Grendel penetration

[tomc]

I recently shot a nice doe at 35 yds with my AA 16" Grendel using factory 123 gr SST ammo. The shot was downward from a steady stand and I aimed a little above and behind the front shoulder hoping to angle down into the lungs and heart. I gave her a few minutes then found a few drops of blood where she had been standing and trailed her into some very thick brush. We found two drops of blood over 25 yds then nothing else after a few hours of looking. I walked the woods where she went the next morning and didn't find anything. That is the first deer I've ever lost and it made me sick. I assume there was no blood trail because there was no exit wound. Could the short range (high velocity) cause the bullet not to perform? Is there better penetrating factory ammo? I'm considering going back to my old 30-06.

[A5BLASTER]

Length of barrel?

What color was the blood?

Was her tail tucked in when she ran off?

Edit to add.

Did you find any hair where she was standing when shot. If so what color and how long?

Did you check the sight where she was shot at for a bullet strick?

[imaguy3]

That is the first deer I've ever lost and it made me sick. I assume there was no blood trail because there was no exit wound. Could the short range (high velocity) cause the bullet not to perform? Is there better penetrating factory ammo? I'm considering going back to my old 30-06.

Well I've perfectly double lunged an eastern whitetail deer with my bow, a javelina with a 243, and this year a coues deer with a 280ai. In all cases there was no blood trail. The bow was a high shot with a fixed 4 blade muzzy, the deer simply died before the chest cavity filled with blood to that point. The same with the javelina and the coues deer.

You saying you aimed "above" the front shoulder is pretty high. It's possible you hit and just grazed it.. or yanked that trigger and hit it but in a non vital area.
This being your first deer, buck fever is a hell of a thing. Just because you aimed perfectly doesn't mean you hit perfectly. I promise you the ammo works just fine, myself and many others have used it just fine.

That being said... Here's the wounds from my coues deer this year, 490 yards with a Hornady ELD-X bullet, speed at impact was about 2300fps...

Entry



Exit

[cwlongshot]

[Texas]

The SST is one of the go to bullets for feral hogs. I have gone from a 308 to the Grendel and have seen a few dead hogd run and fall over dead and leave no blood trail. If the heart id blown up and you don't hit a bone, the wound may seep and leave little or no trail.

[Double Naught Spy]

I recently shot a nice doe at 35 yds with my AA 16" Grendel using factory 123 gr SST ammo. The shot was downward from a steady stand and I aimed a little above and behind the front shoulder hoping to angle down into the lungs and heart. I gave her a few minutes then found a few drops of blood where she had been standing and trailed her into some very thick brush. We found two drops of blood over 25 yds then nothing else after a few hours of looking. I walked the woods where she went the next morning and didn't find anything. That is the first deer I've ever lost and it made me sick. I assume there was no blood trail because there was no exit wound. Could the short range (high velocity) cause the bullet not to perform? Is there better penetrating factory ammo? I'm considering going back to my old 30-06.

Singular experiences are often misleading. Take no offense when I say this, but sometimes people mess up as well. One of the things I have learned from watching videos of my own hunts is that things were not always the way I recalled them at the moment that the rifle discharged.

At 35 yards, the SST round should have easily blasted all the way through a 200 lb doe unless you hit spine or heavy leg bone (humerus). If you would have hit spine, the doe would be down (and the bullet still may have exited). If you hit heavy leg bone, it would be broken and you would have been able to see the result of the massive hit, plus, it still may have exited.

[tomc]

16" barrel, dark red blood, no hair, and didn't notice the tail since she was in the brush in a heartbeat. I am aware that my shot may not have hit exactly where I wanted but with her standing broadside at that distance with a steady rest and the fact that she jumped straight up when hit I feel like it was a decent placed shot. I have killed deer before with a bow and rifle. I didn't have "buck fever", she was just a decent doe for meat. I am just upset that I hit her and was not able to find her due to no blood trail.

[A5BLASTER]

16" barrel, dark red blood, no hair, and didn't notice the tail since she was in the brush in a heartbeat. I am aware that my shot may not have hit exactly where I wanted but with her standing broadside at that distance with a steady rest and the fact that she jumped straight up when hit I feel like it was a decent placed shot. I have killed deer before with a bow and rifle. I didn't have "buck fever", she was just a decent doe for meat. I am just upset that I hit her and was not able to find her due to no blood trail.

Dark red blood and no hair, more often then not is one of 2 things.

Either liver shot are you hit heavy leg bone at a high angle.

But don't think it was liver, if so she would have been dead quickly and struggling to run off.

Think you hit the heavy leg bone area at a high angle and the bullet deflected into the ground.

Good friend of mine shot a nice buck in the rear hip at a heavy angle a few years ago resulting in just a small rip of the skin and that's all we found a few drops of dark red blood and a small chunk of meat, seen the buck later that season, had a limp but still alive.

[rebelsoul]

tomc, I question the 123sst for the same reason. At close range, it will explode when it hits bone. I've had several no exit shots; very hard to track with no blood trail. The good news is that a deer shot with the 123sst in the chest cavity won't be far away. I want something better, out of the box, but it's hard to resist the sst, it goes exactly where you point it. BTW that tail up/down is not definitive, I have videos of double lung shot deer that kept their tail up.

[montana]

16" barrel, dark red blood, no hair, and didn't notice the tail since she was in the brush in a heartbeat. I am aware that my shot may not have hit exactly where I wanted but with her standing broadside at that distance with a steady rest and the fact that she jumped straight up when hit I feel like it was a decent placed shot. I have killed deer before with a bow and rifle. I didn't have "buck fever", she was just a decent doe for meat. I am just upset that I hit her and was not able to find her due to no blood trail.

Every deer I have shot that jumped straight up was a heart shot. A lung shot will leave bright red blood, not dark. I prefer and entrance and exit bullet wound too,since they bleed out quicker and leave a better blood trail. If I have a hard time locating a deer, I will wait or even leave the area for awhile. Make sure you mark the spot for reference when returning. Once the wounded animal realizes it isn't being followed, it will stop, stiffen up and lie down. Return to the location, follow the tracks as far as possible and look for magpies, crow, etc, since they will follow wounded and dying animals. Take your time while moving while minimizing your noise and movement. If at all possible, face the wind and try to read the path or direction of the deer. Hooved animals are fairly easy to track unless it is rocky terrain. Waiting at least an hour or longer after making a shot is a given when locating a wounded elk. Quickly following up on a wounded animal will only pushes them farther. Give them a chance to lie down and bleed out.

[imaguy3]

I am just upset that I hit her and was not able to find her due to no blood trail.

Yeah that's a bummer. A buddy of mine was unable to recover a mule deer after a shot with his bow. We trailed what looked like good blood, bright red and bubbly, for 3 miles before it stopped... It wasn't even my animal and it sucked not recovering.

[1Shot]

After killing hundreds of white tail deer, did crop damage control for 15 years and have been killing them for 43 years, I can tell you that the reaction of the deer when hit will tell you NOTHING about where they were hit a lot of the time. I have blown their heart to bits and had them calmly walk off like they were not touched. I have blown their heart to bits and had them hump up like a gut shot. I have blown their heart to bits and had them take off like a race horse with the tail held high waving by like you missed them.

First deer I ever killed was with a 30-30 Win shooting 150 gr Rem. HP. Buck was about 40 yards away and I was shooting open sights. Put the bead in the pocket behind the front shoulder and at about the same time as the hammer dropped the deer took a step forward. I was sitting up on a big rock on the top of a TN mountain ridge and was shooting at a pretty steep angle down hill. When hit, the deer did a barrel roll in the air and landed back on its feet then reared up on it's hind legs and pawed the air with it's front feet like high-O-silver and took off down the mountain in a dead run. I sat there astonished about 15 minutes then walked to where the deer was standing when shot. Not a drop of blood but there was some white hair on the ground.

All sorts of things began to go through my mind, did it actually hit in the body or was it just a graze of the belly etc. Leaves were heavy on the ground and I could see where they had been disturbed as the deer ran down the steep mountain side. I walked almost a mile to the bottom of the hill and found no blood at all and then I walked around a big laurel bush. There was so much blood that it looked like you had sprayed the ground for 3 feet on both sides of where that buck ran with dark blood and then I saw the deer laying dead about 15 yards from there. Deer was shot right through the liver with an exit the size of a golf ball. So they can go a long ways with a liver shot and leave no blood trail.

I once helped a young man trail a deer he shot with a 243 Win. where there was bright but dark blood. Trailed the deer about 1/2 mile and lost the blood. Deer was found about 2 miles away laying in a farm pond the next day by a farmer and it was down but not dead, he killed it. Hind leg just above the knee was blown in half but still attached by the hide. Strange things happen so don't blame a bullet until you put your hands on the animal and actually see what happened.

I have lost a few deer over the years that were found days latter when buzzards were on them that I had walked all around with in feet but it was so thick that they were not seen and I KNOW the shot was good on them and most of them was with a 7mm Rem Mag, which is the worst caliber I have ever used on deer for having them run off after taking the shot and I used a bunch of different bullets.

So the "it is the calibers fault I need to go bigger" train of thought you often hear is a bunch of bull. Chalk your loss up to "sometimes bad things happen" and go after another deer. Only 6.5 Grendel kill I have made and only shot taken on a deer was with 120 Speer Gold Dot that someone else on the form had a bad experience using but could have just been a one lung hit angle, but did find the deer. My experience with mine shot with the bullet was BANG FLOP through the center of the chest lungs and heart turned into pulp and bullet exited out the belly about 20" penetration with a thumb size hole.

I admit I have not used the 123 SST mainly because it will not shoot all that accurately in either of my rifles but from the experience of others it sounds like a pretty good bullet. I have shot a bunch of deer with the 120 Sierra Pro Hunter and Nosler BT in a 6.5x55 out to between 300 and 500 yards where they have slowed down to 6.5 Grendel out to 300 yard velocities and they both work very good. Got 120 Sierra PH zeroed in one of my 6.5 Grr rifles now but as stated above did not get to shoot a deer with it this year. I have only been shooting the 6.5 Grendel since last spring though. Good luck and keep after them.

[FW Conch]

Good to hear from that much experience 1Shot.

[gnumadic]

I would concur with the thoughts that it could have been a high leg shot. Several years ago I was hunting down in Mississippi with my brother-in-law. I was in a tree stand that was along a natural funnel leading to an open field (off to my right). After seeing some coyotes in the field a buck came through the same spot at about 40 yards and stopped. Given that it was a very small window, I tried to take the shot left handed (due to the angle). I was using a 7mm-08. with the shot the deer fell immediately, but before I could chamber another round he hopped up and ran like a bat out of hell. There was some dark red blood spatter at the site--and droplets leading into the woods--but within 60 yards the blood trail disappeared. We searched and searched but never found the deer or any sign. I'm convinced I hit him in the leg and that he most likely lived to tell the story. And if not, well at least they coyotes made short work of him. I know how you feel and I'm sorry.

[ricsmall]

I have to agree with 1shot on his entire post. Keep using the sst. I shot a 260lb boar hog Thursday. Distance was a whopping 9 yards. DRT. 123 SST, pass through shot. The bullet works, sometimes things just don’t go our way.