Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting The 300 Wby Mag for elk- is there anything better?

If retained velocity is as important as you claim, why don't you use higher B.C. bullets than the AB?

Because I am not sold on using paper thin jacketed target bullets on elk. Much prefer something like a BT which is a great compromise between BC and terminal performance.

In other word you value terminal performance over B.C.? That is the exact same reason I choose the NF, which have more than adequate B.C. for 99%-100% of my needs.

The flaw in your logic are there are bullets that offer both. Just not North Forks..

What part of "more than adequate for my needs" do you not understand.

Give it up. Geeze!

He uses what works for him and you use what works for you. Leave it at that.

That "more than adequate" resulted in a gut shot elk.

Excuse me while I go re-arrange my sock drawer.

Have at it.

Ive nothing but good things to say about 230-FS...it expands much less than other softs,
and as with your experiences, I also found it killed like lightning....even at 400 yd (+ complete penetration).
it repeatedly emphasised to me the importance of shot placement and reliable penetration.....rather than being irrationally
obsessed with larger & larger bore sizes & sometimes velocity.

The laws of physics don't alter, so theres no "perhaps"...FA either has the same, less, or more- effect on penetration(than weight retention)
iF a persons bullet testings was thorough enough and they also had the correct & accompanying mathematical modelling to compliment and
reinforce their physical findings (in the appropriate test media) it would make your view much more convincing.

Every long established and trusted finding in physics has proven but rather complex math formulas that support the physical findings/results.
but I rarely if ever, see people presenting such important supporting mathematical information when presenting their theories on how & why
various hunting bullets perform.

An example was a guy on AR who bizarrely claimed one brand of bullets were "non-Con"... that they supposedly were non -conventional/revolutionary
in the way they react in target, but he blatantly ignored the fundamental but vitally important fact in physics( or simply didn't know) ..that all hunting bullets
work on precisely the same "model in physics"..regardless of design, construction or materials....but he constantly tried to impress and convince people who
were non the wiser, of his highly flawed-erroneous claims & theories.

What a pile of horse [bleep]. Show me where anyone has accurately modeled the passage of a bullet through an animal.

Key words "accurately" and "animal." An accurate model would have to account for so many variables that the whole exercise would be dubious at best. Initial velocity, mass, the shape of the bullets themselves as they deform (which varies with not only make/model of bullet, but size within the same make/model), the variability in the medium, and so on. Think NF vs TSX and all the combinations of FA/mass/velocity with all the permutations of the medium and what part of the medium the bullet hits first (bone vs soft tissue), how that alters the shape of the bullet and the velocity, and what part of the animal the bullet is traveling through at any particular time (bone, lung, muscle, liver).

Better to just go shoot a bunch of bullets into animals and report your results.

I guess I would gently agree with this.

I understand our needs today to quantify everything bullets based on formulas and charts,but we seem to ignore a lot of stuff in the process, foremost being bullet construction as we talk "numbers".

I'm sure we can come close in uniform media predicting exactly what a bullet will always do .........but what happens after hit hits 3" of soggy or mud caked hide, then muscle, sinew,bone of varying density (like a brick wall).....and then gooey, soft stuff (vitals), and then back into the tougher going of more muscle and bone?

Trends will be apparent but I think wide expanding bullets chop big holes,even if they don't penetrate as far as smaller frontal areas in absolute terms. If they did not work well things like Swift Aframes would not be effective Cape Buffalo bullets.

I have seen some wide expanding bullets go farther than I thought they should.

Which brings it back to the question;during what part of the animals death did the bullet fail?

Starman,

Gee, thanks for your condescending and non-illuminating post.

All I've done is shoot various bullets into a lot of different testing media, some of which was capable of retaining the wound channel, and compared not only the channel but the depth of penetration with the diameter of the mushroom and the retained weight.

Often I've fired the same weight of bullet (or nearly so) at the same velocity, from the same rifle, so everything was as close to the same as possible--and many bullets that retained less weight penetrated at deeply, or even deeper, than bullets that retained more weight.

No doubt this could have been figured out with formulas, but one thing I've discovered about writing about firearms is most readers need to SEE something before they can grasp it. Which is why I've taken the time not only to shoot a bunch of test-media over the years, but have gone on a bunch of cull hunts to see how well test media results correlate to field use.

Thanks very much for suggesting I could have just as well stayed home and not wasted a bunch of bullets in actual testing, when fiddling with formulas could have saved me all that time, money and effort.

BWalker,

Concerning ballistic coefficent's role in hunting bullets, thought you might be interested in this pair of April 2016 posts from Coyote Hunter, edited to remove some junk:

April 17th--

Both Mike Brady, the original NF [North Fork] designer, and the current NF owners are totally unapologetic regarding the NF bullet shape. The NF bullets were never intended for long range use but rather to perform extremely well from the muzzle to ranges well past where most game is taken.

If retaining velocity is so important, why do you prefer AB [AccuBond] when there are bullets available that do a much better job at that? If B.C. is the primary consideration, AB bullets are clearly "poorly designed".


April 18th--My .338 is a 22” WM and it pushes a 225g AB to 2742fps with H100V. In 2013 I used it to take a cow at 487 yards.

I went with the 225g AB because of the extra energy at longer ranges….

John,

Congrats on still having the patience to read Coyote Hunter's posts. I gave up long ago because I couldn't keep reading the same 6 detailed paragraphs about his three rifles, loads, and CH logic in picking said rifles and loads.

I do enjoy the ones where he puts the wrong shell in the chamber and yanks the trigger, however.

I don't read the longer ones, especially the even longer follow-up posts where he attempts to explain a previous long post, but picked up on those two because they were shorter--and such an interesting illustration of...something.

Mule Deer,

As I read through Starman's post I thought, "Should I put this guy on ignore now or plod through one more of his physics class lectures?"

Ha ha. You just can't make this stuff up!

Ringman,

There's always that possibility!

I didn't even mention all the factors that COULDN'T be predicted by a formula, though some other people have mentioned a few, like the unpredictable variations in "media" that occurs when bullets hit animals.

Then there's the fact some bullets will blow off most of the frontal mushroom at higher impact velocities, and that not all bullets of the same make (whether Hornady Interlocks, Nosler Partitions, or Swift A-Frames) are all built exactly the same way in different calibers and weights. They're all tweaked a little for different intended (or expected) uses, whether in core hardness, jacket thickness, or whatever.

This why most major bullet companies I know of go through three stages when bringing new bullets to the marketplace. The first is designing the bullet at the factory in accordance with what they already know about expanding bullet design. Then there's testing them in various kinds of "indoor media," between changes in design. Finally there's going out and shooting a bunch of animals so they know what the bullets actually do Out There.

Many also further tweak bullets after more reports come in from the field, or manufacturing methods are changed for greater efficiency.

It would interesting to see what sorts of formulas would accurately predict penetration versus expansion in every situation. I'm sure the bullet companies would want to hear about it, because it would sure make such intensive and expensive "product development" obsolete.