Way to go. Man that open country is sure different than what I'm used to seeing whitetail in.

IMO that really is an amazing shot if you think about it. Not the distance so much but the placement considering the presentation offered.

Meat damage im assuming is a bit more than preferred but it looks like 2-3 ribs were destroyed, probably got at least one lung and major arteries directly. Excellent spinal trauma that dropped her fast and an exit through the neck.

The 200gr SST is known for its accuracy but you really slipped it right in the sweetest spot you were offered.

Gm54-120

Wife is mad at you. She hates it when i am all puffed up.

Them open great plains area with cactus, yucca, sagebrush, and bunch grass, don't normally hold whitetail. If you came out here to hunt whitetail, at one time your guide would have probably taken you up into the Black Hills, where there is all kind of shrubbery, Aspen, Oak, Ponderosa, and Spruce. Nowaday, what with all the lion in the hills, your guide would take you to real farm country with water, hay meadows, all kinda crops, and all kinda cover. Perhaps more like what you are used to.

If that ridge were surrounded by section after section of like flora, them whitetail wouldn't have been there. Them bucks were probably bedded down in the timbered ravine on the right. Beyond the skyline are farms with grain fields. There is an intermittent creek on the other side of the tracks with swamp area interspersed. Off to the left is a pond. Behind the camera and up, is field of unharvested corn, and pockets of timber here and there, with ponderosa, juniper, and cottonwood. All the farms near by have old mature shelter belts. This little piece of government land, which is a little over a section, is rare. Most of the government land around here is dry, and doesn't appeal to whitetail.

One only very very rarely sees whitetail where there are no farms, or creeks. Areas of grass, cactus, sagebrush, and yucca are the domain of pronghorn, mule deer, cattle, and once upon a time, bison.

That's how it seems to me, at any rate.