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Weird Experience With My .308

2068 Views 15 Replies 12 Participants Last post by  Bird Dog II, 
Davers
Well, yesterday Nov. 13th was our opening day for Rifle Season for Deer. Got out to my stand early & was situated at he edge of my back field. Took my Browning A-Bolt in .308 and factory 150 grain Silvertip (the old style) a friend gave me a couple of years ago. I think he bought the ammo back in the late 1990's. Anyway, a nice Buck shows up at the wood's edge trailing a Doe, about 150 yards away from me. He stopped allowing me to get off a shot which I had my crosshairs square on his Lung/Heart area & I fired. The Buck went down, but then got up and sneaked quickly off I fired again but missed. Got down and walked over to where I hit him but saw very little blood, just a few drops, so I started looking for him which I found him in a very tough spot fillled with vines, small pines & Blackberry briers. Got him out, with the help of a neighbor, who was hunting nearby. The Buck traveled about 100 yards into the brush area. When I got him situated to field dress him I noticed the exit bullet hole was only slightly larger than the entrance hole, again in the Lung/heart area. I though this was strange as I've used silvertips in my .270 and the exit hole was much larger than the entrance.:confused: Even on a 170 grain .30-30 silvertip bullet. Just wondering if the 150 grain Silvertip bullet Winchester used in this lot of factory ammo was 150 grain bullets intended for the .30-06 or .300 Win Mag.:confused: I know for a fact that a .308 will kill a Deer at 150 yards and my Browning A-bolt is very accurate, as the bullet hole was just where I placed it. The 150 grain S.T. seemed to act like a FMJ bullet on that particular Buck. What do you guys think what happened??:confused: This is the longest shot I have taken with a .308 as most of my shots are < 100 yards.
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magnumitis
Without heavy bone contact, it's not at all uncommon for a whitetail to make the 100 yard mark following a heart/lung hit.

Also, if there was a lack of heavy bone contact, that could explain the small exit hole. What did the contents of the chest cavity look like??

It doesn't sound like you really had too much of a bullet "failure". Just one of them things. I know from much firsthand experience that the .308 Win and the old Winchester Silvertip (we used 180's) is one of the finest whitetail combo's that ever existed.
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magnumitis
Davers said:
I was wondering if I were to use Silvertips, made for the .30-30, might allow for more expansion. I got over 200 of those type bullets. Then I could just use my reloaded ammo or Winchester 150 grain Power Points.
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Wouldn't do that unless you are going to load them down to .30-30 velocities. The flat-nosed .30-30 ST's are sdesigned to run about 500 fps slower than the .308's and with all that nose surface they will surely come apart more violently than you want them to. I tried the 150 gr. ST'sfor the .308/.30-06 in a .300 Win Mag once. Again.....running 400-500 fps faster than designed to do. A good bit on the fragile side for reliable performance.
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