Butchering our Deer (GRAPHIC IMAGES INCLUDED) and a discussion on terminal ballistics

After hanging for a week, it was time. The doe had hung in our garage with the temp controlled at 3 -4 degrees Celcuis for a week and we were ready to put it in the freezer.

After a quick coffee I donned my nitril gloves (improved grip and some warmth) and set to skinning. We had left the hide on to prevent to much drying of the meat and it worked. Originally I had left it on because when I shot it on the previous Friday it was -25 and closer to -35 with the windchill. I did not want the deer to freeze into a giant deer-cycle before I could get it up in the garage.

The hide was easily removed and then the fun began, as I broke both my hunting knives that I would normally use we bought the Outdoor Edge wild pack with saw and sharpener. It included a fillet/de-boning knife, a caping knife, a gut hook/skinning knife as well as the saw, rib spreader and sharpener. What a great set of knives, there maybe better knives out there but I have never used one, especially considering the whole set was under 80.00 and will fit into my hunt pack. The caping knife is amazing, Andrea essentially butchered the whole deer with this little beauty while I used the skinning knife to remove all the quarters and trim the ribs and neck. She did use the fillet knife to cut a few parts of the very large hind quarters into steaks but that was it, the caping knife was just to handy and easy to control for everything else.

We decided to go with the front shoulder where I shot the deer first, it was full of bloodshot and jellied meat and would be the slowest to "process" so Andrea could find her rhythm (her idea lol).

As can be seen the picture above, there is blood shot meat the whole length of the rib cage, it actually was bloodshot all the way from the base of the skull to the end of the rib cage. I will write about terminal ballistics at the end of the butchering story.

In some ways I had the easy job, all should have been smooth, I was removing the meat from the carcass, Andrea was making the cuts we wanted and Noah was wrapping...After removing the front quarters I went in to see how she was making out and how the wrapping was going - the wrapping was not going!!! Noah was quite sick so the meat was piling up...time for me to pull double duty so away I went. With the front quarters removed we concentrated on getting those cuts in the freezer before they could dry out...After making quick work of the front quarters, the back straps were next - they were beautiful (and taste great too)

Those hind quarters were large and full of wonderful tasty meat, separating and de-boning went quickly, a couple of roasts and then the rest went to steaks with  the majority of the trimmings we made either stew or stir

fry meat from. We actually only had about five pounds of burger meat to grind when we were done. When it was all finished we had 43 lbs of de-boned venison in the freezer, we lost a fair bit from the left side: neck meat, front shoulder and brisket were all affected by the blood shot meat. Not sure how to estimate what the lose would be but we were happy with what we got from this doe.

TERMINAL BALLISTICS - The retired ammo techs nerdy analysis of what was good and bad.

The bullet - Nosler Combined Technoligies Ballistic Silvertip, 130 grain, .277" (270 cal)

The rifle - Savage Model 11 hunter blued chambered in 270 WSM, scoped with a Vortex Diamondback 4 X 12 X 40. The rifle is very accurate, functioning flawlessly during all load development and hunting. The scope is amazing, crystal clear and sharp. The bullets are very accurate, during load testing I found 4 loads that were all sub moa, ranging from 0.4" - 0.8' at 100 yds. The load I choose was not the fastest pushing the bullet at an estimated 3100* fps at the muzzle but it was the most accurate with consistent groups at less than 1/2 inch.
* Nosler's listed max for the bullet is 3200 fps

The question would be then what happens when you shoot a mature whitetail or larger animal with a bullet of this type...if you have read this far you have a fair understanding of what I experienced but I am going to detail it more in depth here.

I shot this doe at 30 yds and I was approximately 12 feet higher than her when I shot. The result was a bullet impacting a mature whitetail doe with a live weight in the 140 lb range according to the measurement charts.

The deer took three jumps, collapsing on the third jump after I shot it, sliding down the hill. I field dressed it right away. It was home and hung in the garage and temp controlled for the next week.

Point of Impact - the POI was the back edge of the left front shoulder into a rib and angling straight through out the offside between two ribs. Sounds pretty damn good at this point right?

You can see in the following picture the entrance through the the shoulder and ribs and the amount of blood shot meat.

The exit hole was barely larger than the entrance hole in the hide, allowed very little bleeding as would relate to tracking but that was not a requirement.

The lung cavity was completely full of blood wherever the organs permitted it to accumulate.

Note the exit hole in the next two pictures:

So you ask what is the hole in the top of the rib cage in that last picture - as near as I can figure it is from this

This picture shows where the bullet hit the rib - the rib then causing a hole in the far top side of the lung and through the meat into the hide and there were a bunch of pin holes through the hide. The next picture shows a better picture of where the rib material (?) created a secondary exit wound. The other possibility is there was separation of the bullets jacket and core, however I found nothing that would indicate this was the case. You can also see in the left edge where the primary exit hole was as well.

So to summarize my experience with this bullet in this calibre - very accurate, very deadly, very destructive if bone is encountered. I will not however be hunting with this combination again - not because I dislike the calibre, I liked the calibre and rifle very much, but it is not my nature to keep many rifles around for very long and this one has already headed to a nice gentleman in Southern ON in trade for semi-auto shotgun I was lusting for...a nearly brand new Remington 11-87 super magnum turkey model...

I have a bunch of these bullets for our 243's and have not decided if I am going to load them or swap them for something I trust to not destroy as much meat.

Top bullets in my humble opinion are
Nosler Partition
Barnes TTSX
Very seldom given enough patience and smokeless powders can one not find an accurate load. The rifle occasionally needs tinkering, bedding, pressure point relief etc but that is beyond the scope of today's blog.The question then becomes as has been argued many times light and fast or big and slow (everything relative of course).

That will become the discussion for another blog post
Geoff