Cant believe no blood???
 

I read alot of articles on here regarding shockwave 250 grain bullets and their lack of bloodtrail. They shoot awesome out of my omega 100 gr 777 and this bullet give me 1-2 groups at 100 yds. dropped a high shoulder shot deer last yr in tracks 25 yds no need for bloodtrail. MY Son shot deer in ohio w/ gun initial blood at site of impact took out 1 lung and liver deer went 50 yds. I shot a decent buck at 50 yds from t stand bullet entered right shoulder took top of heart out and exited lower half of rib s on off side I swear on my life no blood at impact and no blood till I found deer 50 yds in thicket thank god for snow. The only blood I found was the slightest of mist and I mean slight like on hands and knees to see every jump, I would imagine frome nose or mouth since lungs and heart destroyed Exit wound twice the entrance why do yo figure no blood i cant figure it out I couldnt place a shot much better opinions please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

matt068

You are not the first to experiance this feat... Was it one of the ones with the solid tip or one with the flex tip...

I do not shoot pointy bullets so I do not know much about the SST/SW.

Happens to all of us some of the time. Had two this year early season that did the same. No blood until they dropped. Hole through both of them and good placement. Sometimes they just bleed inside and nothing where they are hit. Is worse when there is no snow. Mine were in the evening and right at dark. High weeds and no blood trail. Walked for 2 hrs and nothing until morning and too late then i the warm weather and coyote territory. Never lost 2 in the last 10 years but happened this year. Mine were found about 75 yds but not that night.

My Buddy got a Triumph and we sighted it in this year, since he got a sample pack of TC Shockwaves (250gr yellow tip) this is what we used to sight it in, he also got a 30 pack of them from Wal-Mart.
His Triumph was sighted in perfect, 1"groups at 100yds, yet 2 Deer he hit just had some hair and no blood. We followed the tracks in the snow forever untill we were certain the deer was'nt going to bed or die, right away anyway. He is a great shot and the distances were both around 50-60yds. His third deer was the same but we had a few very small specks and that was it, followed it forever again and no deer.
I also am no Fan of (Pointy) Bullets, they do shoot nice at the range but when it comes to devestation they fall short. My Opinion is they either blow through the animal with such a small hole it plugs up with fat or matter, or they dont exit and the same happens.
Try some Barnes Expanders or XTP's you wont have this.
(BP)

I am fortunate enough to hunt areas where I can typically see my deer go down. I shoot quite a few deer (3-6 per year) and in my experience with several different bullets it's not that unusual to find no blood. If you deflate the lungs on impact they will not aspirate the blood out the mouth/nose or wound. If the impact hole is not positioned for the heart to squirt it out or you ruin its pumping ability on impact there is no pressure to push it out.

Worst of all are high hits that miss the shoulder (which would typically drop them in their tracks) as the blood will pool in the bottom of the chest cavity.

Your deer only went 50 yards. This has to be acceptable performance from ANY bullet. No bullet can guarantee they will go anywhere shorter. I shot my buck this year at under 20 yards, frontal shot, cut the heart in half and hit both lungs, bullet cut a path of destruction all the way until it stopped in the hind quarter where it was recovered (325gr FTX). Yet that deer covered about 75 yards or so before he dropped.

If you hunt an area where 50 yds run is a problem, I suggest focusing on accuracy and placing the bullet in the shoulder blade over searching for another bullet because nothing is going to guarantee that.

FWIW I have shot a deer with a Barnes Expander shotgun slug that was recovered opened to the size of my palm, and there was no blood, it ran about 70 yds.

There is no way a deer can take even a hard cast bullet through the vital organs and not die; I use quite a variety of cast bullets and took some big deer with them in IL, only one time did I have one go over 150 yds after he was hit. I have used SW for a long time and never lost a deer with them. They some times don't leave a good blood trail especially with a high hit but hit in the right place they rarely have gone 100 yds.
If you get a high in and out hit with any bullet the deer bleeds inside, a gut shot would be plugged up by the insides and not leave a good trail. Even so I have to agree that the blood trails from a shock wave fall short of what you would get from a Lehigh or a Nosler partition. A heart shot deer shot with a non-expanding bullet will go quite a way but shot that low they will leave a blood trail.
I wonder some times if some shots are not deflected by branches or something like that.

if you have lost confidence in a bullet you should switch.i have had no problem with the sst/shockwave's for the 5 deer i've shot with them.this year i shot a deer with a
250gr. barnes tmz this was placed just like the sst's,just behind front leg in the lower
1/3 of the chest.this calm at the shot deer with the top of his heart gone and a broken leg still managed a 50yd. death run with no blood showing for 30yds.pretty common for a run and blood.after skinning this deer i really could'nt notice any more damage done by the barnes vs the sst's. the reason i was using the barnes is it's been the most accurate in the knight vision.i believe most deer are lost due to poor bullet placement not the bullet..........karl

There are just so many things that can happen that cause no blood reguardless of a perfectly placed shot, and we just cant explain why.....I've had it happen more than once, all deer were found some went over 100yds with heart shots and complete pass throughs with No Blood, others dropped on the spot, some ran 30 yds. All with entrance and exit holes that you'd swear there's no way there could be no blood. Other's bled a 3 foot blood trail with the exact same placed shot.
(BP)

I had this happen to a doe the other year she went down on the spot got back up and ran ansd jumped into the corn field and i never did find her and there were 4 of looking and there was no blood when she went into the corn anywhere. This happens to diff people I hunt with too

Well I personally have never shot a deer with a Shockwave. And I have sure read a lot of horror stories just like what you are saying. But then I have seen deer shot with a 30-06 that did not bleed for 50 yards. After that of course, a blind person could have followed the trail.

You just never know what a wound is going to do until you find the deer. High shots, unless you are breaking a deer down, are dangerous to make and not always fatal. If you're not going to break the animal down, do a low heart shot. You know then that the deer is not going to run for miles, and with a low hit, they start to bleed sooner.

The 250 grain SST/Shockwave bullets have worked well for me even when i made a few bad shots. On 2008 i made bad shots on two deer: Both were hit in the guts. There was a lot of blood both times. One animal was found dead about 300 yards from where it was hit. i jumped the other wounded deer, went after it and killed the animal. That same year i made a gut shot on a 200 pound sow. That animal was also located.

i make bad shots once in awhile just like a lot of other folks make bad shots but i've not lost an animal since 2004. Wish that i had used a 250 grain SST/Shockwave on that cow elk rather than the 300 grain TC PTX which did not expand.

i have used the SST/Shockwaves with the hard yellow plastic tip, and the hard red plastic tip. Have also used the SSTs with the soft red tip. SST/Shockwave bullets have killed over 15 deer and dozens of hogs for me. I have never lost an animal that was shot with one of these bullets.

If you think deer are hard to kill you should try hogs. Hogs are much harder to cleanly kill than deer. Shot a 300 pound boar hog last fall with my .35 Whelen Improved. Range was 80-100 yards. The bullet was the 250 grain Partition. The muzzle velocity of that load is just over 2,500 fps. The hog was hit a little high behind the shoulder and the bullet exited. That hog took off like it was not hit and ran several hundred yards into a plum thicket where i killed it.

There are two different Shockwave bullets, the regular Shockwave and the bonded Shockwave. I have never seen a case where the regular SST/Shockwave bullet failed to expand. Sometimes they do not exit but i could care less because the animal is not going very far if it is properly hit.

The Bonded Shockwave is a much harder bullet. IMO: The Bonded Shockwave is overkill for whitetail deer.

Deleted by falcon. New thread.

I shot two deer last weekend with a 200 grain shockwave. The first one was approximately 75 yards and the exit hole on that one was half again the size of a quarter. Even with a large exit and in snow the blood trail wasnt great. The second doe was at 180 yards and I made a poor shot on her. It was a low liver hit and the bullet stayed in her. I probably wouldnt have found any blood except for the snow. Ive hunted alot with shotguns and a good blood trail with a shotgun is usualy the exception not the rule. Even though these are my first deer with my muzzle loader, Im sure the same goes for them as well.

I have killed 4 deer with the 250 SST 2 kills were DRT 2 were long tracks with very little blood. All were recovered,but 50% difficult recovery rate is not acceptable for me. There are people I know that would have lost at least one of those animals. I will never shoot another deer with anything but a Nosler Partition. Sure sometimes they will require tracking,but they always leave good blood.This is my experience,yours may differ,but you should shoot with confidence in your ability to make a good shot,and the performance of your bullet. IMO Noslers rule.

Charlie

we used to hunt with the 250 gr. shockwave sst ..these bullets are very ACCURATE in most MLrs. we don't shoulder shot our deer [waste of good meat] we shoot behind the shoulder [lung shots] and the HORNADY SST were not the best hunting bullet on the market ...no blood trail .complete pass through = lost game ...we are now shooting the BARNES EXPANDER 250GR. and our loosing deer problem was solved..

It seems as if there a few types of bullets/sabots that don't produce much blood. I have been fortunate that by muzzleloader season in Mn, there has been snow on the ground every year, otherwise I am not sure that I would found my deer b/c I may have chocked a couple up as misses....but upon long searching in the snow, I would finally find some "minor blood". I always watch the reaction of the deer very intently to see if its hit and that has saved me many a deer b/c I have kept searching even with no blood in the snow for a ways...This fall I will trying a few different sabots on deer to see what works best. I could careless if it shoots good on paper....most every one of them I have tried does, it's what the sabot does on game that is what I care about.

I shot two deer in N.Y with barnes Ex. I hit the Doe 80y in the neck shoulder joint, exited far side rib. Great blood trail. 50y run for the 1rst deer, 35y for the 2nd. shot deer ran 30 y no blood. p.s. my gun hang-fired, but the shooting sticks' held it steady, lifted my head off stock to look at hammer, gun finally fired and hit deer behind shoulder, amazed me. N.Y. has tracking dogs, great service.

I caution evaluating a bullet on a deer that is not found. No matter how well you felt about the shot, if you don't find it you don't know. I've helped track a lot of deer people swore were hit good, but when you finally find them it was a terrible shot. No deer shot through the lungs is going to travel hundreds of yards.

But as someone else stated, if you've lost faith in any part of your equipment you should replace it. Doubt in the field only increases the odds of something going wrong.

+1
Same here. Last deer and elk season i tracked and found 7 animals for other hunters. One bow hunter got a good lung hit on a big buck late in the afternoon. We found that deer the next morning after the coyotes got to it. According to the GPS it went just over 130 yards from where it was hit.

All the other guys were hunting with shotguns and slugs, muzzleloader or C/F rifles. Four of those guys claimed it was a good shot when it was not, one readily fessed up to shooting an elk in the guts, and one thought he missed but wanted a second opinion; we found his big doe.

I was able to recover an SST Shockwave blue tip (bonded) bullet from the deer I took over the weekend. The deer was quartering towards me at about 35 yrds. The bullet passed through and ended up in the deers back left leg. I am shooting the 250 gr at 100 gr 777, even at sucha close range you would think there would be some expansion in the bullet, there was none. in fact other than the blood and some hair stuck in the blue tip it looks like it has never been shot. A bullet change may be in my future.

Hunter,

From what I understand, the bonded SW is designed for higher velocities. A lot of guys use them in smokeless applications at 2,300 fps+. It's a tougher bullet designed for higher velocities. If you are using just 100 grains of powder, you might be better served by switching to the regular Shockwave which is a "softer" bullet.