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

The accubombs I"ve never tried, I kept hearing them called this. Plus added to old ballistic tips were horrible at game wasting meat.... I just can't bring myself to try them.

Hearsay is a poor substitute for actual experience.

You'll never see an "accubomb" do this.....

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or this......

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Never seen a modern era ballistic tip do that either FWIW.

JG,

How about a 130 Accubomb out of a pedestrian 270 at 200 yards. Here's the entrance:



And a closer up:

Marty,
Broadside or raking shot?
Sumpin's not right there.

Hearsay is a poor substitute for actual experience.

You'll never see an "accubomb" do this.....

[img:left][/img]


or this......

[img:left][/img]



Never seen a modern era ballistic tip do that either FWIW.

Always easy to tell who actually shoots...

This was the last critter I shot with an Accubond, large mule deer at 140 yards.

Entrance side:


Didn't even make it to the off shoulder. Not sure what happened but that was pretty much all I needed to see.

Tanner

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.

Had my first grizly client with bergers this year. Five rounds into a grizz from a 338 rum. Didn't break a single bone but blew up the insides of that bear. We found flakes of metal all over in that thing! I'd never use those bullets after seeing that.
That being said accubond....not to much better from what I've seen.

Had my first grizly client with bergers this year. Five rounds into a grizz from a 338 rum. Didn't break a single bone but blew up the insides of that bear. We found flakes of metal all over in that thing! I'd never use those bullets after seeing that.
That being said accubond....not to much better from what I've seen.

I would think blowing up the insides would be a good thing.

Shot placement? Can you elaborate? I would think blowing up the insides would be a good thing.

powderburner,

Gee, I killed a good-sized grizzly a few years ago with AccuBonds, specifically the 250-grain 9.3mm. Put the first one along the rear crease of the left shoulder so it would exit the right shoulder, which it did. The bear then turned and, after biting at the entrance wound, started running, angling away. A second AccuBond entered the right rear of the ribcage, ending up under the hide of the neck on the opposite side. Maybe 4-5 seconds elapsed between the first shot and the bear dropping dead. The second bullet retained over 80% of its weight.

I'm going to have a HARD time learning to shoot a 2nd shot when moving to AK I can see it now...

At least I'm going to have to train myself to rack the bolt anyway... Tough to do when you have been shooting suppressed and keep the surroundings as quiet as you can while harvesting/watching deer.

LOL.

Pretty significant difference between hunting in Alaska and harvesting in Texas. No constructed blinds or rests up there.

What % of Texans hunt that way would you guess AlaskaCub?

I rarely go outside but when I do I shoot Accubonds.....


140's out of 270's to be exact. Work great on deer, no experience on elk but imagine they'd be just fine.

I avoid most outdoorsy stuff too, but found I could shoot deer and elk from the house with Accubonds. Beats the hell outta being outside anyway...

You would "think"that,assuming the first shot actually made it to the vitals and did a lot of damage...

Even then one shot kills on grizzly bears are not exactly common.

Since keeping a grizzly firmly in place usually involves busting up some bone, if the first bullet failed to get past the bone to the vitals, what you have is an adrenalin charged, fully pissed off bear that suddenly gets very tough and is bouncing around like a huge,furry ball, making "bullet placement" problematic. It's ALL down hill if the first shot does not do its job.

Shooting a grizzly is distinctly unlike surgically assassinating harmless elk in open meadows and then following up with impunity.

I can't begin to guess a % statewide but it's been that way on every deer lease I've hunted on. I've yet to hunt a lease that anyone didn't hunt that way. So in my experience it's been 100%

Raider I know where you hunt it isn't like typical Texas WT hunting, much bigger and open country and different tactics. Not lumping far West Texas into it.

Easy rost...I simply meant that for most deer hunters in Texas the actual hunting is more like harvesting than hunting. Guys "generally" sit in a blind and stare at feeders, food plots, crops, corned roads, etc. They see lots of deer and can pick and choose when they want to take a buck or doe pretty much at will. The marksman part of it is also easily aided by carpeted or padded window sills,etc. providing reliable rests. Seldom is a 2nd shot required when shooting the deer down here unless one simply screws up. Alaska is going to make you work for it, and when the time comes to put an animal down, one wants to make sure the animal is in fact down. Either because it's going to get away or it's going to bite and claw the [bleep] out of you when you go looking for it.

I avoid most outdoorsy stuff too, but found I could shoot deer and elk from the house with Accubonds. Beats the hell outta being outside anyway...

I know that you dont like the performance of Bergers, however VLD's have no problem getting through bone, especially bear. I know a couple of guys who have killed grizzlies/brown bears with Bergers as well as with Partitions, TSX, and Accubonds. They prefer the Bergers....