Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Accubond or Berger VLD

I shot a mule deer twice last year broadside behind the shoulder, perfect hit, and then a follow-up through the neck as he was still on his feet and all I had to shoot at.

Neither exited at 525 yards from a .280 Ackley....

I gave them two years of shooting stuff, not once did they impress me in any way.

Bullets are funny things, all bullets seem to do wonky stuff at some point but we all have to follow what we've seen and done...

My pals do get outside more than a little,and they do shoot....one is a special forces combat Marine with multiple Afghan tours. My goodness........ how we love to jump to conclusions about people and bullets around here. Like they don't get outside or shoot if they aren't using Bergers.......please. We're smarter than that I thought.

If you think you can draw any "conclusions"about bullets from a handful of animals, you're mistaken......takes a whole bunch more than that.

Greg what AB? 140? What did it do the first shot? If it started out about 3100 fps from a 280 AI it might have just run out of poop for good results at 500 plus yards. (?)


Here's a 140 AB (left) recovered from a mule deer buck that hog dressed #230 pounds,into the the shoulder at 200 yds, The chest was pulped; he went maybe 30 feet. 7 Rem Mag at 3250 fps. Recovered weight is 59 gr.

Bullets are funny things, all bullets seem to do wonky stuff at some point but we all have to follow what we've seen and done...

Bullets are funny things, all bullets seem to do wonky stuff at some point but we all have to follow what we've seen and done...

Mule deer
To reply to you.
You are correct in one thing....I have NOT shot anything with them.

I HAVE been with 21 hunters so far that have shot deer, antelope and elk with them, and I have talked 4 others that have told me there stories, 3 from just this season.
100% failure of the bullets 100% of the time, in real world experience. So there is no need to be insulting.
I am a gunsmith and a hunter and a former guide. I do not "test' bullets anymore in the lab. I only report what I have seen, and I have see this 21 time with my own eyes.

How many more times do you think I should give them?

I am also the former CEO of Cast Performance Bullet Company and when I was at the helm of that company (and also when I was their foreman for years before) I not only tested what we made, but I tested everything I could get from all our competitors too, so I could speak with some authority on the subject. We specialized mostly in high performance handgun bullets, but we tested rifles bullets too, and not just a few. These tests went on for about 7 years.

No one is giving me products to endorse, and no one is paying me for 'testing' so I report what I actually see. No one is going to withhold payment from me if I tell what I have seen either.

Some of this may be a matter of definitions.

Some men may disagree with my definitions. I am OK with that.

I don't have a dog in the fight. I could not care less what you or anyone else uses to kill game. I was amused in fact, when that guy in Canada used a spear. Good for him!

But I define any bullet that sheds its core as a failure if it does so in less then 18" of penetration. I define any bullet that sheds its core that is marketed as a suitable projectile for any game that can be dangerous to be a super failure.

I define any bullet, marketed for game over 50 pounds, that weight less than 30% of it's unfired weight after it stops as a failure.

These are bullet failures, not killing failures. Not even necessarily hunting failures. I am not here to insult anyone.


To say that 16 oz is a pound is a fact.

To say that a cord of wood is a stack 4'X4'X8' is a fact.

If someone comes up with a container of dirt that weight 12 oz and I say it's NOT a pound, or someone tried to sell a firewood stack of 4' X 3" X 7' it's not an insult to say it's fire wood, but it's NOT a cord of fire wood.

If I say that bullets that fragment and weight 30% or less of their unfired weight are not "good" hunting bullets someone may take issue with what I consider "good." I am OK with that.

But when I compare their performance to what I have seen over 52 years of hunting and guiding from good hunting bullets, it's going to be very hard to convince me that they are "good".

If you, and even the majority of the hunters out there think that a bullet fragmenting down to 20% of it's unfired weight is not a failure, it's OK with me. I am not demanding you stop using them.

I just won't use them.

Funny thing though, of all the 21 kills I have seen on REAL animals, none of those shooters will use then again either.

Bob, you should shoot some critters with VLDs impacting at 2100 and below sometime. Wound channels are still suberb...

I figured that was their strong suit.