Hunting

Opening day for rifle (whitetail) was a success for us. Took my two boys out to a new farm we haven’t hunted before. After seeing lots of does and activity all morning, we decided to be patient on the first day rather than stacking up the does and putting on the pressure right away lol. It payed off. With about 30 minutes of light left, this old 11pt buck came walking out of the woods headed our direction. My youngest son was hitting the grunt calls hard right before that, and I’m sure it’s what got him to leave the does and come check it out. We estimate he’s at least 9 years old by his tooth wear. Left antler base measures 7” in circumference and the right measures 7.5” .

The shot ended up being right at 200 yards after GPS measuring.I originally figured around 185. The impact velocity would have been around 2550fps with my load of the 135gr Apex Outdoors Afterburner I’ve been testing out since last year. I had to wait another year to test it on a buck.

Like I said, he was initially headed right for us, but the group of does he had been with were several hundred yards to his right. As I was getting on him for the shot, he turned to look back at the does and when I shot him in the chest, his chest rotated just a bit to the right as well.

The bullet entered on the left side of his chest, took out most of the left lung and the front lobe of his right lung, missing his heart and all other organs. The shank of the bullet then took out 2-3 ribs on his right side and then slid down the fat under his hide and ended up coming to a stop down near his belly. This was by far the fattest deer I’ve ever shot and butchered. I’m talking an inch thick fat on his back alone. His heart and all organs minus his lungs and liver were covered in fat as well.

So with the angle the bullet took, it was just perfect for it to encounter all that fat under the hide and between his ribs and allow it to stop without exiting. Normally I would anticipate an exit pretty much every time with this type of bullet except maybe a Texas heart shot.

Since my youngest son helped call him in, and it was the first deer kill he’s been there for, he wanted to be the one to pose with it. He also thinks it’s going in his room lol. We’ll see about that .

So anyway, the Afterburner definitely worked as advertised. It shedded its petals and dumped a ton of energy in doing so, by losing both mass and momentum at a very sudden and deliberately designed moment, and also sent a a ton of force into the brachial plexus of nerves, shutting down his central nervous system. He did a backflip on impact and dropped as a result, and with his lungs taken out but his heart still able to pump, he bled out rapidly and never stood a chance of recovering.

So far this bullet has killed three deer for me and has performed very reliable to its design and the deaths have been very quick and clean and amount of wounding has been quite satisfactory and more than I’ve seen with many other copper bullets I’ve used. I’d still like to see how it does at impact velocities 2200fps and below though. That’s yet to come.