Bucket list item: no ducks or boats.

Mike,
That is just a great story. I have lots of outdoor opportunities living where I do but you make me jealous every time you post!
 
Thanks for the great explanation Mike. I know the beetles do a fine job. my neigbor had one done that way and it came out excellently.
 
Just trying to make the most of my days here. Jane and I both agree that after the kids leave home we're headed for someplace warmer where you can grow a garden and not have to worry about bears. Where that might be we can't agree on.

I'm not the kind of guy that gets very excited about ballistic details, and I find that many people over think the gun and bullet part of hunting big game. A well placed shot of a smaller caliber is way more deadly than a poorly placed cannon fire right? BUT, in the case of this particular critter I am amazed at how ineffective my 30.06 bullets were at killing him.

After butchering him up and examining the wounds here's my initial CSI report. I was using 220 gr Core Lokt bullets like this..

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I never did have a broadside shot so I don't know how they would have performed that way, but I did shoot him multiple times in the neck and finally in the head. First shot, facing me, head down, smacked him in the anterior side of the hump low where I thought the vertebrae were. He went down like a sack of hammers. I've personally seen bison get up and run away after that kind of shot, so I racked another shell and advanced to prepare for a followup shot. His head was up, he was lying down facing straight away from me so I had no shot. Due to the rocky terrain I preferred to stand still and wait for him to move or die. He got to his feet, still facing away but wasn't swaying or looking hurt at all. I tried two shots to the posterior hump from maybe 40 yds away but didn't connect ( I underestimated the length of the fur ), getting worried he was going to run I tried to break his pelvis from behind but ended up shooting him right in the butt. He didn't flinch or seem to notice and that bullet only went about 4" into the meat and not even close to bone. When he swung his head to try to see what was behind him I snuck one more bullet just behind his jaw bone, which didn't make it to his neck bones, but it did swing his head far enough the other way for me to land one solidly in his neck on the driver's side. Again, it never made it through the meat to hit bone, but it did knock him down again. I walked as close as I dared in case he got up again and planted one in his neck just below the atlas bone on the passenger side. Didn't penetrate to the bone either. All flesh wounds. Having heard that bullets bounce off their skulls, and wanting definitive proof, I walked in front of him for a coupe de gras brain shot between the horns through the forehead. When skinning the head that one definitely did him in. I never have believed the bullet proof head story. When doing home killed beef the butcher always used a .22 to the skull to down the animal then cut it to drain. I know they were smaller than this bull, but still, a .22 vs 30 cal?

Anyways, my final report is that he died from a bullet to the brain. I need to do some research and see if I can get a bullet in 30.06 that is designed to penetrate several inches of meat and still have enough energy to break bone. I'm sure its out there. I also believe that my 220's would have been more effective if I had placed then through the ribs where the hide and meat layer was thinner.

Not only is the hide ridiculously thick on this bull, but having a bullet proof jacket of meat surrounding his frame is the challenge for a shooter. To set up a performance test you'd need to wrap a block of ballistic jelly in 6 layers of wet carpet to see what happens to your bullet. I just can't imagine killing one of these with a stick bow, and processing it with sharp rocks. How the heck?

I weighed the skull as you see it in the picture on Rich's back - 75 lbs. The femur and tibia on the back leg - 24 lbs. Seeing as how Anna dragged out all four legs with hooves, hide, and bones, I'm guessing she moved the equivalent of a whole deer in waste. If we could have gotten the hide off in one piece, it would have been another 200 lbs easily. The Dept of Environment guys weighed a head off a bull like this with the cape attached for a shoulder mount - about 300 lbs. Crazy.

As far as bison books go for those interested, Rinella's book American Buffalo is an interesting read, but my favorite has always been The Oregon Trail.

Mike
 
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That's really interesting about your .30-06's performance, Mike. It puts the old stories of the Plains Indians riding up into a herd and shooting an arrow clean through a bison in perspective! A good friend of mine actually killed a bison with an atl-atl a few years ago, he was a graduate student in Archaelogy and got permission from a local farmer that raises meat bison to do some experiments. He put a stone-tipped dart through its lungs and it died in about 10 minutes.

As far as a deep-penetrating bullet, in my book you can't beat the TSX or TTSX from Barnes-I have shot several elk with 180 grain TSX's, at ranges from 40 to 250 yards, and the only one that wasn't a complete pass through was a follow-up shot from 240 yards that went through the shoulder blade and came to rest just under the hide on the off side. The recovered bullet looked just like a magazine ad-a perfect mushroom. They are all copper also and they don't come apart at all-they will typically retain close to 100% of their weight after expanding. I know that elk aren't quite as massive as bison but they are biggest animal that I've ever been able to shoot first hand!

Congratulations on your bison, that is something that you'll always remember, and I'm glad for you that you were able to get a team together to help you out. For me the memories that last the most aren't the kill shots or even the hunt itself so much as the companionship of friends and family working together helping to pack and process meat.
 
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That is a cool story. That sure looks like an old animal in the top pic. Massive too.
AK has a 200 grain 2000 fps at 100 yards min. for Bison. So basically what you were shooting was at their legal minimum. As was said some sort of monolithic would probably do better, but what you were shooting worked. :).


T
 
You are right on the money about adventures with friends Cody, right on. Thanks for the info on the TSX's. I have to do some reading.

Todd that is interesting. Here the min is 30.06 with a 180. Maybe we should change that and see if our wounding losses are affected?

Personally I've used 180's to kill several black bears, one grizzly, some moose, some caribou, a sheep, a cow elk, a wolf, all one shot kill type deals. But I did wound a bison once with one. I aimed for lungs broadside, he fell down right away so I must have hit forward, he got up and ran away never to be seen again. The blood trail was sparse, I've seen way more blood at a Jr Hockey game. What a sick feeling that was. That's why I switched to the 220's and tried to be really steady on this big guy.

Mike
 
Anyways, my final report is that he died from a bullet to the brain. I need to do some research and see if I can get a bullet in 30.06 that is designed to penetrate several inches of meat and still have enough energy to break bone. I'm sure its out there. I also believe that my 220's would have been more effective if I had placed then through the ribs where the hide and meat layer was thinner.
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Up here there is a guy that has been building up loads for the .358 Winchester (.308 case necked up to .35) and has been punching clean through bull moose and caribou. He does rib shots only as he is over serious about meat waste. Over the last few years he has found that Woodleigh bullets are the go to for low velocity leathality. His bench testing math and field results with his Savage 99 rifles convienced me to get a .358 winchester Ruger Hawkeye and hang up my old .338 magnum. My messed up left arm likes the lighter weight and lower recoil. The guy here has been using the "protected point" bullets for hunting, but has had good bench results with the weldcore round nose soft point. If you look at their website you will see that they offer several .30 cal bullets up to 240g. They make a distinction between 30-06 and 300 mag bullets. Their 240g is specific to the 30-06. You have to look hard in the US to find the bullets in stock, so finding them in CAN may be even harder, but with them being AU it might be easier. http://www.woodleighbullets.com.au/ Here are the 240g at Midway USA - instock http://www.midwayusa.com/product/458262/woodleigh-bullets-30-06-springfield-308-diameter-240-grain-protected-point-box-of-50?cm_vc=ProductFinding You can try the Barnes bullets and use the plastic tipped ones - TTSX. They work better at slower speeds. However, at 180g they may not have the terminal performance you would need for a bison if there is math regulated into weapon choice like here in AK. The untipped goes up to 200g. If you want to keep things cheaper then the Nosler Partition in 220g is the go to standard. Its killed pretty much everything there is to kill, but guys complain that frequently the front core breaks up too much. Which goes with what I have found using 180g in my 300RSAUM. But the critter died right there as well.
 
Hey and one other thing Ray, if you are ever coming this way in the winter and want to accompany on a day hunt for bison that's totally legal. We could even use your prefference of loads for interest if we got one. You just can't be the shooter. Can you drive a snowmobile with your wounded wing?
 
Congrats on the bison Mike! Sounds like you had some great help with it too.

One quarter from that bison weighs as much as a big whitetail here, hard for me to imagine!
 
Hey and one other thing Ray, if you are ever coming this way in the winter and want to accompany on a day hunt for bison that's totally legal. We could even use your prefference of loads for interest if we got one. You just can't be the shooter. Can you drive a snowmobile with your wounded wing?
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Thank you for the offer. That is really tempting. I can do most things OK these days, but shoveling snow would be a no-go after about 20 minutes as the bicep will start napping about then. Running a snomobile would be pretty simple on a trail system, but deep drifts might be a concern if I bury one.

I would need to get my passport renewed so the US will let me back in.
 
Talking about penetration with arrows, I saw a video recently of a guy doing a short experiment comparing stone tipped vs steel single blade heads.. Three shots with stone were almost complete in and out hits on a supported, ungutted deer. Three hits with the steel broadheads weren't quite as deep but still sticking out both sides. A deer is nothing to a bison I realize, however the test shows obsidian/glass heads could do the job. And they are legal in a lot of states.
Interesting news about the penetration of the 30-06. Somewhat disappointing actually. But I've never autopsied a bison either.
 
Since this thread is kinda headed in a bowhunting direction I'll add this little story. When they were originally trying to come up with a bison management strategy for the Yukon, there seemed to be very little support for bow hunting. In fact, there was opposition. The official word from the gov't was that it wouldn't be effective or humane. "Effective?" 30,000 years of people living off bison doesn't count as evidence FOR the effectiveness of stone tipped arrows, atlatls, spears etc? That shows you some of the ground bow hunting has to gain to be more accepted here.

Mike
 
Mike - You did good! Bison is at the top of my red meat list, DEEEEeeeeelicious and good for ya....grouse are also very good. Congratulations.
 

If an .06 will knock a animal down but he can then get up and get away....if you have to shoot one multiple times with a modern rifle.....the fact that Native American's managed to "make a living" using a bow on the big shaggy's doesn't mean it was particularly effective or humane.....most likely there were LOTS of Bison roaming around the plains back them with rocks inside em....or that were food for the Wolves when an piece of chert didn't do its job.....
Not a condemnation just saying that the fact that they ate Buffalo doesn't mean they were all that efficient at bringing them to camp....
Just sayin.....


Steve
 
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