MSalyards, here is a write up of the hunt for you as well as some autopsy photos:
I purchased the bison hunt from a SCI Banquet for a fantastic deal, it was a typical silent auction where no one had bid on the hunt so I put the minimum bid down and ended up winning it.
The hunt was conducted on a 100,000 plus acre ranch south of Santa Fe, New Mexico (not one of Ted Turners ranches). The ranch owner had stocked the ranch with bison about 20 years before I hunted and most of the bison on the ranch had been born and lived there, their entire life.
In the months before the hunt I was trying to figure out what bullet I should use and I first went with bullets that I was casting. At the time I was doing quite a bit of centerfire cast bullet metallic silhouette shooting and thought I would try one of those. For my 45-70 caliber rifle, my bullets weighed out right at 405 g and I was using 45.0 g of Varget behind them.
For a practice animal I picked up a cow elk tag in New Mexico for an early December hunt (the bison hunt was in February) so I took off after a cowc with my cast bullets.
My opportunity for a cow elk came at 150 yards and I shot her off my shooting sticks while seated on the ground and hit her directly behind the shoulder. At the sound of the shot she dropped straight down never taking a step.
Upon skinning her out, the bullet had entered behind the shoulder striking the inside of the shoulder on the far side then turned 90 degrees tumbling through her neck and exiting out of the top of her neck. It appeared that the bullet never mushroomed. In retrospect I am sure it was way too hard. That made sense as I typically added linotype to my wheel weight mix of lead to make the bullets harder for silhouette shooting so they did not lead up the barrel so bad.
During my load work up during the summer I had also found that the 300 grain, Nosler Partition (discontinued but I had a bunch of them) also shot very well out of my rifle behind 53.0 g of RL-7. So I decided to use this bullet and load for the bison hunt and not chance a clear pass thru with no mushrooming of the bullet.
On the first day of the bison hunt I almost reconsidered my choice of weapons. The bison that we found were not like the ones you see on tv that just stand around in big herds. They were in 2ās and 3ās and as soon as they saw you they took off for the horizon!
We were finally able to find a good bull that we were able to stalk up to 120 yards on. Once again using shooting sticks while shooting off my butt I fired and struck the bull behind the shoulder and off he ran. He stopped at about 200 yards and we could tell he was done for but I went ahead and fired off another shot, this one also hitting him behind the shoulder. He then came running back toward us stopping at about 100 yards when I shot him a 3rd time putting him down for good.
Two bullets (we think the first shot from the side it entered on and the third) were clean pass thruās. The bullet from the second shot was lodged against the hide on the far side. All three shots had gone through the lungs.
Best part case when we went back and got a four wheel drive tractor for the recovery! No packing! I have packed a lot of elk and a couple of moose in my day but a bison is HUGE and I was very grateful that we did not have to cut him up to carry him out!
I want a .45-90, 34ā Barrel, The āLong Range Expressā Has a Pistol Grip
