Before YOU FOLKS get embroiled in the ethics of shooting deer at 600 yards, let's look at one aspect that no one seems to consider. Finding the damn thing or finding the place where you hit the thing.
Well now...
I used ta hunt over this one soy been/cotton/corn field where my shots were
always 400 to 600 yards; what I'd call medium range. 'course when I shot the deer was always DRT, in their tracks as it were, so I never had to do no trackin. This was mostly because of my unbelievable marksmanship ability, but also partly due to the rifle and ammo I have found to be the best they is for this type of shooting; the 243 Winchester loaded with 55 gr. Nosler BT's. They shoot dead flat to 300 yards then climb a bit to put them 1.2769 inches high at 400 yards. At that range my handloads are still clocking right at 4000 fps so there is more then the 1000 ft. lbs. of energy you have to have to kill deer. I know some may doubt that velocity claim, but I'll let you in on a little secret, it's a 243
AI. Trust me, I shot these rounds over my Chrony with the screen set out at 400 yards.
Anyways, it's hard to imagine Bambi not being DRT at the shot, but this is for the sake of argument, so let's say he managed to stagger off a ways. If he did, he would leave a blood trail Stevy Wonder could follow... I always get complete bullet pass through, even if the deer is fully facing or looking directly away from me. I normally recover the bullet, which almost always weighs 53 to 54.9 gr., at the location the deer was standing at the shot. I load my rounds so every bit of energy is expended on the inside of the deer, with just enough to break through the skin on the far side and drop to the ground.
But I never had no problem walking right to a downed deer. Mostly because I try to position my stand about 100 feet up in the giant redwoods I had planted around the field. by doing that I know my distance from the ground, then I range the downed deer and that gives me 2 sides of a triangle. So I calculate the remaining side and then I know exactly how far it is to the deer. Now, my step is exactly 30 inches heel to toe - a holdover from the military back in the day when soldiers still marched, so I can calculate the exact number of steps it is to the deer. Lastly I shoot an azimuth to the deer with my sextant, I find compasses just aren't accurate enough to find our small JawJa white tails, and commence to stepin', countin' and azimuthing. Never failed me yet...
But I has been thinkin about developing a GPS linked to the range finder so you could range the deer and have the coordinates for whatever you ranged transferred to a GPS. That way if I ever got into long range deer shooting I could continue to walk right to the deer. Not that I think I'd need the help mind you...
(anybody want to hire a deer sniffing old man? 
)
That's another story...
