage is just amazing. The leg bone and much of the shoulder on her left side were destroyed. But when she ran off of the food plot I could see no indication that her leg wasn't functioning normally.
Here are the remains of the bullet found under the off-side skin.
That wide hollow point bullet destroyed itself. I hit closer to the shoulder than I wanted (hate ruining shoulder meat) and the damage was greater than I expected.
I would put full confidence in the 250 Deep Curl/Gold Dot to put a whitetail down with authority and wouldn't hesitate to use it out to 175 yards or so if the right shot presented itself.
Still, I think I will favor the 300 grain Gold Dot and expect a little less damage with slower expansion. However, I've never recovered a 300 from a deer because they have always passed through, and have never hit that same spot with a 300. So any comparison of damage is only speculation on my part.
Here's a short video of the shot. It's of poor quality and I apologize for that. I shot it with my little Nikon Coolpix S550. Though it has somewhat limited telephoto ability it usually takes a pretty good video. But I didn't realize that I had the Continuous Auto Focus feature turned off when I fired it up.
Anyway, you can just about make out the deer, see the smoke from the shot, and the deer's reaction.
Performance Report - 250 Grain Gold Dot
