Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Berger VLD & black bear?

I have seen very few VLD's retain the core, and when they did it was just a tiny fragment.

Essentially they totally disintegrate--after getting inside. Normally the biggest chunks left are some pieces of jacket. This is why they create such massive internal damage.

I know this is hard concept for many hunters to understand, especially after all the propaganda about high weight retention during the past decade or two. But VLD's do work, and on average make the quickest kills I've ever seen.

During one of the periodic "my bullet is best" threads that show up on the Campfire, somebody posted a photo of some large animal's heart with about a 2" hole through the top, as an example of massive internal damage.

Well, the heart of the red stag I shot with a VLD (185-grain with a .30-06 at 250) didn't have a hole in it. Instead the heart was essentially turned inside out, becoming a long flap of muscle. I have a photo of it laid out on the ground. It's about a foot long, and the only way you can even tell what it was is the bottom tip of the heart at one corner.

A few people have also posted on the Campfire stating quite firmly that the VLD's are just the same as Sierra MatchKings, or work similarly to Nosler Ballistic Tips. I have asked these people how they know this, and it turned out NONE had ever seen a VLD in use.

They were just assuming they knew how a VLD would act, based on their experience with other bullets. These people have even gone on rants about "shooting up 20 pounds of meat" and "surface wounds," both of which indicated they didn't know what they were talking about.

I was skeptical when I first started using VLD's, because of similar assumptions. But then I saw the same thing happen over and over and over again: a tiny entrance hole that goes 1-1/2 to 2" into an animal, and then massive damage to the internal organs.

Now, they will sometimes shoot up some meat on the OTHER side of a small deer-sized animal, because they'll exit. But very often on 150-400 pound game they damage less meat than anything I've ever seen except a broadhead. This is because they punch that knitting-needle-size hole going in, and only fragments of the bullet reach the inside of the far ribs.

It also doesn't seem to matter much how big the bullet is, since they don't hold together anyway. People keep writing me, asking if they should use the 185-grain VLD on "big deer," instead of the 168, or a smaller caliber. I haven't seen that it matters much. We shot animals with everything from 115 .25's to 185 .30's, from cartridges as small as the .257 Roberts and as large as the .300 Winchester Magnum, and it didn't seem to matter, because even the 115 .25's created more internal damage than conventional bullets.

So VLD's challenge what we "know" in many ways. All I know now, after using them quite a bit, is that they are the quickest killing bullets I've ever used.

Call me Irish but I like a bullet that works when everything is wrong. Lots will do the trick when everything in right.

Thanks John for a very informative post. Am I right in assuming that penetraction is about the same as a standard cup and core?

Ditto. Way too many proven game bullets to take chances on match stuff. Give me a partition or a swift a frame any day.

I can't warm up to the thought of using the ultra high BC bullets for hunting. Whether it be AMAX or Berger.

Anybody have any actual failure experience with them?

downwindtracker2,

It depends on the cup-and-core and how hard it's driven. I have seen some total failures to penetrate to the vitals with cup-and-cores. I haven't seen that with a VLD.

In fact the only "failures" I've seen with VLD's involved lousy shooting, but then I haven't noticed any successes when the most expensive premiums are put in a leg or the guts.

Hey Bob the .30-06 wasn't designed to be a hunting cartridge either right? Sure seems to have worked out.
They seem to work. Would I go chase elk or bear with them? No, like I said before there are better hammers for that nail.
Would I go after deer, or lopes with them? Yeah in a heartbeat and without worries.

Ok I'm sold. Order for 115 gr 'hunting' VLDs to run through my 257 AI next deer season is going in asap!

When will they make one or two in 338 cal... a 215 and a 300 maybe? Seems like that'd be a great addition to the line up, particularly for elk and moose.

JB, you think you could/would throw your weight behind that idea?

Can't tell you about Black Bear, as I haven't used them on bear. But, I can tell you my from own use that whitetail and pigs absolutely hate 'em. Pigs ain't exactly the easiest things in the world to make DRT, but the VLDs (155gr from a .308) have done that for me most convincingly.

Some of the reactions here remind of me when my kids were little, and saw something on their plate they didn't want to eat:

"I don't like that."

"Have you tried it?"

"No."

"Then you don't know if you don't like it. Have a bite..."

I especially love the "were never designed to be a hunting bullet" comments. Who cares?! A baseball bat wasn't designed as a club either, but it makes a pretty darned good one...

To those nay-sayers that haven't tried them (that would be the vast majority of nay-sayers), give them a try. You might be pleasantly surprised....

John

I just sold all my 30. cal 180 E-Tips.

Anyone want to buy my Swift S2 6.5 130's?

$45.00 ea. shipped.

Need to make room for the Berger's.

I rather have exit wounds pretty much all the time.

Hey Bob,

If you come up with a good 25-06 load, please let me know.

I thought a few people might be interested in the history of Berger's "exploitation" of the VLD's.

The VLD's were indeed designed as a target bullet, but some hunters started using them and found out how they worked. The word got back to the Berger people, and they were pretty skeptical at first. Walt himself is an avid and experienced hunter and had never thought of using his target bullets for hunting.

But there was so much buzz about VLD's (including on TV) that they decided to check it out. They got in contact with Richard Mann, the guy who invented the wax-based Bullet Tube that retains the shape of a bullet's wound channel better than anything else I've seen. The Test Tube gave a clear profile of the 2" or so of penetration before the VLD's started opening up, something nobody had ever seen before from an expanding bullet.

The Berger folks then arranged to shoot some wild pigs in West Virginia, where Mann lives. The bullets worked very well on the pigs.

Berger also started offering free VLD's to any member of the North American Hunting Club that wanted to try them on deer. A bunch of hunters took them up on the deal, and the feedback was very postive.

Finally, they decided to do a really extensive test in New Zealand, where they could essentially shoot unlimited numbers of animals and monitor all the results closely. They invited Richard Mann and me as shooting writers, but did NOT insist on our reporting favorably. In fact Eric Stecker, who runs Berger, told me that he wanted a real test. If the bullets didn't work, they wanted to know.

Also along were several other shooters, including Walt Berger himself and my wife Eileen, who asked if she could come along if she paid her own expenses. They wanted as many shooters as possible, so said if she paid for her own plane ticket they'd be happy to have her.

We shot a pile of feral goats, some feral sheep and 4 big red stags, at ranges from under 20 to 500+ yards. The oufitter and his guides were very doubtful about the VLD's, just by looking at them. The outfitter insisted we needed heavier, round-nosed bullets to kill goats, since goats are notoriously tough.

By the end of the second day the head guide said VLD's were best goat bullet he'd ever seen, partly because Eileen was crumpling big billies with broadside lung shots from her .257 Roberts, something they'd almost never seen even with much bigger rifles.

I was skeptical going over but by the end of the trip was impressed. And only THEN--after other people started using VLD's on big game and publicizing them on TV programs, and the bullets had been throughly tested in the U.S. in test media AND on a lot of deer and pigs, and the trip to New Zealand--did the Berger people decide they would go ahead and publicize VLD's as hunting bullets.

As I've noted before, the way VLD's work is contrary to what many of us have learned about big game bullets, especially in recent years with all the emphasis on "premium" bullets, retained weight and exit holes.

They do NOT retain weight, at least in any meaningful way that would impress your buddies. They are not partitioned, monometal, bonded, licensed or insured. But they also do NOT come apart on the surface of deer.

They DO come apart inside deer, which is why they kill deer very, very quickly. And the Berger people did not start selling VLD's as hunting bullets until they were very, very sure they worked.

Myself and a few friends all shot VLDs on a whitetail hunt in Saskatchewan last year. One of us took a nice buck with a 7mm Mag at 100 yards. Bullet worked great and the deer didnot travel any where. My other friend(shootone) shot a 168 BC buck at 505 yards with a 7 WSM and a 180 VLD. The deer ran about 10 yards. The guide said that while cleaning the deer he has never seen damage done like that with a VLD. It totaly destroys the inside of an animal. He is now shooting VLDs himself. I didnt make a kill but hopefully will this year. My 280 Ackley with 180s is a tack driver.

I remember that article you wrote about the VLD's after your NZ trip.

Now if I could only find it to read it again.
I must admit, you have my interest piqued.

One thing I forgot to mention just now was that in NZ we autopsied a lot of the animals we shot, especially at first. This was not exactly the most pleasant job, especially the first couple of days because the weather was hot and sunny and a lot of insects were out. But we stopped to do it, when we could have just been shooting more animals, because we wanted to find out exactly how the VLD's were working, instead of relying of results from test media or previous reports. And that is how I am so familiar with the way they expand.

I must also report that nobody I know who has tried them has experienced any "failures" of the type many who have never used VLD's suggests might happens, such as insufficient penetration or "blowing up" on the surface of animals. I have gotten a lot of e-mails from people who tried them after my article came out, and everybody said the VLD's worked just as described, and they planned to use them again.

They are not the bullet I'd use for hunting big black bears, especially in fall, because there is too much chance the bear might have an outside layer of fur and fat that's more than two inches thick. But they do punch through the rib cartilage on pigs before ex[anding, and after seeing the results on several 400-pound red stags (as big as any mule deer ow whitetail would ever get) I don't feel any hesitation on recommending them for use on deer and similar-sized hoofed game.

MD,
Just out of curiosity, about how many game animals would you say that you've seen killed with the VLD? Would you say that the number, whatever it is, is enough to make statistically significant generalities and draw conclusions about the VLD?

I'm asking because there have been other bullet makers in the past who have sold a LOT of bullets, and were quite confident that their bullets worked, but there are still failures from time to time (the BT and TSX, for example).

Jordan,
How could Mule Deer possibly know how many deer have been killed by the VLD?

Statistically, since every person that has written to him has spoken of success (see his response above), that would be 100% correlation to his findings that the VLD is a great deer bullet.

Some folks think the BT is the best (Jarrett, et al), some think it is the partition. I know a guy that won't shoot partitions because "the front comes off when I shoot a deer." I don't hunt with him any more, because he's an idiot.

I don't want to imply that I have more trigger time than Mule Deer, or even more trigger time than most of the people on this board.

But, given the extreme range of muzzle velocities, and the extreme range of shooter abilities, and the various conditions of shooting in the field, there will be some "failures" with any bullet. The fact that none have been reported to John speaks volumes on just how good the VLD is for the stated purpose of shooting deer.

"terminal ballistic regression".
Better to stick with a proven bullet like a MatchKing.
It'll take the VLD 30 years to pile up the record the MatchKing
already has.
dave