I met with sucess today in filling my doe tag. I had just decided to head back from the blind for some breakfast at about 9 this morning. Mere steps from where I parked the van off to one side of the cow pasture some movement in the distance caught my eye. It was two does standing broadside down below the hillside I had parked on. Counting my blessings for having had the foresight to put the range finder in my pocket. I immediately dropped onto my posterior and took a range reading on the largest deer which lasered out at 278yds downhill a goodly little bit. Uncharacteristically steady I put the rangefinder down and produced my AR in a STD sitting shooting stance. I had the rifle ZEROED at 200
meters so I put a little English on the crosshairs right behind the shoulder and squeezed the bang switch....
Since I had left the 3x9x40 scope on 3x I was rewarded with a great view of the doe rear almost straight up on it's hind legs and stumble off into the tree line appx 50yds away.
NOW THIS IS WHERE I MESSED UP not the cartridge.
Due to the great distance involved I took careful note of the location of where the doe entered the trees. Assuming she would have charged into the wooded area a goodly ways me and the wife decided to find the start of the boodtrail at the tree line and
then wait 20 or 30 min. Well it turned out that the deer had lied down just inside the trees so when we arrived it bolted again into a recently clearcut area for a ways before expiring making retrieval a real chore.
But once tracked, retrieved and field dressed post mortum showed that my shot placment was almost perfect vertically although a tad farther forward than I would have liked. The 125grn Nosler B-Tip passed through the shoulder destroyed one lung and clipped the heart. I could not locate the bullet in the gooey mass but it was apparent it hadn't exited.
All in all not a shot I would normally take with a 7.62x39mm but in this one instance everything was perfect for me to attempt this shot. Calm wind, steady rest, known range and zero.
The rifle used was a 20" Ar15 flattop chambered for 7.62x39mm, the ammunition was a 2400fps handload shooting the 125grn Ballistic Tip. The deer weighed 98lbs field dressed.