Okay so I'll give a little back story- I wasn't too hyped on using SMK's on my deer hunt, but not having the time to sight in with my buddy's gameking loads, I was left with the SMK's. I would have preferred some sort of controlled expansion round such as the gameking or partition.
Here are some pictures for you of the doe I took:
Location of the shot:
Exit wound:
Heart (difficult to really see):
Okay so I'm sure everyone can see this was a good kill shot, and why shouldn't it be at less than 100m? What I really wanted to point out are a in the exit wound and heart pictures.
As you can see, the exit wound is around 1" in diameter or so. This is the wound in the hide; once skinned, the devastation to the meat around the hole was much, much larger. It appeared as though there was about a 3" hole in the meat, and it was pulled out of the hide's approx. 1" hole. I failed in not taking a picture of the skinned exit wound... but at that point, neither my buddy or I had hands clean enough to handle my iPhone for pictures. So anyway, moral of this story is, just because it's a match bullet does not mean it will produce a .30 hole through and through. We had to trash about half of that front right quarter.
The heart- it's pretty tough to see in the picture since its sitting in a pile of other guts to include lungs, but the top half of it was absolutely destroyed. Looked like someone split the top of it in half, then beat the shit out of it with hammers for a while.
What you don't see is the massive blood trail and the short distance the deer went. First, after seeing the heart I was utterly shocked it went anywhere at all- but it certainly did explain the MASSIVE amount of blood it lost on it's short sprint. I was really shocked how heavy the blood trail was- if you told me someone came by with a garden hose and a tight spray nozzle, putting out nothing but blood... I would not have doubted you. It wasn't a mist here and there, or drops, or a trail that has lengths of a few feet without blood- it was a constant, HEAVY spray, drop and coating on everything in it's path.
So, are SMK's a good hunting bullet? This time it did the job exceedingly well. But at less than 100m, it's safe to assume it had almost every bit of it's 2600fps MV. Plus, at such short range and a full broad side target, it is a shot no one should miss a perfect vitals hit. What will it do at 500m with an angled shot? That I can't say.
My buddy had scouted this area and recommended the .308. Had I scouted it and taken a good look at what I could get for range (200m max), I would have used my AR with Hornady TAP 62gr soft point barrier rounds. .308 was far and beyond over-kill.
So ultimately, make your own assessment on the SMK hunting performance for distance, but for short range it is way more than capable.
Here are some pictures for you of the doe I took:
Location of the shot:
Exit wound:
Heart (difficult to really see):
Okay so I'm sure everyone can see this was a good kill shot, and why shouldn't it be at less than 100m? What I really wanted to point out are a in the exit wound and heart pictures.
As you can see, the exit wound is around 1" in diameter or so. This is the wound in the hide; once skinned, the devastation to the meat around the hole was much, much larger. It appeared as though there was about a 3" hole in the meat, and it was pulled out of the hide's approx. 1" hole. I failed in not taking a picture of the skinned exit wound... but at that point, neither my buddy or I had hands clean enough to handle my iPhone for pictures. So anyway, moral of this story is, just because it's a match bullet does not mean it will produce a .30 hole through and through. We had to trash about half of that front right quarter.
The heart- it's pretty tough to see in the picture since its sitting in a pile of other guts to include lungs, but the top half of it was absolutely destroyed. Looked like someone split the top of it in half, then beat the shit out of it with hammers for a while.
What you don't see is the massive blood trail and the short distance the deer went. First, after seeing the heart I was utterly shocked it went anywhere at all- but it certainly did explain the MASSIVE amount of blood it lost on it's short sprint. I was really shocked how heavy the blood trail was- if you told me someone came by with a garden hose and a tight spray nozzle, putting out nothing but blood... I would not have doubted you. It wasn't a mist here and there, or drops, or a trail that has lengths of a few feet without blood- it was a constant, HEAVY spray, drop and coating on everything in it's path.
So, are SMK's a good hunting bullet? This time it did the job exceedingly well. But at less than 100m, it's safe to assume it had almost every bit of it's 2600fps MV. Plus, at such short range and a full broad side target, it is a shot no one should miss a perfect vitals hit. What will it do at 500m with an angled shot? That I can't say.
My buddy had scouted this area and recommended the .308. Had I scouted it and taken a good look at what I could get for range (200m max), I would have used my AR with Hornady TAP 62gr soft point barrier rounds. .308 was far and beyond over-kill.
So ultimately, make your own assessment on the SMK hunting performance for distance, but for short range it is way more than capable.
