I've been quiet about this for awhile.
 

I really honestly believe, Lehigh bullets are the best Muzzleloader bullet money can buy. Why? They just plain work. Here is one Deer i shot this year in Ohio. I can actually say, this was the farthest a Deer has ever gone since i been using Lehigh bullets. This Deer went right around 45yds. But the blood was all over the place. This is exactly what i expect when a animal does not go down right away. A nice blood trail to easily track the animal.

The Deer below was shot with a Knight LRH 52cal ML with a .458 220grn Lehigh bullet. The Deer was shot at less then 20yds.

wow.. that is some damage there.

Also there is nothing I see wrong with you believing that Lehigh are the best bullets out there. Even if I disagreed, and liked something different, if you have absolute faith in the Lehigh bullet, then that is the bullet you should use.

I have shot them. They are super accurate. I have not shot an animal with them, but am impressed at how well they shoot. Also the range results and the field reports on them have to mean something.

fer a texas guy, been cool to see picks of that blood trail in the snow.

Why would they be better than say a Barnes 250 MZ???

I shot a Doe this year at 100 yards with the 200 gr Lehigh DOA out of my DISC Elite .45 taking off the top half of the heart and the bottom of the lungs. The deer ran 100 yard through a partially cut hay field pileing up in a hedge row. The tracking job was so easy as blood was being spray every where out both side covering a six foot wide path. These bullets work like Grouse45 posted and they are darn accurate too.

Wow - that's pretty gruesome. I think you ought to post that on the PETA sight with a caption "Venison - Its what' for dinner."
Nice shot Grouse. Almost perfect placement.

Great shot Grouse, fine looking deer.

can i call bs here...aint anything running anywhere with 1/2 the heart missin!!!! maybe an artery or somethin?

deer can cover a whole lot of ground in a very short amount of time. Mountain men NEVER heart shot buffalo because they could run a couple miles before going down. They always went for the lungs.

You can call it whatever you want.

I actually agree 100%. The truth is, i shot this Deer a lot lower then i was aiming.

I have to agree with Mountain Devil and I base this on personal experience. I shot a BIG doe a few years back. She was standing broadside and I shot her right through the heart. That doe was able to still run over 40 yards in a tag alder marsh before she dropped. Blood was everywhere from the hit. And mind you, this was done with a roundball. Tracking her was a piece of cake. Blood trails on the bushes was all over. But I remember thinking.. how far would have she ran, if it was a nice smooth field?

My first buck was another one. My father shot a buck with a 12 gauge shotgun, right in the heart. It ran down a small hill past me where I (I was 14 years old) emptied my 12 gauge semi automatic shotgun at it. I blew the front leg off (not the body.. just the leg) and it knocked that deer down, and it never got up. I would guess that deer ran over 40 yards before it reached me.

One other small buck I shot once through the lungs. When I recovered him, he had this foamy stuff coming out of his mouth. Kind of gross actually. I don't know if anyone ever saw that stuff before. It was air, bubbles and lung parts I think. But he was able to go over 30 yards. Again, through tag alder brush. How far would have it gone on a flat field?

So depending on the ease of terrain, the slope, and the attention mode the deer was in at the hit, I believe one could run that far. One reason when I bow hunted, I always liked to shoot a deer when it was relaxed. Never when they were on high alert. They don't seem to run as far.

I was hunting with a guy many years ago and he was using a 35 remington. He hit a deer directly in the heart. It ran 100 yards till it hit a lake and then dropped into the water. After gutting it there was absolutely no sign of of heart in there. It was turned into a mass of mush by the heavy 35 bullet.

while i am not convinced that lehigh's are the best muzzle loader bullet, from what i have seen so far they are definately at the top of the heap.IMHO the barnes MZ "non polymer tipped hollow point" with it's good BC is the best all around performer from 0-150 yds. I would also rate the tipped TEZ,TMZ right up there,especially for long range shots. the MZ boat tail with it's small hollow point i would never use fearing it's close range lack of expansion.nice deer by the way! Grats

i think its basic...if ya get shot in the brain, there is the possibility that the body can survive...if the heart stops, the whole body stops. is there a doctor in the house?
i believe if ya just barely nicked the heart, to cause a lil tear, i can see them running, but usually bullets are tumbling, and would be a very small chance of a very small hole when the heart gets hit.

I had two nice heart shots with pass throughs this year. One ran maybe 40 and the other went maybe half that. Both hearts were burger and the aortas were ripped apart too. Lots of "jello".

Mine didnt have anywhere near that kind of bleed out though. Nice "pink mist" left on the ground when hit but nothing like the Lehigh pics ive seen.

Sometimes they run much further than you would imagine and sometimes they dont.

Not BS at all halfbaked. The last doe I shot covered about 40 yards before dropping. The 250 grain Gold Dot took off the entire upper half of her heart.

halfbakedi420

You might be a little bit off base here... depending on the oxygenation level of the blood in the animal at the time it may be able to run for quite a distance using the blood exsiting in the system (muscles).

The Army found this out in the Phillipines a long time ago, when short range - heart, heart & lung shots with a .38 revolver failed to stop humans - hence the development of the 45ACP. Heart shots will kill but they are a long ways from being immediate.

Well said sabot!!

Maybe halfbaked was out in that TEXAS sun without his sombrero on.

yeah sabot is dead on......i remember reading some of peter capsticks books on guiding in africa (great books by the way), and he talks of shooting cape buffs and rhinos in the heart and the animal still had enough steam to charge and cause all kinds of mayhem....i think something like a brain shot or something shocking the spinal cord is the only way to truly drop an animal in its tracks.....heart and lung shots the animal can still cover some distance.

i can see where a non expanded or non-fragmented shot piercing the heart and leaving a perfect pencil hole through and through on the heart, and a deer runnin 100 yards....but i am imagining a heart that has been basically exploded by a bullet, and 1/2 of it blew apart.
i have heart shot a bunch of animals, and they drop, right in their tracks...just jelly was left.
i have nicked the heart before, leaving just a lil tear, and the deer ran 40-60 yards.
my buddy shot a deer, not even close to the heart. she dropped in her tracks. when we opened her up, there was a piece of bone that had plunged into the heart, we believe thats what killed her instantly.

I can understand that your personal experience would lead you to believe that halfbaked. But the simple fact experienced by me and many others is that a deer shot so that the heart is basically destroyed can easly run over 40 yards before dropping. The damage report I posted in the link below is accurate.

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/blac...-gold-dot.html

Be sure to see the video of that deer's reaction to the shot contained in that post. In my experience, the way she jumped and kicked is typical of a heart shot.

halfbakedi420

One thing to remember, the heart has nothing to do with movement of the body. The heart/lungs supplies oxygenated blood the brain, organs, and muscles. If you had a way to oygenate the blood and move it through the body you would not need a heart, such as a mechanical heart.

If the blood in the brain and muscles contains oxygen at the time the heart quits, the brain still functions for awhile and it will send meassages to the muscles to flee and the muscles do until the oygenated blood is used, as circulation has been interuppted.

Another example might be when the heart quits - you can still circulate oxygenated blood be doing chest compressions or other forms of heart massage.

Be sure if the animals heart is blown up, the animal is dead - but the brain does not know it for awhile.

couldnt find the video

plus when you think about how fast a deer can cover 50 or 100 yards, youre only talking about a matter of 2 to 5 seconds, so even though the hearts destroyed theres enough blood in the brain and limbs to power the deer those couple seconds.

Just click on the last picture in that post.

Both these were hit with a 300gr and 120gr of BH209. So im sure they also had a good shock factor too at under 80 yards. One deer didnt go far at all the other went 40 yards.

One was hit by a 458SOCOM and the other a 50S&W FTX.


Both pass throughs looked like this. The FTX photo got messed up.

This is the SOCOM that went 40 yards. It also was the heart with more damage.


Both had a good amount of splatter behind them too. When i was gutting it i really couldn't see how it even moved. They can be amazingly tough at times even with a near perfect hit. The buck though dropped instantly with a good neck shot that shattered the spine.

Great photos there gm.

Call it anything you want--I shot a 9pt through the heart at 30 yds with a 12ga slug,split the heart across the middle.Recovered the deer 150 yds away with a blood trail Stevie Wonder could follow.Deer do strange things sometimes.

Charlie

Thank you, i usually dont take "graphic" pics or even kill pics but this year i had been testing out these two bullets in my 54cal and i remembered the camera. :D

Now i got to try some of these 185gr Lehighs on some coyotes. The Elite is sighted in for them atm.

Thanks for backing me up Guys.:happy0001:

yeah, thats exactly what mine did when she ran...straight up like pop corn. good to know, i think when that lifetime trophy walks out in front of me, i'll use the head on shot through the neck into the spine, cause 150 yards where i hunt, you might never find it.
sorry fer bein a dick and askin permission to call "bs".

Many people think that a heart shot will stop a being. About the only way to get this type of action would be a shot to the central nervous system. This would be to the base of the spinal cord and brain, not necessarily the brain as witnessed by the congresswoman who servived a head shot.

After listening to Halfbaked, he sounds like he will not see the light and continue to believe what he believes. This is all after he is told of all these different examples to the contrary. Of course this doesn't make him a bad guy, just a little confused to the facts.

:confused0024: But I think we can still let him hang with us! :s4:

Very impressive.

Sorry Halfbaked, but don't think there is any BS here. I took the heart out of a deer with a 275 gr Maxihunter while she was on the run and she still covered about 70 yds. Left a blood trail Stevie Wonder could have followed. You could say it was a lucky shot. But I say luck is that point in time when preparation and opportunity come together.

Let's see the pics. :popcorn: