HoosierHunter79

Today I moved my deer hut from 1 place to another, brushed it in good and cut off the small saplings and branchs that needed trimmed for shooting lanes. Of course when you are in the stand or blind for a few hours, your mind thinks of hundreds of things.

There is still a small amount of tall grass/weeds, etc. there. Will a small amount of foxtail, weeds, etc. effect the flight of your sabot? How big does a twig, limb, branch have to be to deflect it? I can't make myself think that a couplepieces of foxtail is gonna deture a 350 grain bullet at 2000 fps. LOL

Panhandle

That very question has been the topic of conversation between my son and I for the last week. Last Saturday my son shot at a doe at 45yds standing broadside in a clump of wild sunflowers. The stems on these are about 1/4" dia. He didn't think they would deflect the 300gn bullet so he cut loose. The bullet hit 6" low and sideways, low in the brisket. We eventually got the deer with a followup shot after trailing it over a mile. It doesn't take much we found out to disrupt a bullet. Luckily we hunt in wide open country and could keep up with the deers path of escape.
Zen

TNHagies

A lot of things can happen to a bullet once it hits an object. I think it's impossible to say with any certainty what will always happen to a bullet. That being said, in all my years of hunting I've only had two instances where I can think of hitting something between a deer and myself.

The first one was with a 150g Nosler pushed out of a .280 w/54g of IMR 4831. I hit a piece of laural brush and the bullet tumbled. It went through the buck's ribs sideways about 6 inches back from where I was aiming. The bullet did not exit. The deer only went about 50 yards but obviously not desirable.

The second one was a 300g. .452 XTP MAG pushed by 100g Pyrodex RS out of a Genesis. That cut a laural bush limb about the size of Sharpie in half. I still hit exactly where I was aiming and still got a pass through. Both of those deer were shot at about 40 yards.

So FOR ME, I try my best not to shoot through brush of any size. I personally would not be concerned about shooting through hay or wheat if it was at the point of the deer (say a yard or two in front of the deer). If the object was 3 yards in front of me and the deer was 150 yards away, no I don't think the results would be favorable.

my $0.02

driftrider

A couple years back I attempted a 50 yards shot at a doe that was across a creek bed. I was on the crest of a hill in a cut corn field, and she was halfway up the hill in the cut cornfield on the other side. There were trees without leaves (it was January) along the creek bed, but she was standing in a clear gap (or so I thought). Shot was taken from the prone position from atop my pack, so my rest was rock solid. The gun was my .50cal T/C White Mountain Carbine, 90gr Pyrodex RS with a 460gr Hornady Great Plains flat nose conical (aka, the freight train conical). I squeezed the trigger, the gun fired, and I was dead sure she'd be laying there when the smoke cleared, but when it did I saw her running hell-bent over the other hill. There was 1/2" of fresh snow, but not a single drop of blood, hair, nothing. I could clearly see where she was standing, and I found the furough cut by the bullet 6 feet short and almost 3 feet to the right of where she was when I took the shot. Then I noticed that there was one tiny little branch across the gap that I hadn't noticed that wasn't more than 1/4" in diameter that was broke and dangling. Turns out that the bullet grazed that branch just enough to cut it about half through, but it was enough to deflect that big chunk of lead over 6 feet in the 25 yard distance between the branch and the deer. I was not a happy camper after that, especially since I got skunked for the rest of the my time out there and went home empty handed. But, such is life when deer are involved.

Mike