first buck was killed on public land. national forest, wilderness area, over 3 miles in from the road at 4000' elevation. Not a big buck, but a feat to accomplish all the same. Been wanting to hunt up there for years and finally went for it. About killed me packing this thing out so I'm glad he didn't weigh one pound more. Hopefully my resulting injuries will heal. I guess I'm not 25 any more.
Shot him with my 1952 Savage 99 in 300 savage using factory remington 150 gr. core lokts. Bullet hit and smashed the upper leg bone, went through the heart and then through the opposite shoulder and stopped under the skin. When I dressed him out I was pulling out finger sized bone fragments out of the chest cavity. That front leg/shoulder was obliterated.
Second deer was on private land. Wanted one more deer for the freezer and an adult doe finally obliged 10 minutes before final shooting light on the last Friday of season.
Shot her with my 1952 Savage 99 in 250-3000 savage using handloaded 87 gr. speer hot core over 3031 powder. I was a little nervous about deer hunting with this rifle because I'm not used to using such tiny bullets and was worried about lack of penetration. However the bullet passed straight through her and made a bigger hole going out than going in. All my other guns start at 30 cal and go up, so I'm not used to seeing such a tiny .25 cal hole. It worked well. Did a ton of damage in the chest cavity. I was in a rush to dress her out as it was dark, and thankfully had help coming to drag, so I didn't have time to inspect, but did notice that the liver was tore up pretty bad because I was hoping to keep the liver to eat, but it was a mess so I ditched it.
So, in terms of guns, this season ended up being pretty cool as I got one deer each with my pair of 99s. I love these guns and love the old weaver scopes on them (2.5x on the 300 and 3x on the 250). I'm probably going to post a new topic soon to discuss options for levergun scopes for some of my other rifles.
