First 10mm kill

[spaniel]

Indiana legalized the 10mm for hunting for the first time this year.  I only learned a week before the season, so I didn't have any 200gr pills on hand.  So the 180gr XTPs would have to do as I carried my Kimber Eclipse as my backup weapon.

Opening day was the first hunting experience for my younger daughter (age 6).  Her older sister went last year but declined this year, too early to get up apparently.  It was cold, she had a tough time sitting, so asked to walk the ditch like we did the prior year when her sister got to watch me get a nice 8pt and a doe in 15 minutes.

The landowner had restricted us to one deer as the population appeared lower, and being opening day, I wanted a nice buck.  We saw one doe enter the ditch from the nearby creek and jumped it, but I let it go.  We walked a bit further, then doing a 360 check and I saw a buck approaching behind us across the open field, following doe scent on the ground.  I got her to get down and set up with the 243AI (also just legalized this year) on the bipod.  He was moving too rapidly at 320 yards.  After a couple minutes of bleating like a goat caught in an electric fence I was practically yelling at the deer, and it finally locked up and took notice.  Thinking it was still, he held several seconds, I took the shot.  But as the trigger broke I saw the deer start to move..too late to stop the bullet.  He moved, and I hit him in the back leg.  Not the way I wanted this to go.

He ran into the ditch and I tried to cross but it was full of water, so I cam back out and asked my daughter if she had seen him and she said no.  He busted out across the field, and I took two running shots known he was already hit.  Unfortunately one of these took an antler off the 6pt.  He crossed almost the whole 400yds towards a wooded creek, then laid down.  I could not shoot into the creek as the landowner was hunting somewhere in there, so I began to circle around for an allowable angle.  Just as I got to it with a 150yd shot, the buck got up and ran into the trees.

My daughter caught up and had a better idea where he went into the trees, so we went 50 yards south to make sure we cut him off from where I thought the landowner was.  I slung the rifle and pulled out the Kimber and told my daughter to stay close and quiet as we stalked through young, thick oaks.  We went about 50 yards and sure enough, he was bedded and alert right in front of us.  I drew a bead with the Kimber and put a double tap into his chest at about 25 yards a second apart, putting him down.  Running up, I put an insurance shot through the heart point blank.

I don't have the picks loaded yet, but both of the first two boiler room 10mm shots were recovered under the offside hide.  One was a perfect mushroom with great retention, the other the jacket only.  Not as dramatic of damage as I've seen with a 44Mag, but definitely superior to prior experience with a 40SW.  Not that it's legal perhaps I'll get a 6" longslide....

Smallest buck I've shot in years, but the girl was about frozen and done and I wanted to make it a special day for her, and that it was.

[sqlbullet]

I didn't realize Indiana had gone rifle.  I grew up in Parke County, and it was shotgun/muzzle loader only.

Interesting that they only allow 6mm and 30 caliber.  I wonder what rationale drove that decision.

[BKS]

Awesome. I killed my first deer with a handgun this morning, a small doe. Glock. 40 MOS

[nickE10mm]

Nice!!

[spaniel]

  I wonder what rationale drove that decision.

The DNR kept declining, so someone had pull in the legislature and got it passed at that level.  As written, the law didn't even make sense, listing legal "calibers", which were an attempt at specific chamberings, but most of which were not even real.

So the DNR threw up their hands and legalized everything in the calibers that matched up.  Which left things like 6.5mm, 270, and 7mm illegal, which makes absolutely no sense.