I was at the neighbor's field target shooting on Friday. As I was finishing up, the neighor woman calls me on my cell phone, frantic. Apparently, a deer had been hit by a car and dragged itself onto her property. So I go down there, and sure enough, a doe was sitting there, very badly injured - 3 legs were broken, and it looked terrible. I hate seeing any animal suffer like that, so I grabbed my ML, a powder charge, and the first bullet I found in my bag, which was a 200 grain .40 cal SST. I run back, and shoot the deer from about 5 yards away to put it out of its misery.

I was glad that I could do it, as opposed to letting the animal suffer for many more hours before it died. However, I wasn't too impressed with the performance of the SST. I shot from about 5 yards away, the bullet entered the back, right next to the spine, travelled through the chest cavity, and exited low in the ribcage. The exit hole was only slightly larger than the entrance hole - about .45 cal, it looked like. The already injured deer took about 45 seconds to completely expire. The SST didn't appear to hit any major bones, although it could have clipped a rib or two - I didn't field dress the deer, so I don't know. However, it seemed to just blow right through the deer without expanding much. This contrasts my experience with the .40 cal XTP - golf-ball sized exit holes and lots of internal damage.

I just thought I'd let you know - any similar experiences? Powder charge was 95 grains 777 - so that SST was moving pretty fast on impact.