The Optimal Whitetail Load

How do you know if you have an optimized whitetail load? That question is simple to answer: take it out in the woods, point it at deer and touch it off. If, in the next few seconds, you transform a graceful, warm, vital deer into a slowly cooling pile of venison, I think it is safe to conclude that you have an optimal load.

Okay, I'm a smart-a$$.

There is something I have noticed as I ever so slowly mature as a deer hunter and a reloader. There are an infinite number of mental bunny holes and most of them lead eventually to a dead deer.

Optimizing for velocity, force, sectional density, Taylor KO, all seem to lead to successful whitetail hunting. About the only projects I've tried that have not panned out are a hot 44 Mag pistol load for deer that is not too loud, and a good .223 Rem whitetail load that doesn't keyhole out of my Mini 14. All the others have been winners.

I am forced to conclude that whitetail are not that hard to kill, and they represent one of the easiest challenges for the reloading hunter.

1) Any cartridge built for human-sized game will take down a whitetail. With all the effort to find the optimal military cartridge expended over the last few hundred years, it only remains to find one you like and put some soft-point bullets on it.

2) A deer has a kill zone about as big as a pie-plate. If you can regularly hit a pie plate given a specific stance and weapon system and target distance, you will probably have a deer.

3) Reloading safety dictates that you start with a load about 10% off the maximum and work up to the optimum. With whitetail, you don't have to go much past that 10%-off-max load to have a dandy, accurate, deadly, cheap load. All my current deer loads are 5-8% off-max.

4) You can use premium bullets all you want if it makes you feel better about your loads. The deer will not mind. However, Corelokts and Powerpoints do just fine too, if you're optimizing for cost.

Whenever I was working with my Dad, he used to say " If it hurts, you're probably doing it wrong." That was a great piece of truth. It is true for spade shovels, claw hammers, and a bunch of other things. It is especially true with whitetail deer loads. If you find your shoulder hurting, you've got too much recoil for a whitetail load. If your wallet is aching, you're paying too much for your ammunition.

35 Rem, 444 Marlin, 308, 270? Yes, one of those will do quite nicely. My personal favs right now are are 308 loaded to 300 Savage levels and 30-06. If you think '06 works great at 200 yards, you should see what it does at 25!