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I receive Darrel Hollands' newsletter and thought I'd share his comments on bullet performance in large Texas whitetail. They were shooting Creedmoor and 6mm XC. Bottom line, not impressed with A-Max performance but encouraged by SMK performance.
Choosing the RIGHT BULLET.
I was invited by a good friend in South Texas to assist him in thinning deer to meet his buck/doe ratios and genetic profiles. This required removing about 35 deer from the ranch. I decided to take the Creedmoor and test the 140 A-max on South Texas deer. Now to set the record straight, most folks think of Texas deer as 100 lb targets.
Who sez Texas deer are small? We shot several bucks that went well over 200 lbs. With thick necks, long bodies; beautiful specimens to say the least. We shot deer from 125-485 yards with 6mm XCs and the 6.5 Creedmoor.
It was a great opportunity to test and compare bullets on these huge deer. When the smoke cleared we learned several things.
1) While the A-max bullets killed deer, the exit wounds and blood trails were erratic. Often times the exit wound was a 30-caliber hole; other times it failed to exit and organ damage was minimal. Out of 11 deer shot we never had a decent blood trail to follow if the deer left the sendero. One particular doe was shot at 220 yards with a perfect lung shot; she left maybe 3 tablespoons of blood over a 150-yard trail and things dried up. We circled for well over an hour in increasingly larger circles and I found another drop of blood. She went about 300 yds total and expired in a mesquite bush in tall grass. WE WERE VERY LUCKY to have found her.
2) The 6mm XC and 107 gr. SMKs produced a far better wound channel and exit wounds were achieved nearly 90% of the time in bucks and does.
I was invited by a good friend in South Texas to assist him in thinning deer to meet his buck/doe ratios and genetic profiles. This required removing about 35 deer from the ranch. I decided to take the Creedmoor and test the 140 A-max on South Texas deer. Now to set the record straight, most folks think of Texas deer as 100 lb targets.
Who sez Texas deer are small? We shot several bucks that went well over 200 lbs. With thick necks, long bodies; beautiful specimens to say the least. We shot deer from 125-485 yards with 6mm XCs and the 6.5 Creedmoor.
It was a great opportunity to test and compare bullets on these huge deer. When the smoke cleared we learned several things.
1) While the A-max bullets killed deer, the exit wounds and blood trails were erratic. Often times the exit wound was a 30-caliber hole; other times it failed to exit and organ damage was minimal. Out of 11 deer shot we never had a decent blood trail to follow if the deer left the sendero. One particular doe was shot at 220 yards with a perfect lung shot; she left maybe 3 tablespoons of blood over a 150-yard trail and things dried up. We circled for well over an hour in increasingly larger circles and I found another drop of blood. She went about 300 yds total and expired in a mesquite bush in tall grass. WE WERE VERY LUCKY to have found her.
2) The 6mm XC and 107 gr. SMKs produced a far better wound channel and exit wounds were achieved nearly 90% of the time in bucks and does.
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