This was the first gun season this year. I did not go out until after the first week of October and got busted and things went wrong with swirling winds and didn’t de-scent my clothes. Two weekends it rained and I don’t like to bow hunt with rain as it can make blood trailing hard, or wash it away.

This was the first year hunting with my CVA Accura. I used to have a BPI gun that my wife bought for me through Cabelas with the help of a friend one year. Cheap gun and hunting and shot at a doe and the bolt failed. I was in a blind and my ears were ringing, I was choking on smoke. I called CVA as the same mother company bought CVA as owned BPI. They gave me a 35% discount on a new gun just for sending the old, broken gun back to them. So I bought an Accura in 50 caliber.

I took Thursday and Friday off as I wanted two deer and does need to be removed from the farm. I go out early Thursday and bust busted from thermals going down the hill at 8am. I said, I’ll just wait and that will change, and the sun was up and just after 8:30 and a doe comes up the hill and can’t smell me as everything is heating up. 8:40 I shoot her.

I jerked a bit or the gun was shooting a bit right and I noticed I only had an entry hole and no exit. The bullet expelled all of the force inside of her. There was not even a visible wound on the right side. I noticed as I blood trailed her on deer trails and their was sometimes heavy blood sign and only on the left side of the trail.

I gave this doe to my buddy Scott. He doesn’t have anywhere to hunt around here and there is too many deer where I am hunting. I could not find the slug in the chest cavity and did not think to feel the right ribs.

After dropping her off, I head out, get some Small pistol primers and 209 primers, loading and casting for 6.8 SPC is on the long range forecast! I ate some lunch and relaxed with Kako, my dog. I headed back out around 3pm to look for another doe.

Setup in the stand at 3:30 and hunt the back trail stand. An entire section about 40 yards long, before you get tot the stand, is covered on the ground with acorns from a Red Oak tree. Driving my truck in that spot to the creek sounds like driving on bubble wrap there are so many acorns on the trail.

About 5:40 a see a yearling and think to myself, “Where’s your Momma.” Then another yearling come out and I’m thinking, an older doe. Then I see the white of antlers. Then he walks out and I can see three points on a side and I can hear my heartbeat. I calm down and see he’s not real old. Then I start thinking, maybe he’ll be better next year. Then realization hits me, he is going to go down that hill, cross the creek, and someone else is going to shoot him on another farm! Okay and Bang!

The buck runs down the trail and down the hill and this hill is like 25° and awful to drag a doe up and a buck is even harder. About 40 yards into the run he hits some thick stuff and I see him roll. He flops around a bit and I give it 5 minutes before getting down.

Above is a picture of him on one of my many pauses dragging him up so we can get the ATV to drag him back. The hill is too thick, uneven and steep to safely get the ATV in there. Luckily I got smart and realized the back trail stand is where the trail tapers down to the creek. I was able to go down the creek as much as up the hill and the more I went down, the lower the hill got. Still as I am 56 now and work at a desk all the time, I am not in great shape. Dragging this heavy beast requires many breaks. I was tired and knew the work ahead of me and didn’t bother looking for the bullet and you can see he was shot on the right and there is no exit on the left side.

Then while skinning and going down the left side I find the bullet in the ribs. It went between the ribs and did not have enough energy left to even bruise the left side skin. The base of the bullets on the right picture does not look like that when it is cast, or sized to .452 and those marks are from the sabot. The pure lead deformed some being shot. The round line is a form mark in the bottom of the sabot and the 4 little protrusions you see is the opening slots in the sabot.

So the talk of this with my buddy Kevin, enjoying a few beers and talking about the good luck of this buck walking out, instead of a doe. Kevin comments, “I really like exit holes. It’s nice you expended all the energy in kill force, but another exit hole would make blood tracking easier and sometimes, that’s really important!”

I though about that and Friday after I boned him out into meat tubs I heated up the cast pot and got out the Lee 452-255-RF 6 cavity mold and started casting. The previous bullets were pure lead and yes they kill, but no exit hole. The casting pot already had Wheel weight lead in it so I cast about 40 of them. Then I dump it out into ingot molds and put half and half wheel weight lead and pure lead in the pot. I weigh them all in grams to make sure I am close in weight of both and not lopsided to one side or the other. Then I thought I casted about 40, but it was only 33 good ones I could save.

Above is the bullets that will be shown on here with more water expansion testing. From that and shooting them at targets I will decide which one to hunt with in December.

I ended up with 4 roast for jerky, both football roasts sliced into steaks and both back straps into 1″ medallions for grilling. I got 27 pounds of ground from the neck, shoulders and scraps.

Also to be covered another time. I messed up filleting off the silver skin and sliced a big flat mini steak. So I fried that in butter in a pan with Memphis rubs sprinkled on it. Then dropped into my plate and poured that seasoned butter all over top of it. Wow, the grill might get ignored a bunch this winter!

Enjoy!