I had a little Savage 99 300 Sav that someone whacked the barrel to 16 1/4". It was about a deer killing machine. I picked it up at a gunshow, the guy was packing it around trying to trade it off, I gave him a $100 for it. It loved 180gr RN's.
I flew back to WI to hunt with my dad and BinL, they all had their favorite stands. I had never hunted this area with them before so I opted to wait for daylight and wander in looking for what ever. I found a little knob overlooking a big brushy bowl, the knob had a bunch of beds on it so I thought I'd rest a bit and watch, a freezer buck came out of the bowl and walked right up to the knob, killed him at 8 feet. I drug him back to the truck.
I still had two doe tags so I headed down to the creek bottom and picked up a big track and started to work it out, well the deer kept going through black spruce thickets(crawl on your knees stuff) and then circling around the down wind side and going around behind me. The third time the deer tried that I started into the thicket and then backed out and circled down wind and waited. I kill a big doe at 20 feet walking straight at me watching and sniffing toward the thicket. This one was a fairly long drag and It was about 11 o'clock by the time I got to the truck.
I thought I'd hunt my way back to my dad and have a sandwich with him. Still hunting through the woods I spotted 4 deer in some thick stuff and picked the biggest doe and dropped her at about 70 yards, the other three just stood there, I knew dad had a couple doe tags but didn't know if he had filled them so let them pass. I hung the deer in a tree and went and had lunch with dad, good thing I let them pass dad had his two bonus tags on the ground and was still waiting on a buck. We spent the afternoon dragging deer.
That was 25 yrs ago and I gave the little Savage to my nephew and he's still killing deer with it.