Thread: Should be at the beach

As I was in the middle of the four hour carry out, with a nice hot breeze and heavy pack, I did ask myself. Why am I hunting this time of year?

It’s been a few years since I’ve been in to the Urutawas and the last few times the river has come up leading to very wet walk outs or even being stuck at the hut for a few more days. I was due to go in with another forum member, but his bronchitis put pay to him being able to walk further than his doctors. So with the Mrs and small human with grandparents it was a quick 2 nighter trip.

Arriving at the car park at midday it was promising to be a scorcher. The walk in was literal sauna and the damage to the track from last years storms was an indicator of the state of the river and hills. A quick snooze at the hut and it was off again in the evening to allow me to check out the river flats and the smaller clearings on the way to the usual fly camp spot. The Opotiki boys had been busy over the spring with at least a dozen carcasses just on the river flats. But at least there were no horses left grazing.

Sure enough arriving at the last meadow and the camp at 8pm after seeing nothing, I checked out the fan with binos to see a few deer grazing at the top. But with a 40 minute hike to get there, it was pointless. So I spent the rest of that first night watching the flats again with no result.

That night was a hot one, it’s not often I sleep without a sleeping bag the entire night. Up at 5.15am the next morning I was stalking up the fan in the early mist. The sun finally hit the hill, but typically this area is an evening spot, so nothing was seen apart from a ton of carcasses.



A little bit disappointing was the remains of a hind and the far less decomposed fawn beside it’s mum. Not assuming things, but it would seem that the fawn lay down beside what was left of mum to later die of thirst. I won’t post the photo.

Back down the hill to get some sleep and chill out by river where it was cooler, as the deer weren’t silly enough to be out in the heat either. Luckily I had a good book by award winning journalist Ben Anderson, but the day still went slowly. At 6.30pm I started to head back up the hill. Arriving at the base at 8pm the wind finally sorted itself allowing me to stalk the left side. I arrived at midway and spent 5 minutes getting my breath and letting the sweat cool. Nothing visible on the right, so I shifted spots to see the left. Sure enough just above the mid level terrace was a nice Stag.
Now this was the first time I had used the 6.5 Grendel AR15 on larger game. A nice meaty thwack indicated a solid hit, but disappointingly he ran 50m across the face before stopping, dropping and rolled my down the hill to almost my feet.

I’m a bit more used to bang flops with the Sako pooseventy, at least recently, it’s been 10 years since a deer went further than 40 metres. But a fatal shot is a fatal shot and he wasn’t going to survive the hit.



It was getting dark now and I’m not the biggest guy, so I boned out the meat on the hill there and left it hanging in cloth bags in the cool stream gully overnight ready for the next day. Anyway it was 2.30am before I finally hit the sack.
A sleep in the next morning had its benefits rest wise, resulted in another hot walk and with said heavy pack. It was nice in the stream, flat and cool, but once the track rose up above the main river, it was hot and up and down.

Finally back at the car, it was off to Opotiki for ice and the drive back to Katikati and a swim in the ocean.
A good start to 2019, a deer 3 days into the new year.

Noice. Looks like a good spot.

Nice going Ant
At least there was no snow on the drive out

Beauty

great effort...I wonder if the nosler partition would be the answer for your 6.5 ???? they had good name in the swede so could be nearest thing to a magic bullet for you...

Yeah I'm thinking bonded projectiles, or maybe a bit more velocity. There was no exit wound.
My current 123gn SST/CFE223 loads are light compared to US forums.
Beavis and I are discussing this off line.

I use 140gn Corelocts or SSTs in my Swede, but that will be too heavy a projectile.

I enjoyed reading your article. Good effort and should definitely be in the bush

I love a well written story @dogmatix. Great read, very descriptive, well done.

Its worth considering that if you’d been a couple of centimetres here or there, maybe you’d have hit something CNS related, and down she/he goes. To best achieve this with a modest velocity cartridge like the Grendel, you need a frangible projectile. The SST is a pretty good option.

Just my view on things, and I know others will disagree, all good.... but I absolutely would not go to a bonded projectile with a mild velocity round. I’d select a more frangible bullet, bring the point of aim forward to the front line of the foreleg, and look forward to liquified lungs and severed arteries and CNS pathway between brain and lungs/heart. My pick would probably be the 123 gr ELD-M assumimg it stabilises correctly.

You haven’t told us where the bullet impacted, would like to know out of interest. Is it shown in the photo there?

I would be using te Nosler LR Accubonds while they are a bonded bullet they are designedfor impact velocities down to 1300fps, I have been less than impressed with the performans of the ELD-m's on the 2 deer I have shot with my TCU which has an average MV of 2585fps (at least that was the average for 5 shots yesterday)

@mikee its always good to know why you weren’t happy with the ELD-M performance? Helps put things in perspective. Where did the bullets impact?

Cheers guys. It was a high lung shot, a little higher than normal. A lower shot closer to the heart definitely would have dropped him more promptly. Destroyed the lungs, but no exit and the entry was tiny.

Another thought is that the only shooter I know who uses 7mm Accubond LR has shown me two recovered bullets, both from animals where they didn’t exit, but at decent range, like 500-600m something like that. Both looked pretty much identical to the 6.5mm ELD-X I’ve recovered at similar ranges. Nothing in it, in terms of weight retention, shape, etc.

Originally Posted by dogmatix

Cheers guys. It was a high lung shot, a little higher than normal. A lower shot closer to the heart definitely would have dropped him more promptly. Destroyed the lungs, but no exit and the entry was tiny.

There’s the reason why he ran then. Changing bullets wouldn’t change the outcome, a harder one would have exited but it wouldn’t have stopped him running.

Originally Posted by Flyblown

@mikee its always good to know why you weren’t happy with the ELD-M performance? Helps put things in perspective. Where did the bullets impact?

Last one was a bit far forward in the chest (to be fair maybe miss directed a little) deer went down but needed another "finishing shot", only found fragments of projectile, lot of damage but was expecting to find nicely mushroomed projectile as well. The other was thru the chest when deer was quartering away and deer ran quite some way and expired. Blood trail was hard to follow with only one small hole and no exit.

Mind you I am comparing this to my SAUM/ Normal Accubond combination where its always been thru and thru with lots of blood and big "out" hole and the 375 which just well works by letting lots of daylight in.

Good spot that. Think I saw a year ago the last remnants of the last standing horse.