cayugad

I would be curious to know the weight of that found ball. That is some amazing expansion it did. Think of the wound channel that ball made.

kidoggy

this will get some hackles up. coyotes got ta eat to.

Muley Hunter

Yep, bears, cats, and birds too. It's all part of hunting.

WV Hunter

Cayugad, good info.

If I was the OP....since its legal in the state... I'd be calling a tracker to see if I could get some help. Those guys and their dogs live for that stuff. If one of them tracking dogs can't find it... likely its not dead. If it ended up being a gutshot, its dead somewhere...they would probably find it in short order.

bronko22000

From what I can surmise from the post and pics that your ball hit the opposite leg below the shoulder blade which would explain the bone fragments and being able to locate the ball. Prior to that the ball did not expand much thereby not giving you a good blood trail or much internal damage.
I suspect that you probably put that ball through at least one lung because even though there is no bubbles in the blood the blood is bright red. I also believe that the deer is dead somewhere. A deer can travel a long way with one lung out but will expire eventually. Your search should encompass several hundred yards. But depending on your coyote population there, it is possible that all you'll find are bones and hair.

mainjet

My daughter and I went back and searched for a couple more hours. walking in I found a lot of blood but I thought it looked too fresh to be my deer. I told my daughter that it probably is another persons deer. It came from the same area that my deer was shot.

Later I talked to another hunter that said he helped a guy track a deer that he shot that morning. So the blood turned out to be from that deer and really made it difficult to now know what blood you may be following. I don't have access to a dog for trailing but at that point it would be difficult with all the blood from this other deer in the area.

I gave up the search. I do not give up tracking easily. I normally will search for it even if I know that the meat is no longer good. I just like to find the animal and see exactly how I hit it and just learn from the kill. But we searched a lot of area between yesterday and today and being public land with a lot of hunters th enhances of recovery at this point are minimal. Also, today is the last day of ML here in Indiana. So walking through the woods on the last day and last afternoon was not real fair to other hunters if I really believed that I was not going to find it. We tried to hit the time between when morning hunters would have left and afternoon/evening hunters would not be there yet. We hit it good and there were only two cars in the lot when we got there.

Te balls are Hornady Blackpowder. The actual weight I don't know. I am going to weigh an unfired one and the recovered one tomorrow at work to see how much of the ball I recovered.
" />

Here is some hair from the hit location. I was 20 feet up in a tree stand and about 50 yards away. Slightly quartering away. My aim point was mid rib cage. It's hard t tell in the pictures but the hair is white with light brown tips. bout an 1.25"-1.5"
" />

cayugad

The Hornady .530 ball normally weight 232 grains I believe it is. What's left will be most interesting.

mainjet

Cayugad, I'm a dope. I never thought about weighing the round ball on my powder scale until you said "232 grains". lol

I weighed a couple of the balls and they come up to about 225 grains. The fragment weighed 136.8 grains.

Muley Hunter

That's unusual. A RB usually stays together pretty good.

bronko22000

That looks a lot like belly hair. I'd bet you may have dropped your muzzle at the shot and hit too low. It is very easy to do if you don't concentrate on following through with your shot. That would explain the squatting/hunching of your deer.