Perfect practice makes perfect shots
Been doing a lot of reloading lately and with each batch I go down to the range and confirm zero with a bit of long range steel out to 400m and set up balloons at different ranges and elevations.
The day of the hunt one last target session with balloons set up at lots of 3 at 100m,150m,175,200m,230m and 260m range and angle of 15 degrees to 35 degrees down hill as this hunt was going to be in fairly open countryside and hunting from above.
To the hunt, 10 deer 3 of which were spikers were spotted and watched them for 35 minutes feeding and identified the stags for the fridge, one of which had a broken velvet.
Ranged the deer 218m, -26 degree down hill, already had temp, pressure and attitude in my ballistic app and now had to dail up 21.75 MOA or 54" of drop and 6 MOA for wind to take the shot. With the rifle well rested on the rock outcrop looking down I chambered a 208gr A-max @ 1032fps and settled the reticule on the ear and fired. The first stag dropped the others jumped to attention and started to walk up the hill towards me. Now the second stag was at 207m I dailed back to 20 MOA and called out to them the stag stopped and looking right at me I hit him between the eyes.
Now for the hard job dealing with the meat.
I would not use this projectile on a body shot and would use the Lehigh 194gr ME instead or go supersonic with the 125gr BT.
Subsonic hunting is great fun but only if you do the ground work of good reloading, lots of practice at intended ranges and not just shooting on the flat ground but up and down hill as most of the animals I shoot are above or below me.
The bullet drop at angle as a example, a big difference in a solid hit or a miss or a wounded animal. On the app I normally use 1m increments for the best accuracy.
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...pstoxe8dad.png
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...pseezdqbzl.png
Tasty meat ageing and a big thanks to the 300 blackouts subsonics accuracy.
http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p...pscoogklbq.jpg
