Indiana 8 point
 

Shot this 8 pointer on Friday, Nov. 19th on public land in Northern Indiana. Used my CVA Optima, 2 white-hot pellets: Traditions Smackdown SST 50 Cal. 250 gr. He snuck in behind me and offered a 50 yard shot, hit him in the spine. Second shot to finish him off at about 30 yards.

btuker

Nice looking harvest... :arms: wish we had more that size around here...

Great looking buck. Congratulations.

nice deer congrats

Thanks for the comments. These are the bullets used to take the buck down.

btuker

Just so you know, there are better bullet available. If you get curious as to what they are, the answer is just about anything, except sst, shockwave, and powerbelt. The choice is myriad, and yours to make.

Congrats on yer fine deer

Congrats!!! Really nice deer there.

Congratulations on a very nice buck. I have to go with ronlaughlin on your bullet though. Neither bullet definitely did not perform well on impact. You were probably fortunate that you spine shot him and dropped him on impact. If you would have had to track him and didn't hit an artery there is a good chance there wouldn't have been a very good blood trail. Just a FYI, would hate to see you lose a deer in the future even with a good shot.

Yes, I will be changing Bullets. Both entry holes were so small we had a hard time finding them.

Nice buck. I'm still looking

Definetly some poor performing bullets. I have never been too concerned with entry holes, it's what they do from that point on that tells the tale.

nice deer congrats

Nice looking buck congratulations

Yes real nice buck. I would also change your bullet choice maybe some XTP's or Harvesters

Whats wrong with Hornady SST? Do they come apart, or won't open up?

smokey92

Just need to tell you right off the bat - this is only my opinion....

The SST/SW is or would not be my bullet of choice for the hunting I do here strictly because of dependability. If I were consistently shooting 125/150+ it would in my opion be a very good bullet. My shots are NORMALLY 20 to 60 yards. It is my thought that the SST/SW will not expand reliably At the those ranges - they are traveling so fast they do not get the opportunity and seem to pencil through if they do not strike a solid bone, and at those closer ranges if they do hit a bone they can come apart - spearate the copper from the lead. Do they do this every time - not even close it would be a very small percentage of the time, but to large for me to wonder... so I choose to shoot another bullet.

And again - just my thoughts... even the XTP's will and do come apart. There are more reliable bullets on the market... again IMO

You hear a lot of mixed stories about the SST. Personally, I have used them a lot for target shooting, and some for hunting. My opinions on this bullet is as follows:

200 SST - good bullet, expands well, penetrates well. Sometimes sheds its jacket with high velocity impacts, but generally still gets the job done. Works well with a muzzle velocity of 1,800 - 2,100 fps. I would be wary of using it with a MV of more than 2,200 fps, as it may come apart on close shots

250 SST - probably the least consistent performer of the SST's. Everything I've seen points to it being a pretty lightly constructed bullet that comes apart and fragments pretty easily. But then on the other hand, you get people saying that it pencils through deer and doesn't expand. I would not use this bullet, personally, although I know many people that do and have success with it.

250 BONDED Shockwave (bonded version of 250 SST) - a great bullet for use at smokeless velocities. Probably too tough of a bullet for deer hunting at blackpowder velocities - will not always expand.

300 SST - Maybe a bit overkill for whitetail, but good for elk hunting.

Will the .300gr hold together on whitetails? Still trying to work an accurate load, then will be able to decide on terminal performance. thanks guys.

Congratulations btucker. Nice buck/miserable bullet performance.

The thing that worries me in the photos he included of the bullets he recovered is that 1. they did not expand at all and 2. even thought they did not expand they still did not exit the deer.

Yes, isn't that strange. Seems if he had used about 20g of powder, the appearance of them bullet would be about the same.

Both.

If you spend some time reading different threads on this forum, you will see many posts about the sst. Some will be positive, and some will be negative. If you are looking to choose a bullet to use for hunting, i recommend you choose a bullet that has no negative posts. There are several.

Myself, i have never read a negative post on the Deep Curl/Gold Dot. Nor have i ever read a negative post on the Nosler Partition.

If you wish to use the sst, fly at it, the choice is yours. Myself, i killed 5 deer with the sst. The meat was eaten long ago. At the end of that season i gave away all the sst i had left.

Ron, the reason you never see a negative post about those bullets is because dead deer don't post. Otherwise, I'm sure they would not have nice things to say about them.

You got me to thinkin' about the deer that post in this forum; i just don't recall any live deer posting on this forum either. That got me to thinkin' i am frequenting the wrong forum. Then i realized i had better be careful about looking for a different forum, because i could end up having them deer thinking i was a deerist, or some such thing. Wife won't let me bring home a buck, so i think she could be a buckist. It matters not, i love her anyway.

Deerist, buckist, doeist - all hateful words. Especially to the generous and open minded members of this forum who spend many hours attempting to locate those critters so as to extend an "engraved" invitation to the member's home.