Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns The Hollow Points Never Reached The Vitals

yes, the hundreds of thousands of cops riding around all day and night with those same semi autos are just dumb right. my duty glocks were carried in some of the [bleep] weather you can find. rain, snow, boat patrol, floodwater etc. never failed to work when asked and never went off when the trigger wasn't pulled

Yikes! a 200 gr cast bullet at 1315 fps from a 10mm is zipping right along for sure. I remember someone shooting a Cape Buffalo with a 10mm, not sure how he got a semi auto into Africa, I thought semi's were against the law to bring into the country, but he had one!

Dick

if you watch the video his PH is carrying a semi in a belt holster too

You'd have to be a real dumbazz to carry HP ammo for bear defense. Penetration is key to doing serious damage.

If memory serves I think the 10mm ammo Ted used was custom made 190gr. brass solids. Or maybe they were copper. Either way there was nothing on the market at the time that would have been up to the task.

If you're from Africa you can legally carry a semi auto, not so if you are out of country. Actually I think South Africa is the only country that allows hand gun hunting period, might be wrong. Either way I did see the video of the guy taking a large Cape Buffalo with his 10mm semi auto & it worked just fine.

Dick

If you're looking at 10mm hunting videos there is a guy named Razor Dobbs that kills a bunch of game with a Dan Wesson 10mm. I don't know anything about him, just that he has quite a few 10mm hunting videos out there.

That's the guy I'm talking about, couldn't remember his name. Not sure how he's getting a semi auto in country but he did & he killed that Buffalo just as dead as if it had been with a 458. Can't knock it, just not sure how he's getting the guns in there.

Dick

Ted Nugent killed a Cape Buffalo around 2005 or a bit before. Ted is the first person that I know of to use the 10mm on Cape Buffalo

Dobbs used the Cor-Bon Hard cast, either 220 or 230 gr at 1250 fps

Dobbs said Double Tap 200 gr. hardcast. I have tried several different Double Tap loads in different cartridges and they were never up to their published velocities in my guns. Close maybe, but always a bit short of what they were advertised at. Underwood Ammo on the other hand has usually been spot on or even slightly exceeded their published velocities in my experience. I like the consistency of the Underwood ammo. I have some of Mac's .357 170 gr. SWC that I have been trying to get a hog to step in front of with no luck yet. The .357 Lost River ammo is accurate. I haven't chronographed it but my guess is Mac has got it figured out pretty well and I trust it scoots along at pretty close to his published velocity. If only one of these Ozark razorbacks would hold still long enough I'd be able to report on how well it penetrates game.

My experience with Double Tap Ammo mirrors yours. Never got the advertised velocity, but the accuracy was very good

None of the bears were shot out of trees

And all black bears regardless of size will climb a tree.

Howdy JJ……haven’t seen you around for a very long time. Or maybe, I’ve been look’n at the wrong times! 😉 Glad to see you’re still kick’n! 👍 memtb

I would guess that 220-230 gr 10mm ammo at 1250 fps would be some very, very hot ammo, even from a long slide gun, yikes!

Dick

Same thing happened to a guy I used to know well, he was a bear hunter extraordinaire and had taken a lot of big black bears in Washington. He was of small but fairly athletic stature and completely unassuming to meet and talk to but he knew how to hunt black bears. He had recently bought a Sig .40 from my shop and several boxes of Winchester 180gr ball ammo (target). He previously never carried a handgun bear hunting since he had his rifle but the area he hunted was beginning to see a hell of a lot more wolves and cats were always “thick” up there so he thought it would be better than nothing to start carrying a sidearm while hunting. The following weekend he went up to his spot and after a few days he’d taken the big bore he was after. He told me that he’d put a good shot on the big bear but it ran into the buckbrush after being hit. He gave it 45 minutes or so and then went in after it carefully. It was down 75 yards into the brush and he closed in on it. When he was inside of 20 or 25 yards he saw it move a little but he didn’t want to shoot it again with his 300wm because he thought it’d damage the hide too much so he said he decided to do the coup de grace with his new Sig .40s/w but he didn’t want to damage the skull so he aimed for below the base of the skull. After each shot the bear responded angrily but couldn’t get up (lucky for him 😀) and after each shot he expected the bear to die but it didn’t. He put 6 .40s/w 180gr ball into the back (posterior) neck and after skinning the bear he said not 1 of the pistol rounds made it passed the skin, fat layer and muscle into the “c-spine” or high spinal cord.

Obviously there are several factors that come into play but as already mentioned….A pistol is better than nothing but it requires a lot of practice, the proper ammunition, shot placement and a dash of luck. 😀. If one spends any amount of time around big bears in their habitat where THEY are at the top of the food chain and they come away thinking a handgun…any handgun is “enough” for those critters I’d say they need their meds adjusted.

I have noted in the past when testing ammo that some of the manufacturers must be using unvented test barrels as their advertised numbers do not seem to coincide with numbers attained with shooting them through a particular handgun, such as a 10mm Glock 20 for example. Same with powder manufacturers.

I just fired some loads today that will never be put into production as they were simply too hot, and knowing that many consumers have never once replaced a recoil spring on their favorite semi auto, going to the very edge of what is possible is generally not a good idea.

I ran some poly coat 200 grain 10mms that averaged over 1275 FPS today, including a small number just over 1300. That brass immediately all got tossed.

There are actually a few problems with running loads such as a 200 grain 10mm at 1250. One is that when you run a load that hot and fast the slide can actually outrun the magazine spring and you will have malfunctions.
The other is that the very vast majority of shooters are not used to shooting a hard recoiling semi auto. They are used to shooting a 9mm or at best a standard pressure .45.

To ensure 100% reliability and make sure the gun will cycle correctly you have to have an absolutely rock solid grip on the gun and in my observation, most shooters, unless they are used to shooting heavy 10mm loads, generally do not grip the gun hard enough, and malfunctions happen.

These are all reasons why backing the velocity down just a bit to make sure you will get 100 % reliability makes more sense than an extra 75 FPS. A 200 grain 10mm at 1150 or 1225 will both go clean through a skull of your typical large animal. But the 1150 FPS load is one where I have found from testing, that people can actually (with practice) be shot one handed if need be, which is a very real possibility.

Very good advice. Reliability trumps a little extra horsepower, go to a pistol match sometime & watch shooters shoot strong hand only or switch to weak hand only, lots of stove pipes, etc.

A number of years ago I bought 100's of both 44 (250 gr) and 45 (260 gr) Nosler Partitions when one of the mail order houses was blowing them out on clearance after Nosler discontinued them. Does anyone have experience using them? Appears they are a pretty good design.

Yes.

I used the 300gr. Flat Nose (Bisley 45 Colt) and the 260 Hollow Points out of Winchester 20 gauge slug ammo.

Even more of the 385 50 calibers out of 12 gauge slug ammo.

The 300 grainer from a 7.5 Ruger Bisley, near as I could tell, didn't expand, penetrated well and had a decent meplat.
Two deer, no recovered bullets. 35-40 yards away with a 1200 fps. Muzzle velocity

The 45 260 HP out of a 20 gauge expanded well and I don't believe we ever recovered one out of around 10 deer. It reminded me of the 12 gauge BRI slugs in how they killed well and shot well. They actually clocked close to the box listed velocity.
I would imagine it would behave differently out of a handgun unless up close at impact.

The 12 gauge 385 expanded well and penetrated okay.

We recovered 3 or 4 out of 20 deer. It looked like a shuttlecock when found and when it hit bones veered and tumbled.

I'd rather use a cast softnose lead slug; the 12 gauge Nosler jacket material hung up and did weird things. It certainly killed deer, but wasn't a worst case scenario slug.

I would imagine the bullets you have will work decent as a solid and will flare a bit up close. Bone impacts should help them open up.