Biggest buck I’ve ever seen

[Rifleman97]

Public land in Iowa, 125 yard shot, 350 legend with hornady ftx bullets

First let me show you the cams

Looked huge but couldn't count points from the low quality pic.
First 45 minutes of deer season and I got a great shot on him. Shot once and saw him stumble hard, but kept running. Shot again and I completely missed lol but after 30-40 yards running he took a hard fall and never got back up.
Here he is

Words could not describe the feeling when I saw how big that deer was in person

Realizing you can't see all the points in the picture lol, there's some small points that curve backwards and stick out from the back of the antler and this angle doesn't show them. 20 points total, 17 that are longer than 1 inch and not broken off (the 3 other points were small and chipped off from fighting I think)

Biggest deer I've ever seen in person, took 3 people to lift it into the side by side after it was gutted.

Our group had 7 tags, and we got 7 deer by 9 am first day. 4 bucks and 3 does. 17 point, 7 point, 6 point, and 5 point, and one of the does was bigger bodied than the 5 point.

Plenty of meat! If only I owned a hanging scale to figure out just how heavy this monster is

 

[jonthomps]

Awesome buck! Congrats!

 

[VALKYRIETP]

That's FANTASTIC!!
T.P.

 

[jjmp]

yes indeed cheers & Congratulations!!!

 

[JohnnieB]

Woohoo!!!!

Awesome Buck!!

 

[Trogon]

Incredible buck, congratulations!!!

 

[Rifleman97]

Thanks for the congrats guys, really was a perfect day. I've never in my life scored an animal before, but this one has such a cool rack I kind of want to find out how many points it is, but I don't know how. Need to do some googling haha

 

[Slick8]

Amazing deer, congrats to you and your group. Love a good opening day heavily loaded meat pole.

 

[Rifleman97]

Amazing deer, congrats to you and your group. Love a good opening day heavily loaded meat pole.

It was a great morning. 6 people, 7 tags, I shot 2, my brother shot 3, his son shot 1, and our friend got another. I gave my extra doe to the friend since his family had only got 1 and my family had 6. Freezers going to be full full full!

 

[CB284]

Wow congrats!

 

[Beluebow]

That's a steak!!! Congrats!

 

[Trogon]

@Rifleman97 how do you like your rifle and the 350 Legend? Interested in your opinion. I have considered this cartridge but likely in a AR vs bolt action.

 

[Muddyboots]

Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

 

[Rifleman97]

@Rifleman97 how do you like your rifle and the 350 Legend? Interested in your opinion. I have considered this cartridge but likely in a AR vs bolt action.

My nephew uses an AR version, jams pretty often. My brother and I both have bolt guns, I've got a Winchester XPR and he's got a ruger something or other bolt 350. His ruger had 2 light firing pin strikes this morning, one causing him to lose his shot at a 10 point. I haven't had a single issue with my xpr itself, but I had a couple misfires due to bad primers at -20° last winter (when I was testing specifically for that, not hunting). I finally got all the stuff to start hand loading for 350 2 weeks ago and I use small magnum rifle primers instead of small rifle, and they have never misfired even when I put the rounds in the deep freezer just for testing for that.

I LOVE my XPR. 350 legend is a great round too but I think it needs small magnum primers to be reliable in extreme cold. My brothers ruger I think needs a firing pin spring adjustment since it's not the first light primer strike he's had. That's not a 350 issue though, more of a ruger quality control issue.

I imagine in the AR form it would be more reliable with handloads since you can load them a tad hotter than factory ammo to be more reliable, and more consistent round to round if you load for precision like I do.


The load I used is 25.9 grains of Lil Gun, small magnum rifle primer, hornady 165gr FTX, COAL is 2.260 (max SAAMI length) but I haven't played with the load very much yet, basically just developed one that shot a good enough group at 100 and told myself I wouldn't shoot any further than 150 because I don't have a clue what velocity it's running at. But at those ranges it's good enough it doesn't really matter.

My favorite part is the 350 is a lot quieter than a slug gun, as long as I'm wearing a hat that covers my ears, my ears don't ring after shooting like they did with shotgun slug hunting.

Let me know any other questions you have I'll do my best to answer