Yes I very much enjoy pot stirring.  And yes I did shoot this deer with a 45/70 when has the story changed?



45/70 in question.  I shoot deer with 9mm, 45 acp, 243,30'06 and Archery tackle also.  I have used a bunch of other calibers in the past.

ETA Because I grew up being fed BS by good Ole Boy know it alls that said 223 was not adequate for coyotes much less deer.  Guess what,  turns out those guys did not know what they were talking about.

Well, it was a .45" diameter ice pick...

Try a 300grn hollow point going about 2400fps and there will be a blood trail next time.

I think we all know the .45-70 is plenty for deer, so let's start on the real stumper:  The deer was out in the middle of a field 400 yards away and you couldn't find him after you shot him?  

Meh....Have your way but YOU are the one that failed to find the animal in-time to recover without it being mangled by other critters.

Not enough light to track 400 yards in flat land? That is what they make flash-lights for.

Now if you waited a half-hour, tracked it, and then found that it had got-up after laying down due to pushing it then I'd say fine, go back after it the next morning at first light and take what comes. I would never give-up till then.

Look as I have said.  I shot the deer, I watched it jump in the air and then run off.  It went out of sight over a hill running with a bunch of other deer.  They were out of sight for maybe 2 seconds, when they came back into sight there was a deer in the same position this buck was in the group, that deer was running like it was wounded so I was certain that it was hit.   I watched that deer run for at least 3/4 of a mile across the top of 2 hills and then cross a fence.  I then looked for blood, hoping to determine what kind of hit I had.  At that point I was certain I had missed badly and shot it in the guts.  I have never seen a deer hit  in the vitals run as far as this had (or so I thought).  I could not find any blood.  So I did not go and cross the fence, which I could not have done anyway, without getting permission from the landowner first.  I am not certain that he would give me permission anyway.  I went home and waited for morning, in the morning first thing I went back to where I had shot him and looked again, still no blood so I walked a zig zag pattern back and forth across the field in the direction he had run and finally found a pin head size speck of blood. I looked some more and 50 yards away I found another.    I decided to go back to the truck and drive around to the other side of the field where I had seen him jump  the fence.  As I was driving the truck around I saw something odd looking in a little hollow I could barely see from the trail and there was 2 crows next to it.  So I went and checked it out.  That was buck, not the deer I had watched run away.  When they went over the hill he kept running straight and the rest turned.  I do not know why the one deer was running so odd, it may have been injured.  you want to hit me with sticks go ahead, but in my opinion I did the right thing, based on the information that I had at the time.

ETA once you pushed him that first time in your scenario, you just cut your odds of finding him in half.  I do not agree with what you said at all.

You couldn't track it 400 yards?





What time of day did you make that shot?





Sounds like a clean kill from here, 400 yards is not that far to have to track a deer.





I'm puzzled as to why you didn't retrieve it the same day.



ETA - hard cast lead is not the best choice for hunting

actually the area where it crossed the Aorta was missing a chunk about 1" wide

read on

.45-70 has a .45 in it. Ergo:

1) The deer you hit simply exploded.
2) The deer you found was hit by shrapnel from the first deer.

  You win this thread

Read from start to finish, still puzzled about the lack of tracking/failure to retrieve a deer that only went 400 yards.



 

Most folks call that a Texas heart shot.

Shit happens?







 

I use the 420 Keiths on hogs, and can tell you that your 430 went THRU your deer without much of a slowdown, I have hit deer in the chest and the exit was the ass.Not a good loading for deer, The 350 gr jhp round would have been a better choice.  KNOW YOUR CARTRIDGE before hitting the woods.

I do not want to put a fist sized hole through the deer

I'm confused, it ran 400 yards and you weren't able to recover?  Was it late at night?

I get a kick out of threads like this where the internet experts all gather 'round.


OP, FWIW, I hate it when I make the shot you made - too high for blood to leak out, too low for spine. If hitting the nerves in the shoulder doesn't stop 'em, you just have to look for them. Odd that he went that far, though.

I do.
YMMV

I guess you prefer a fist-sized piece of ass-hole ripped out over-night by critters cause that is what you ended-up what with the poor bullet choice combined with your seemingly lame tracking skills.

You know some things are best left un-said. A prudent hunter would just chalk it up to his own poor choices and learn from the experiance but noooo you want to blame the weapon/cartridge and claim you did everything possible to recover the deer. Sorry....You failed on several levels. But hey!.....You got a rack to hang in your shed.

 Blaiming the Cartidge was a JOKE!  How exactly was I going to track it when I could'nt find any blood?  The entire wheat field is covered in tracks, over a hundred deer hit that field every day, but go ahead, flap your jaws and wag your finger.  Maybe you can come hold my hand next time and show me how a real hunter does it.

Well....I know what I know but you seem to know it all so I'll pass on the hand-holding and leave you to your own devices.

I hope your next thread goes the way you want.

This thread is going exactly they way I knew it would.  I bet you can track an ant across a flat rock.  Maybe one day I will learn these skills.

Well there you go. If that can happen, anything can happen.

Ok now that all the experts have weighed on what a flat point solid hard cast bullet does in game.  Let us take a look at what really happened.  When I said the bullet left a .55 exit I was wrong it was much closer to .70 THROUGH THE HIDE.  What we find underneath is another story entirely.  When Elmer designed these bullets all those years ago, he knew what he was doing.   These flat nose solids leave a wound channel Similiar to what a Modern Bonded Controlled Expansion bullet does.  These pictures also show how odd it was the deer was able to run as far as he did.



Here we have the exit wound through the hide,  notice the lack of blood on the hide except a small amount directly around the wound.


Here we have the exit through the ribs, notice the hole is in excess of 1"


Here we have the same exit wound but from the inside.


Here we have entry wound just in front of the shoulder


Herr is the entry with some of the bloody connective tissue removed if you look you can see a bit of bone, that bone is connected to the spinal column and the part sticking out there is less than1/2 inch from the spine.



Here you can see where the bullet passed just under the spine the large missing section there by my thumb is where the bullet passed through and removed a portion of muscle and cut the artery that lies just below.

45-70 is plenty. it was probebly the wrong load or wrong bullet for deer hunting.  big difference from SP ,PSP, JHP ,LRN ,LFN , ect ect

Guys, we can argue until we turn blue about whether the OP should have used a softer bullet or not. His choice. (Not mine, but I can't fault him for his.)
The bullet he did use has killed trainloads of big game of all sizes for well over a century.

It was plenty adequate. (And he knows it.)

If you actually bother to read the thread, you'll be able to see that the deer really didn't travel all that far and probably died within a matter of seconds. (Deer run fast.)
It was merely an unusual circumstance in which he mistook a different deer for the one he shot as it disappeared from sight that led to the temporary loss and subsequent meat spoilage/depredation loss.

He made a (sound) decision to not push the deer, (unfortunately based on mistaken evidence), but understandable because  these things happen now and then.

Bottom line:
Fine rifle.
Great Cartridge.
Great bullet, maybe or maybe not absolutely perfect for deer, but a perfectly acceptable choice for 99 percent of any deer hunting situations within its range capabilities.
Good solid shot through a very vital area.
Relatively clean kill, even though not an instant kill. (Which usually doesn't happen most of the time regardless of cartridge, velocity, bullet or shot placement, barring a CNS hit.)
 Dry ground, no snow, poor tracking conditions. (Certainly didn't help the situation any.)
Presence of other deer led to a regrettable error in judgement.
Tendency to stir pot may have led to another regrettable error in judgement.  
But whatever.

As head arbiter in this case, I personally have no choice but to completely exonerate him of any ethics violations whatsoever, at least as far as outlined herein...

I have spoken!

Case closed.

Yep. An inch higher and he'd have never twitched; a few inches lower and he'd have bled all over the place. Like I said, I hate that particular spot on a deer. You can fill their chest with blood in seconds but never a drop spills out.

The half-assed autopsy is fine but all I see (from 44 years of experiance with half-assed deer autopsies) is a deer with a fatal wound that should have left more than enough of a blood trail for the OP to follow had he done a better job at tracking after he got over his confusion as to who was on 1st deer-wise.

You can sugar-coat it all you want but the bottom line is it was what transpired after the shot that led the OP not to secure the carcass before it got it's ass eat out.

Meh.....The deer is dead, no children were harmed, and hopefully a lesson was learned for the next go-round. Happy hunting.

I've killed somewhere north of 100 deer (I quit counting years ago) and have watched many, many more over the shoulder of a friend or relative, and have helped track many of my own, and those of others, some tracking jobs being successful and others not, and don't find it uncommon at all for that shot to have not left a bloodtrail. It's a matter of anatomy; he's cut a major artery that will bleed like crazy, but the blood is flowing down into the chest cavity; the only way for it to get out is to go out through the nose, which it won't do because the lungs themselves aren't damaged, or through the entrance, which won't happen because there's too much muscle in the way, or the exit, which is covered over with hair and stretchy skin.

I actually made a similar shot a few weeks ago; the deer ran less than 100 yards and died, and was easily recovered, but even after backtracking to the point of the shot (in daylight) I never found a single drop of blood. The deer bled profusely; he just didn't have any leak out. It happens, and I avoid the high chest shot for that very reason, unless I'm close enough to know I'm going to drop the deer instantly.

If it helps out the OP(yes, I've given him all sorts of grief over this), I lost a bigger buck with a shot in the same spot with my .257 Roberts. The deer made it about the same distance and crossed to another farm where another hunter knocked him down with a .30-06.

It took you three days to open him up?!?

Guess by now you have figured out the reliable one shot stop is a myth.

LOL that's exactly what old school trolling is.    Most of what people call "trolling" on this site is, is actually a difference of opinion and they don't have the capacity to come up with a reply, so they call the other person a troll.





Coming up with a title on purpose, that you KNOW will get people to read a thread and incite ignorant replies and argument is trolling to a "T".



 

Meh

You tried for the sweet spot , but hit the damned tiny-sour spot .

It aint no big deal .

Did your family starve cause ya didnt bring one home that night ?

Did ya have a $500 bet with Ted Nugent that day or sumptin ?


Aint nuttin but a thing , chicken wing . It's just a gawdang deer and there's plenty more in Texas .

Nope I gutted him the morning I found him, has been hanging in storage waiting for his rotation.  This is the 10th deer I have killed this season,  My wife has killed two.  Despite what some have thought, I did not cut his antlers off and throw him in a ditch.  While I am not going to eat him,  he will make perfectly good dog chow.  If the scavenger had not spilled digestive juices all over the inside of the deer and pissed all over it, I would have taken the meat for us.  We have plenty, I have donated plenty, so not going to eat this one as much as I dislike it.

That's cool of ya to feed the dogs with it , ours always loved it .
I swear they would be sitting in the kitchen literally drooling as I cooked it up for em .