Originally Posted by
Grouse45
spaniel
According to the post, the shots were pretty good. I do agree with out recovering the animal it's hard to comment. I really havent had a whole lot of trouble with Shockwaves at all.
The FTX is another story. All my Deer were recovered with good shots and no blood. It took multiple people to find my Deer. I shot a Buck with a 200grn Lehigh behind the shoulder and it went 40 yards. I thought that was a mile to tell you the truth. Everbody has different opinions on good bullet performance. No blood to track is poor to me.
Are we reading the same report? One shot was a gut shot and the other was quartering placed behind the shoulder (I agree with the OP that it quite likely angled too far forward to catch the lungs and would have been better placed behind the last rib to angle forward through the whole chest).
I cannot tell you what happened on your FTX shots other than my experience with the 325gr has been nothing but stellar, plenty of expansion(see pics) and plenty of penetration.
But you weren't using the 325 so it's impossible to draw a direct comparison. It's been awhile since I've had a deer go far enough to worry about blood, but I've seen too much variation in getting a blood trail to really concern myself thinking one bullet will do it reliably and another not. Plenty of high chest hits don't bleed despite big holes as the blood pools down if the lungs deflate and don't aspirate it.
It's hard to compare results with a ML to shotgun slugs. Slugs are huge compared to ML bullets and expand from there. I rarely had problems getting good blood with shotgun slugs, but I had a lot harder time hitting the deer where I wanted to so I needed to track a LOT more often.
If most of your shots will be under 100 yds you give up nothing going to a Nosler or similar lower-BC but hollowpoint bullet. However you're going to be getting marginal with that 200 yds shot. If the bulk of your shots will be 100-200 yds I'd stick with a Shockwave or similar bullet. Personally I like the 200gr the best because it is longer-for-caliber so it holds together better. If you look at the pic I posted before you'll see that the last bit of the jacket base held together and drove through both shoulders. My experience with the 250SW is that it can over-expand and fragment as it is not as long-for-caliber and it goes "splat" all the way back to the base.
To OP -- If you miss the vitals nothing short of a grenade launcher will guarantee you a good blood trail. I've seen deer take three rifled slugs through the guts and not leave a blood trail. The misfire was rotton luck, I'm sure you've already beat yourself up figuring out how it happened and will be punching one through the lungs next time anyways. And yes, I think the SWs perform optimally in the 100+ yd range though both the 200 and 300 gr bullets are better than the 250gr bullet (don't use bonded at all on deer-sized game).