Is that ball you used home cast? The reason I ask is I expected more of a flattened design to the ball after traveling that far. If it is home cast, check your lead. Although maybe it never hit any hard bone surface to make it flatten out more then it did.
Yep! That's a home cast ball from a .535 double cavity Lee mold. I got that mold at a real good price from a guy on this forum who seems to be a pretty decent fellow and goes by the name
Cayugad.
The ball is pure soft lead. It entered the chest cavity through the brisket cartilage and exited the chest cavity between the second and third rib, then stopped under the skin. It clipped the third rib a little and cut a "half moon" from the side of it. I think the crease in the ball that you can see in the picture was from contact with the rib. He didn't start bleeding from the entry wound until he covered a good twenty or twenty-five yards. After that the blood trail was good and he really bled out where he went down.
After the shot I began questioning my judgement in taking a "facing" shot that far out, especially since I didn't find any evidence of a hit right away (and was lucky in that I saw exactly where he entered the woods). However, I've been shooting this gun a lot and was confident in the load. I was sitting in a folding chair behind a pile of brush on a small bluff on side of the plot and had the gun on my camera tripod shooting rest. I sure would have preferred a broadside shot, but he was really nervous and had already trotted off of the plot once without offering me a shot. One of the guys in my hunting club described it as "preparation, confidence and opportunity coming together".