frontier gander

Just got home from 6 days of hunting and while we didnt fill all of our tags, we got 2 doe's. I popped one in the early morning of the second day and she turned out to be a pretty good sized doe. I shot her with my Deer Creek Northwest Rifle in .45 with 80 grains triple 7 and a 225 grain aerotip powerbelt @ 80 yards.

Shot was perfect and i put it through BOTH shoulders, breaking one shoulder bone, taking out 1 1/2 ribs on the entrance shot and then the exit shot broke 2 ribs and stopped just right behind the hide. I recovered the bullet and was happy to see a perfect mushroom. Both shoulders had very little useable meat and were used for hamburger.

From the pics, you can see the blood trail i was able to follow. She slowly walked 5 yards behind a tree and then rolled a few more feet before coming to a stop. I was amazed with the massive blood trail it left and the performance of that 225 grain powerbelt.

Deer #2 my dad shot with the same rifle and load. He got it at 50 yards in Thick forest covered with brush, high grass and some kind of jungle looking type leafed folage. The deer ran/rolled 20 yards between two logs and under some thick growth. I spotted a huge splatter of blood against an aspen that measured about 4" wide and blood was thick and just running down the tree. Looking in the thicker growth on the forest floor my brother and i scanned out the area and followed a good blood trail and walked right to the deer. It was an easy tracking job even in the thick forest.

His shot went right through the lung and exited the shoulder of the oppisite side. That shoulder was useless and was cut off in the field and thrown to what ever comes along. The exit hole was the size of a silver dollar.
Here are pics of my deer i took earlier that day. We shot ours 3 hours apart. Please note that the pics are graphic so, those who have weak stomachs, Man up and deal with it

Here is my pic, the first shot of the deer is the entrance hole. She bled out fast and there was a heavy blood trail to follow, as you can tell from the pics.

Also some assortment of pics. The mountain in the back ground is Castle Peak where we were hoping to get an elk. 80 Degree weather messed up hunting season badly and only 2 elk were taken during muzzleloading season. My bro also grossed us all out when he gutted my deer and sliced off a chunk of liver and ate it raw. I about puked lol. He said it was actually better raw than cooked and surprised him. I'll leave that to him and choose not to eat the liver raw

Here is the shot i took and this is the end result.



My finger points to where the powerbelt rests behind the hide.






And below is the rifle that took her,


225 grain powerbelt.


Entrance shot,


Exit shot!


Me doing what i do best when hunting is slow.


Above pic is the Green River skinning knife i bought at the Santa Fe trails rendezvous this summer. Worked amazing! And yeah, thats my bro chewing on raw liver [:'(]

My brother and I walking through a thick aspen grove near Castle Peak,



And here is castle peak,

cayugad

Frontier Gander - very nice deer. That is an amazing entry wound on that doe. No wonder she bleed so well. Also nice shooting there. You could not have placed that better.

That is some real pretty country there. So now you get to butcher and make sausage, and all the other fun stuff. Well at least you have some excellent table fare there...

Again, congratulations.

HuntAway

First off, FG congratulations on your successful hunt!!!

Now, more importantly, since when is the "Perfect Shot" drilling both shoulders, or, drilling one shoulderfor that matter on anything other than dangerous game? I understand that you Southern boy's tend to hunt a lot of private land and letting an animal cross property lines would be a bad thing. However, if there is room to roam, why waste good meat? Behind the shoulder breaks two or at worse four ribs and they're just as dead with a very nice blood trail. Best of all, all you waste is a few ribs, not an entire shoulder or two.

OK, my rant is over. It is, after all, JMHO.

frontier gander

To test a new bullet and see how it performs. IMO, you can shoot into a bullet trap and such and get an idea of how the bullet will do, but the best way to know for sure is on the actual game you are hunting. I had faith in the bullet since day one when the 225 powerbelt out performed the 255 maxi hunter. I was looking for a bullet that was big enough, yet light enough to shoot out to 150-175 yards and still perform. We get a lot of knocking on the Powerbelt bullets on this forum and only 1 or 2 others have posted pics of powerbelts that have actually taken game cleanly. We hear all the horror stories and never the good ones. This i believe will show a lot of people that the powerbelt is an amazing bullet to use when you are using charges that are suggested by the company.

I am more than happy with how the powerbelt performed and how the animal went down. The deer my dad took with my .45 was a lung shot that was taken slightly at an angle and just tore the hell out of the other shoulder on its way out.

Do powerbelts perform better with lower powder charges? I honestly can say yes. I used to use 120 grains and 150 grains and never got blood trails like this before. This will be my hunting load for many many years to come.
I think i see a 300 grain platinum some year, but am affraid of the damage that big slug would do!

Thanks guys, we had a lot of fun even though we had to hunt in t- shirts. Horrible season for elk and not that great for deer, but i am grateful that we were able to take the two deer that we did. They are both in the freezer now and will be cooked up very soon.

Semisane

Hey gander, nice deer. Loved the picture.

If you did that in my neck of the woods, you'd come away with so many chiggers that people would think you had chicken pox.

frontier gander

I forgot to add.

When my dad shot his doe at 50 yards, i picked the deer up to see the wound and was shocked to see that part of the stomach push out of the entrance wound and stood out like a half inflated baloon. How the heck did the stomach come up out of that hole? In all the years ive been muzzleloading, ive never seen something like that happen before.

Semi, i just had to deal with a few pesty black ants

gleason.chapman

Congratuatlions. Nice doe. I believe you confirmed Phil Glasgow'stheory that PB have to be shot less than 1200--1400 FPS. Where is it written on the packages that you should shoot them at this speed to get adequate penetration and full expanion on game? I have not heard or seen that. I believe you learned it on this forum, exactly like I did. Only a small % of ML hunters are "into the forums", therefore they will not know what you know. Infact, since your addicted to HNI, you know a lot more than most ML users with regard to bullet performance and selection.
Again congratulations. Chap

nchawkeye

If you are hunting wide open spaces lung shots are fine...If you are hunting down here in the South and a cutover or swamp is just a few bounds away, a shoulder shot ensures that the deer won't make it in there.....I let the situation dictate which I use.....

n5638b

FG, You're right, the ml hunt was warm! We saw a dozen or so elk in our area, even had a bull & cow broadside at 30 yards! If he had been a shooter, he'd be in the freezer.Too warm yet to get much response to calling.....Looking forward to 1st rifle, think I'll carry the ml instead of the .308 this year.

frontier gander

Heres some pics of aspen trees that some beaver had felled and littered an entire mountain side. I spotted 4 pretty good sized lodges. One lodge was entirely mudded over! Pretty amazing little animals.
Look at the size of the chunks they take out!
I wish i would have taken pics of their "slides" These were packed trails they made that were slick and running straight down into their ponds.