CAelknuts
Moderator
- Messages
- 3,825
About ten days ago, a fellow started a thread about his brother shooting a bull with a bow, getting a doulbe lung hit and having to track the bull about a mile before finding it. As some will remember, I made a comment that any bull "double lunged" can't go a mile. I got flamed for that comment and we had some back and forth discourse, and then I left to go to Arizona to help a buddy with his elk hunt. I just returned and would like to share something that happened on my buddies hunt.
My buddy killed a nice bull on the second evening of the muzzleloader season. I wasn't with him as I was a couple miles away, scouting for bulls while he hunted the mountain behind our camp location. He killed his bull right before dark, and they skinned and broke the bull down, hanging the pieces in trees to cool before walking back to camp late that night.
On Sunday morning we packed the bull back to where we were staying and boned everything out, and GOT A BIG SURPRISE! Someone else had shot the bull either earlier that same day, or the day before. The bull, according to my buddy, appeared totally healthy, bugling and chasing a spike bull away from his cows that he was herding along the mountain.
I'm pretty sure the guy who shot this bull thought he'd made a good shot, and probably hit the bull right through the lungs as the bullet penetrated the left scapula and went through the chest to lodge under the right scapula. I imagine the guys who shot this bull thought they had a dead bull if they saw hair fly on his shoulder, but they couldn't have known that the bullet passed over the lungs and under the spine and didn't harm the bull very much at all. This guy was shooting a .50 rifle, and using a sabot encased slug. The bullet performed badly, as it sheared off a petal, had another couple collapse inward and only a couple expand outward to expand the wound channel. The wound channel was very clean with virtually no bloodshot tissue. The only way the bull would have ever perished from this shot was if he developed an infection, but when we butchered the bull there wasn't even any sign of imflammation so I wonder if the bull would have ever had anything more than a sore shoulder that would have healed in a few weeks.
The point I hope that some of the readers of this website take away, is that what we see or think happened isn't always what happened. What the hunter probably thought was a great hit, wasn't at all as it turned out. I think this also shows some of the limitation of sabots and jacketed "pistol" bullets that so many guys shoot. This bullet performed terribly and only wounded the elk. My buddy, on the other hand, was shooting a 495 grain slug in his 45 caliber muzzleloader. The bull collapsed in his tracks and rolled down the hill all the way to a dry creekbed. I wasn't there, but the guide and my buddy both said the bull instantly collapsed from that shot. Maybe this gives some muzzy hunters something to consider in the bullets they choose, maybe not.
Finally, if anyone on here knows someone who has a tag for 22 south and wounded a 6x6 bull near Gibson Peak, you can tell him that we found the bull after they lost him, and he's now at the butcher shop.
My buddy killed a nice bull on the second evening of the muzzleloader season. I wasn't with him as I was a couple miles away, scouting for bulls while he hunted the mountain behind our camp location. He killed his bull right before dark, and they skinned and broke the bull down, hanging the pieces in trees to cool before walking back to camp late that night.
On Sunday morning we packed the bull back to where we were staying and boned everything out, and GOT A BIG SURPRISE! Someone else had shot the bull either earlier that same day, or the day before. The bull, according to my buddy, appeared totally healthy, bugling and chasing a spike bull away from his cows that he was herding along the mountain.
I'm pretty sure the guy who shot this bull thought he'd made a good shot, and probably hit the bull right through the lungs as the bullet penetrated the left scapula and went through the chest to lodge under the right scapula. I imagine the guys who shot this bull thought they had a dead bull if they saw hair fly on his shoulder, but they couldn't have known that the bullet passed over the lungs and under the spine and didn't harm the bull very much at all. This guy was shooting a .50 rifle, and using a sabot encased slug. The bullet performed badly, as it sheared off a petal, had another couple collapse inward and only a couple expand outward to expand the wound channel. The wound channel was very clean with virtually no bloodshot tissue. The only way the bull would have ever perished from this shot was if he developed an infection, but when we butchered the bull there wasn't even any sign of imflammation so I wonder if the bull would have ever had anything more than a sore shoulder that would have healed in a few weeks.
The point I hope that some of the readers of this website take away, is that what we see or think happened isn't always what happened. What the hunter probably thought was a great hit, wasn't at all as it turned out. I think this also shows some of the limitation of sabots and jacketed "pistol" bullets that so many guys shoot. This bullet performed terribly and only wounded the elk. My buddy, on the other hand, was shooting a 495 grain slug in his 45 caliber muzzleloader. The bull collapsed in his tracks and rolled down the hill all the way to a dry creekbed. I wasn't there, but the guide and my buddy both said the bull instantly collapsed from that shot. Maybe this gives some muzzy hunters something to consider in the bullets they choose, maybe not.
Finally, if anyone on here knows someone who has a tag for 22 south and wounded a 6x6 bull near Gibson Peak, you can tell him that we found the bull after they lost him, and he's now at the butcher shop.