Biggest buck I’ve ever seen

[LVJ76]

Now that is a big old buck. Congrats on a great trophy!

 

[Trogon]

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

Thank you for your reply. I live in Ohio (where this cartridge is legal for deer) but don't know anyone using it. 450 Bushmaster is popular. But I'm thinking this would be an interesting round for feral hogs down South, besides for whitetail here.

 

[Capt RB]

Beautiful buck! Thanks for sharing.
I started wearing my electronic earpro for hunting 5 years ago wish I started out that way. I track and now @57 I can hear them get out of their bed when I'm close plus I get the protection I need. They go on at the truck and come off after I have an animal on the ground or back to the truck. Something you should look into

 

[Rifleman97]

Thank you for your reply. I live in Ohio (where this cartridge is legal for deer) but don't know anyone using it. 450 Bushmaster is popular. But I'm thinking this would be an interesting round for feral hogs down South, besides for whitetail here.

It doesn't use a whole lot of powder, all the deer that were shot with it dropped within 30 yards of being hit, recoil of a 243 or less, it's a wonderful round. For hogs I'd want something with a big magazine so I wouldn't go xpr unless you know how to make 3D models and can 3D print your own magazine. I'd look into one of the ranch rifle type bolts or AR for that use case

 

[Rifleman97]

Beautiful buck! Thanks for sharing.
I started wearing my electronic earpro for hunting 5 years ago wish I started out that way. I track and now @57 I can hear them get out of their bed when I'm close plus I get the protection I need. They go on at the truck and come off after I have an animal on the ground or back to the truck. Something you should look into

I am a musician so I take very good care of my ears, but my electric ear muffs are broken (found out last week when doing a quick load development that the mic no longer works) and I couldn't find any in time for season unfortunately. They'll be getting replaced soon. This is the first time I've heard this gun without protection today, the 12 guage ear ringing days were from when I was a kid before electronic ear muffs were even remotely affordable

 

[Rifleman97]

I also want to thank @jeepnsammys for trading me this Athlon 1-6 scope a few years ago, I have taken 5 deer with that scope now, it's the perfect deer scope for Iowa, and it has taken many a rabbit and squirrel when I had it mounted to my custom 10/22. But I think this scope has found it's permanent home atop this 350 legend. It's like it can't miss. What a combo

 

[ButterBean]

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

First let me show you the cams
View attachment 317022
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
View attachment 317023
Words could not describe the feeling when I saw how big that deer was in person
View attachment 317025
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

Congrats, That's a freaking Brute

 

[Warrior27]

Big ole brute, congrats!!!

 

[KMLampson]

Awesome, way cool!

 

[OG10]

That is an awsome buck, congratulations.

 

[Greyfox]

Cool buck Congratulations!!!

 

[Rifleman97]

The second pic shows some of the tines that can't be seen in the other photos. Crazy to see that there's 3 tines that have broken off, so it would've been scored even higher if it didn't break them. But as we saw with the trail cam, he was one battle worn old brute. Once in a lifetime sized whitetail, and on PUBLIC land.

 

[Darryle]

That old man has a lot of character!

Congrats!

Don't kid yourself or concern yourself about broken tines, that is one helluva buck!

Now, you can concentrate on trying to find a better one, it will be hard to best!

 

[fnlights]

Great buck, congrats!