Thanks.
I spent some years as a QA Manager. In Quality Assurance you are constantly faced with anecdotal problems.
What impresses me in this thread is nearly every situation is unique. Every failure ends up being a one-off. Furthermore, one of the key factors, speed, is related to a factor that hunters are historically inaccurate in estimating: distance. I can't count the number of times I've heard somebody claim to have nailed a buck at 300 yards with a 30-30 offhand.
Do some of these bullet failures come from inadequate muzzle velocity? I'd say you'd have to rule out faulty distance estimation first.
On the other hand. . .
I worked in a solder factory for about a decade. A lot of the issues encountered there would be similar to bullet production. What I can tell you from that experience is the finished product can have a wide variation in its properties depending on how the material was handled. We'd make a batch of brazing rod, and if things were not done just right, a semi-ductile rod of alloy could come out so brittle it would shatter when dropped to the floor. We were known for our high quality, but I'll tell you that keeping the product in spec was a bear, and we were selling it by the 10s of thousands of pounds. I did not work in QA at that plant, but I respected QA's work.
Based on that experience, it would not surprise me if one welding stick in a thousand came out queer in some manner, just as I would not be surprised if 1 bullet per million or even 1 bullet in 10 thousand came out bad. QA can catch a bad batch, but failure rates that low are going to be hard to spot.
I am leaving now for a couple days' sabbatical to test whether a .54 caliber dead-soft lead bullet cast on my own patio is sufficient to put down a KY whitetail. It may be while before I get back here.
