Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Most interesting recovered bullets

Let’s hear what you’ve found. Yours or bullets in animals that you have killed fired by someone else.

175 Bitterroot - Cow elk - 175 yards





175 Nosler ABLR - Bull elk - 605 yards

I don't have a pic of it on my phone, but a 240XTP from a Ruger 96/44 about 25 years ago.

Shot was about 110 yards... the jacket was caught in the far side hide completely intact with absolutely 0 lead core left inside it.

7 RM 150 Swift - Bull elk - 475 yards





30-06 212 ELD - Bull Elk - 390 yards

.54 round ball, white tail doe. Shot entered around last rib and was found just ahead of shoulder on opposite side.

Several bullets recovered from coyotes, shot with a couple 22-250s.

Sierra and Nosler bullets recovered from severel deer and 1 hog.

I do have a bullet recovered from a squirrel. Load would have been a CCI Mini Mag HP. Hit in head and bullet traveled the length of the squirrel and was found in a rear quarter.

300 Win 200 AB - Bull elk - 675 yards





300 RUM 200 AB - Bull elk - 570 yards

300 Wby 200 AB - Bull elk - 250 yards





300 Win 180 PT - Bull elk - 310 yards

Scrap metal from last hunting season. Rio7

30-06 165 AB - Bull elk - 200 yards





35 Whelen 225 TSX - Black Bear -125 yards

Cape buffalo with the 350 gr TSX from my 416 Rem. Left is the one that put him down at 130 yards, right the "finisher" at 10 yards.

Just another expanded LRX. What's interesting to me is how the heck does Barnes get the X at the bottom of the cavity?

The rear section of a 160 gr 7mm Nosler Partition. Partitions are well known for keeping intact, driving deep, and breaking bones. We all know that.

In an elk camp several decades ago, we had a very vocal coyote. My friend and I, having filled our tags, set up to call him in. He did just that, and was in a head on position at 20 yards. Shot him with my Ruger 7mm Rem Mag with the Partition, expecting incredible damage. To our amazement, there was no sign of a hit at all. No blood, no nothing. We thought we scared him to death.

Upon skinning him out, the mystery was revealed. The bullet entered the corner of his mouth, and didn't really hit anything until it exploded on his rear molars, which were apparently much harder than just bone. His neck was peppered with small fragments internally, nothing breaking the skin.

Finally found this piece of the rear jacket, lead completely blown out. Maybe 6" to 8" of penetration. Obvious because of the beveled edge at the base.

Here a couple of interesting ones I’ve collected. The lead core was found under the skin at the hock of a blacktail buck I killed. I don’t know how long he had been packing it around and I didn’t find any obvious point of entry. It looks to be from a .270 or .280. The flattened jacket is a 180 Sierra game king that went through a bull I killed in hells canyon. The bull was broadside with the front of his shoulder exposed from the tree he was standing behind with a rock bluff right behind him. At the shot he hit the ground then got up and lunged sideways and piled up. After I got across the canyon to him it could see the blood splattered on the snow and what looked like sand mixed in so I scratched the snow back and found the jacket. The bullet was apparently upset when exiting and hit the bluff sideways squirting the core out. I thought it was a cool to find a bullet after it left the animal.

Shot a muley buck, had an 11" drop tine, which we thought was the cause of a swolen up ozing puss pocket on the back of its neck which we thought was caused by the drop tine, if you turned the bucks head far enough the drop tine would stick right into the wound. probably why it never healed. Anyway we skinned the deer for a shoulder mount and found a shreaded .22 cal varmit bullet jacket and a few bits of lead in the puss pocket where someone had shot it.

On another occasion I shot an antelope that had a broken off broadhead stuck in its femur bone. Rear quarter had atrophied, he was walking on 3 legs, had lost a lot of weight and was on his last legs miles away from any other antelope. Pretty much a mercy kill.

Have found two small caliber bullets apparently shot a season or two prior, appeared to be .24 caliber cup and core, in elk. I also found a bout 6” of arrow-shaft with broadhead against the shoulder blade of my first moose. The arrow/broadhead were fully incased in what I would describe as a large mass of gristle.

Found a bullet that I shot into an elk broadside behind the shoulder only hitting a rib, found up against the hide on the opposite side, under the hide. Last time to use those bullets for hunting. If I recover a bullet from broadside shot on anything smaller than a very large Bison…..I’m on the hunt for a different bullet! memtb

WOW, just friggen wow! Is everyone using varmint bullets were you hunt? memtb

Guy shot a large bull moose up here in AK. Cutting up the neck meat, he hit a puss sack in the neck. Out popped a 270 partition bullet.

Memtb, how many 243 bullets you found in that elk?

We don't hear much about these stupid fkn gopher bullets when they fail.

I actually prefer the bullets to stay in the animal. I have never seen the need for or demanded an exit. I've got a mason jar full of recovered bullets on my desk at work.
Bears have held onto bullets pretty consistently for me, but I also have several that I dug out of mule deer and elk. Some are expanded into decent mushrooms of various weight retentions and I also have several handfuls of bullet fragments. Failsafes, TSX, bergers, corelokts, accubonds, grand slams and some others. Four pieces (lead cores and their copper cups) from two Bergers from a cow elk in 2007. Both of those kept maybe 30-40% of their initial weight, but both cores slide right into their copper cup. Kinda neat.
I believe this is the only one I currently have a pic of. A 62 TSX out of a Wyoming mule deer. Unimpressive, but the second shot dropped the buck instantly and I still have no clue what the deal is with the first shot (bullet in pic). The TSXs just never did seem consistent or reliable to me.



Aside from my own shots, I have found several bullets that were scarred over from other hunters who had previously wounded a critter, as well as one broadhead with 6 or so inches of arrow. These have been mainly in elk but I do recall finding a random 7mm or 30 cal something mushroomed in a mule deer's hind quarter. I've found birdshot in both whitetail deer and black bears, I presume from grouse hunters peppering critters they shouldn't have been shooting at.

I had a 260 partition from my .375 H&H stay in a wolf at about 100 yards. The shot wasn't broadside, but wasn't straight on through the length of the body either. While that is a fairly light bullet for a .375 cal round, it still surprised me. Partitions are another bullet overall that I seem to have different experience with concerning performance than what many others do.

Like me with Core-Lokts. The only thing consistent about them is their inconsistencies.