Round ball and blood trails

[tenngun]

I owned a hunting ranch for a long time. It is all about where you hit them. We averaged 60 deer a year and the one thing I learned for sure is nothing can live without lungs. A poor hit with a 300 mag is not as deadly as a .22 in the lungs. I have MLer from 45 to 69 with most of my deer and hogs shot with a .54. Calm down and pop them in the lungs, wait 30 minutes and 99% of them will be dead within a 100 yards

First thing to do after a shot ofcorse is see if you can note where it’s going. Not always easy in the fog of war(hunt)
Then swab your gun, load, have a smoke or eat a little snack, pull out a pocket book and read a little, have an imaginary conversation with Plato or Daniel Boone
After you have shot the bull for about six hours, well fifteen minutes to half an hour but it will feel like six.
Your heart rate will return to normal.
Then go look for your deer. It was hurt and scared it wants to lay down. It will only run if chased
They go down pretty quick then they don’t get up.

 

[bigstick6017555]

I think every caliber of ml projectile and cartridge has been pronounced at fault by hunters who have lost an animal. A lost animal provokes a narrative of self justification in most so therefore most lost animals were hit perfectly.

You hit the nail squarely on the head with this statement. May I add that hunters also need too sharpen their tracking skills and keep them sharp.

 

[Buff1958]

I used to tell my hunters after they shot something,,,,,, let’s wait an hour. If it is dead, it will still be dead in an hour

 

[Spikebuck]

Have been ML hunting for 24 years (was all bow for 25 years prior) taking a lot of northern whitetails including large bucks. I have used .50, .54, and .62 with both PRB and conicals in .50 and .54. I shoot from 80 to 105 grs of 2f with 90 being the most common. Only a couple of those deer were not a pass through regardless of projectile. I generally am killing deer at under 50 yards but have taken a number over that with 125 yards the longest.

It has been my experience that for the same kind of placement the projectile type is irrelevant in blood trail produced on deer at those ranges.

Years ago I moved completely to PRB as for the kind of hunting I do it works just as well as heavier and more costly conicals with less kick.

 

[Tizzy]

Hunting can be an perplexing. I have shot deer with modern rifles, only found hair at point of impact, looked for blood everywhere in vicinity, thought it was a poor hit at best...resort to block search method to find dead deer perfectly heart shot with zero blood trail. Sometimes 100 yards away! Some DRT. Some shots leave massive blood trails a near blind man can follow, round ball included amongst them. Archery can be especially perplexing. Some massive blood trails...some not. Passthroughs do increase your odds of finding animal. So try to achieve that..Shot placement, accepting and understanding that different situations cause different trailing scenarios, and an unwillingness to give up will usually result in a recovered animal if the shot was good. That..and learning how to track animals even though a less than stellar blood trails is present.
I'm not too proud to state that I have unfortunately lost an animal, even under the best shot scenario...Most times you can reflect and know if shot was good or not.
Geez..sorry...all that to say...a round ball to the vitals=dead animal...same as with an arrow or modern rifle. Blood trails are subjective to shot placement and situation. I've seen great blood trails with round ball, modern rifle, and arrow. Then I've seen poor trails with all 3 with great shot placement and animal be just as dead.
I hope I didn't just add to confusion.

 

[Billy Boy]

I haven't taken my Hawken out deer hunting yet, but after speaking for a few people I have a question about blood trails. A friend who is a fanatical deer hunter in PA will only use conicals while deer hunting with his muzzleloader because of a lack of blood trails. I didn't give his opinion much thought; but after speaking with two guys who run deer retrieval dogs, one in NJ and another in NY, they both stated that they've had several retrievals where a round ball left zero to no blood trail even though it was a well placed fatal shot. Just curious about other peoples experiences.

Thanks.

Never had any problems with round balls and blood trails, 50. 54 cals always seem to make a pretty good leak. Placement - as with any rifle - is more important than any thing else.

 

[kyron4]

I guess for me muzzleloading hunting is about being traditional, and all the "disadvantages" that may come with it. It's the experience of hunting like they did 200 years ago and all the challenges that come with it. When losing a deer meant going hungry.

It can be a slippery slope, first from flint lock to cap lock ,then switch to conicals from round ball, , then traditional iron sights are hard to see in low light, so then it's a scoped inline, then the range is still limited so a scoped 300 Win Mag. and so on.

 

[Eterry]

No two animals will ever react the same. That's just biology.
Dad's theory was if the deer had just taken a breath of air before lung shot he'd run farther than if it had just exhaled. I have zero hard data to base that on, but it kinda sounds right.

I know I've shot deer with a 45 prb, under 50 yards. It looked like a garden hose was hooked to a barrel of red paint, and they fell where they stood.

Not too long ago I used my old 30 WCF. At 60 yards I hit a doe perfectly; tight behind the lower shoulder. She ran into scrub timber and briars, her tail down. I smoked a cigarette , then looked for her, but she had turned into thin air! I had watched her leave, a good thing. I searched and found not one spot of blood. I stumbled upon her at dark, about 80 yards from where shot. Perfect, "textbook" entrance and exit, but no blood to talk about.

Again, I challenge anyone who says "when you shoot a deer with a prb it will do this, or they will do that with a conical."
It just ain't so.

 

[Wirehair]

Eterry +1. I've killed a pile of whitetails with a PRB, all with either .50 or .54. Most of them have been does in late season and loaded with fat. I believe in a lot of cases entrance/exit wounds plug with fat and limit or prevent external bleeding.

 

[Mike in FL]

Off topic s bit. I'm 76 and have been deer hunting for 60 of those years. I still dearly love entering and being in the woods with a flintlock, but during the last few seasons I have lost the need/desire to kill a deer. The many blood trails I've followed in the past now make me sad in that I know that loss of blood is what's left of the life he is about to lose. He has run from the noise he didn't understand because running away has always been his defense and has always worked for him until that last day of his existence that I hastened. His life was all he had until I violently took it. I know that is weird and I never thought I'd come to that. So I let them walk now, then sit and feel old and silly. But how nice it is be in the woods at day break and see the early light arriving and flickering across my gorgeous longrifle and comprehend fully how blessed I am to have another cold morning like men and boys experienced and cherished decades ago when hunting was not just necessary but every bit as loved and lovely as it is now right up to the moments I see that pitiful lost blood that hunters have always spilled. I am well aware that I am weird but happy and thankful.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I haven't taken my Hawken out deer hunting yet, but after speaking for a few people I have a question about blood trails. A friend who is a fanatical deer hunter in PA will only use conicals while deer hunting with his muzzleloader because of a lack of blood trails. I didn't give his opinion much thought; but after speaking with two guys who run deer retrieval dogs, one in NJ and another in NY, they both stated that they've had several retrievals where a round ball left zero to no blood trail even though it was a well placed fatal shot. Just curious about other peoples experiences.

Thanks.

Chief, there are a lot of other factors that may influencing your buddy's opinion of which he is unaware.

First, why is he worrying about blood trails? I have more than a dozen deer in the past twenty years, and have tracked several for buddies who couldn't find a blood trail. ONLY one of mine didn't have a trail and needed tracking..., and that was because he was juiced on adrenaline when he crossed over to the property where I was waiting, and my hit cut the abdominal aorta, so blood wasn't going anywhere but into the chest cavity... yet adrenaline gave him enough before he dropped to go a pretty good distance.

I use a shoulder or a double lung shot, and most are double lung, round ball, pass through, and the deer are within site of where they were standing when they were hit. Farthest shot was 110 yards. I don't try for the heart because it's tasty... I want to pressure cook it and eat it.....

Some folks are not that good at tracking, I didn't start out very good, and some miss one or two fundamentals. So there IS a blood trail, but they don't see it.

For the deer I've had to track for folks, what I saw was....
a) Lack of finding the spot where the deer was shot. Usually the hunter under estimated the distance, or lost perspective when he left the location from where he fired. I always take a cheap, polyester, knit, blaze orange hat with me and hang it high at the spot where I was when I fired, to allow me to look back and help judge how far I've walked when going up to the spot where the deer was hit.

b) Lack of patience. Wait at least ten minutes (20 is better) before going to pick up a deer that you can't already see is down. IF for some reason the wound was mortal but not quickly incapacitating..., the deer will move when you come walking up, and by then it's moving when it's now low on blood....

c) Don't assume the blood trail will be "on the ground". I helped a friend track a deer in minutes when I pointed out the blood trail was on the bushes in copious amounts about 18" above the ground. Very very little was reaching the soil.

d) Understand that deer when hit well will take the least difficult path for them, but they are shorter than humans, and sometimes will double back on the path they used leading up to where they were hit. If you hunt in overgrown areas, you may need to track while crawling a bit....,

e) Have an accurate load and practice with it then be confident. Two of the deer that I've tracked that friends hit with modern cartridge rifles were poor hits, as the store bought ammo didn't work well in their rifles. When they corrected this they started to get BANG-flop results. Another friend with a muzzleloader had a very accurate round, practiced a lot over the summer, and shot the deer at about 60 yards. He called me after three hours and ranging far and wide..., so I began with (a) above, and he had missed doing that, and then concentrated on the deer being within 40 yards of that spot..., I found it crawled up under a honeysuckle bush... he had walked past it several times that day.... see (c) and (d).

f) A buck will often go a bit farther than a doe when hit, if it doesn't drop within sight of the spot where it was hit.

AND just to show I'm not an expert or such... most of what I've learned was from screwing up and discovering what I did wrong..., the ones I tracked for friends were during the past few years, not when I was beginning.

I got better by reading The Still Hunter by Theodore Van Dyke. His observations on deer behavior when it's hit are excellent and also on how to move through the woods.

LD

 

[OldSmoky1967]

How do they hunt? Ground hunting doesn't give good trails in my experience, because the holes are even and higher on the body so the chest cavity must fill with blood before it comes out.

Conversely shooting from elevation give a high hole and a low hole, the lower hole bleeds much sooner if not immediately.

This has been my experience, as well.

 

[Buff1958]

Both of these deer were shot with a PRB neither ran very far one had a great blood trail. the other not much at all

 

[johnraleksa]

Both of these deer were shot with a PRB neither ran very far one had a great blood trail. the other not much at all
View attachment 299154

I have always been impressed with the size a round ball makes in a deer. Stop using other types years ago seemed a waist of lead and powder.

 

[longcruise]

Off topic s bit. I'm 76 and have been deer hunting for 60 of those years. I still dearly love entering and being in the woods with a flintlock, but during the last few seasons I have lost the need/desire to kill a deer.

I'm not all the way down that road but getting there. I still love the hunt as much as ever but the kill is less important.

 

[stikshooter]

Both of these deer were shot with a PRB neither ran very far one had a great blood trail. the other not much at all
View attachment 299154

Exactly how big was that ball before squezzin the trigger and assuming pure lead ? Looks like a 2inch hole punch ! /Ed

 

[SwampBilly]

I have never had that problem and I have shot over 30 deer with round balls from 50 caliber to 58 caliber. Of the 30 or so deer shot I have only recovered 2 flattened round balls under the hide on the far side. Blood trails were generally easy to follow due to the pass thru, but most of the deer fell within 50 yards of the shot, and many dropped in place. I can only surmise that the lack of blood trails was due to poor shot placement.

I took a hog once with an 1858 with a round ball and about a 27 grain load from about 80 ft. It went high behind the shoulder passing through both lungs and I found the ball on the hide on the far side of a broadside shot.

The only deformation to speak of was a slight indention on the top of the ball which I would assume was from impact with the rib.

It was roughly 120 lb hog. It ran about 15 ft and squealed loudly twice and that was it.

I did not notice any trail to speak of as there was no need to follow very far.

 

[azmntman]

Last falls cow hunt. .54 PRB at 50 yards. Excellent shot placement. Elk never flinched. Was found 45 yards away and not even any blood around the entrance hole. First time ever I did not get a pass through. .70 GR Black MZ. They can't go far with no lungs (however a big bull has an incredible will to live and can go hundreds of yards with no lungs, heart etc, they are the exception).

 

[gustrolland]

I owned a hunting ranch for a long time. It is all about where you hit them. We averaged 60 deer a year and the one thing I learned for sure is nothing can live without lungs. A poor hit with a 300 mag is not as deadly as a .22 in the lungs. I have MLer from 45 to 69 with most of my deer and hogs shot with a .54. Calm down and pop them in the lungs, wait 30 minutes and 99% of them will be dead within a 100 yards

You are correct. But I have been kinda lucky with round balls. Longest shot I have had was with a .45. None of my deer have moved more than about 5 yards. And I admit that is just luck. But I only used the .45 once, I usually use a .54 or a .58.

 

[danhornaday]

Off topic s bit. I'm 76 and have been deer hunting for 60 of those years. I still dearly love entering and being in the woods with a flintlock, but during the last few seasons I have lost the need/desire to kill a deer. The many blood trails I've followed in the past now make me sad in that I know that loss of blood is what's left of the life he is about to lose. He has run from the noise he didn't understand because running away has always been his defense and has always worked for him until that last day of his existence that I hastened. His life was all he had until I violently took it. I know that is weird and I never thought I'd come to that. So I let them walk now, then sit and feel old and silly. But how nice it is be in the woods at day break and see the early light arriving and flickering across my gorgeous longrifle and comprehend fully how blessed I am to have another cold morning like men and boys experienced and cherished decades ago when hunting was not just necessary but every bit as loved and lovely as it is now right up to the moments I see that pitiful lost blood that hunters have always spilled. I am well aware that I am weird but happy and thankful.

not to worry...I fgeel the same way and I"m sure there are others