Thread: Promising Start

Well it all went pretty good yesterday. I took my 7mm Mag and the last three 175 gr Noslar LRAB's which i loaded at 65.8 grs RL 26 so hoped the velocity would be a bit over 2900 fps.
Daybreak seen Beeman and I doing a "driveby" around a big clear cut area that has had a rather large amount of deer sign about.
We headed for the back edge of the block where there is a creek and a stand of big pine on the other side which we thought the deer were coming from. After checking there and not seeing much sign on the frosty road we shot back around to go and check another road, while we drove through I glanced up onto a open ridge top and spotted a deer standing in the first bit of sun. Beeman backed up a little and by the time I took the shot , one deer had turned into three. My shot was good at about 200 yards and the yearling went straight down. The other two gapped it back to the bush edge which was about half a km away.
We took off back to the back edge of the block by the creek to possibly cut them off , Beeman dropped me off on one gully where I could see the ridge I shot the deer on in the distance and Beeman headed to the end of the road and checked and series of gullies the deer could have come down.
I decided to walk back to the dead deer and drag it back to the road. In the mean time Beeman came back around and gave me a hand. Once we had it loaded up we shot back around as Beeman had seen a bit of sign of an animal heading back to the cover.
When we got there we were surprised to find fresh spots of blood crossing the road and headed down a trail across the creek into the big pines.
It appears my bullet had passed through the one we got and hit one of the others. I followed a reasonable blood trail to the creek that was quite fast moving , then on the other side cut the track of a deer moving up a spur and eventually going into a block of younger pine. After crossing the creek I found no blood whatsoever and never found the deer which was a real bugger.
Bullet performance was pretty good as you can see from the picture , maybe a bit destructive but it certainly didn't go anywhere.