A few with the smokepole.

[Stratosman]

Nothing extra fancy here, but though some might enjoy some more deer pix.

This is from opening weekend of Muzzy season. Dad me and my brother in law scored on these three, brother in laws first time muzzy hunting and drills a fat forkhorn, he was excited. Those powerbelt hollow tips did the trick on the center doe, and that is the entrance hole.

Dad got his with his Hawkins at 120 yards, nice shot.

Still have my buck tag and holding out for a nice one, so we'll see....

[Nova]

very nice harvest for the opener of muzzy, congrats. And yes, we still want to see more deer pics, thanks.

[irvingdog]

Stratos: Dad threaded the windpipe, didn't he?

wow. A neck-shot (old-school style!) at 120 is impressive indeed!

[BigWadeS]

Hey Stratos, nice pic, that is one heck of an entrance hole, I suppose you keep your hands clean that way? Bullet field dressing.... congrats on your harvest

[Stratosman]

Thanks,

I hit her a bit forward and clipped the front shoulder, that must have expanded the bullet so that the hole in the rib cage I could have fit a baseball through, the exit was the same. And she still ran about 50 yards!

[jerkin'm]

I shot my first deer with a muzzleloader on Sunday...similar to that buck in the photo....After shooting dozens of deer with a rifle it was a bigger thrill to shoot one with the smokepole..congrats..

[huntnfish]

Great deer Stratos. It is amazing how far a deer can go sometimes. The first deer I shot with my muzzleloader was a double lung and also took out a shoulder and it still went about 120 yards. That was with a 245 grain 50 cal. The very still mornings are the most interesting when shooting at a deer. When you take the shot you have to try and look around the puff of smoke to see where it goes. It is definately one of the more enjotable ways to hunt deer.

[Mark Christianson]

Very nice Strats!

[Stratosman]

huntnfish,

I know what you mean about the post shot confusion. This particular doe had at least 8 others along with her, I waited as long as possible to see if there was a buck following, when I was sure there wasn't I picked out a mature doe and poof....deer running everywhere, smoke, and that wonderful aroma of ignited black powder. And the momentary confusion that followed the shot, where did she go, did I even hit her? I honestly didn't know until I walked up the ridge and saw her laying there.

Only my second with the blackpowder, but already I enjoy it more so than shotgun season....

[bigbucks]

Nice job Stratosman,

I'm glad somebody's getting pass throughs, I think you said that in your earlier post. I've shot three with Power Belts (one this year) & got them all, but no exit holes on any of them. The first one was a shoulder & the second a spine, but the one last weekend was a little too far back & hit paunch & was still under the skin on the other side. This year I'm using 150 grains of 777 & it still didn't go all the way through the soft part of the deer.

I wish it would have been a better hit at 40 yards, but fortunately she didn't go so far that the lack of blood trail made us lose her. We did have to put a couple more in her though, to make sure we didn't lose her for good.

That shooting & waiting for the smoke to clear to see what happened is a really cool thing though. In the case of this last deer, if she hunched at all that was over when the smoke cleared. She was just running off flag & ears down. I figured I couldn't have missed, but there were a couple little twigs in between, so thought it was possible it deflected off. That may have been the reason for the hit being back too far, but I couldn't see any shot off or scarred branches.