Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Bullet Failure

I wouldnt wish a pair of Russel boots on an enemy... BTDT on a dall sheep hunt.

This doesn't happen.It's a myth.

Bullets may not expand on impact,or may be too tough for the job at hand;or some C&C bullets may shear at the cannelure and leave a caliber-sized exit(I have recovered bullets at least one where this happened)...and even a Nosler Partition will leave a small exit sometimes because it blows off the nose back to the partition before it exits, leaving little frontal area......but you can bet they are expanding all right.

In fact I bet if you ran those loads over a chronograph,a guy might find they are going about the same speed as a handloaded 280AI,which should be plenty enough for about anything.

Be assured that a bullet from a 7 mag has plenty of time to expand at 30 yards on about anything.

A 7 mag is completely adequate for about anything that walks or crawls on this continent....if we pick the right bullet for the job,which is not really hard to do.

The cartridge has been around since like 1962,and has killed about every major BG species world wide thousands of times over...and does it every year....we aren't exactly rediscovering the wheel here...If a guy is having difficulty killing things pronto with a 7mm magnum he should choose his bullets more carefully and stick them in the right place.Cartridges are rarely the culprit in failure to kill animals pronto.

You must live in an opposite universe...

When I was in my 20's several older hunters informed me that many cartridges pushed too fast for the bullets to expand. The .270 Winchester and 7mm Remington Magnum were the two most commonly suggested. I knew they were FOS but even then didn't feel like arguing with people who obviously didn't know anything about how bullets work.

Every time I hear a claim that certain bullets didn't expand because the entrance and exit holes were the same size, I ask if they field-dress their own game, or at least watch it being done. If they look puzzled then I know they're also FOS.

To fast to expand...

Like hitting the brakes too hard for the car to stop?

One of the worst bullet failures I personally sawe, and had to help rectify, was when a member from here went on the first annual 24hrcf African hunt in Zim, about 2006 IIRC. This hunter brought a beautiful Weatherby Lazermark in 378 Weatherby but my first iindication that he did not listen to a word of advice I had given him was his arrival in camp with a low grade Bushnell scope atop both the 378 and the 300 WBY that he unpacked at camp. He shot these well enough at the sight check station that he hunted with them, but early in the hunt he took a poke at a nice cape buffalo at dusk and hit it well, just right at the creas of the shoulder and about 1/3 the way up just as I had instructed. He and his PH tracked that buff, with VERY LITTLE blood, BTW, until dusk and decided wisely that looking for a very lively cape buffalo in thick stuff at dark thirty was a abad idea and returned to camp rather dejected. The next morning I joined the track with my hunter but had removed the 378 with plain Weatherby factory loads from the equation and handed my hunter my much customized 416 Rigby. It turned out that day to be a VERY good thing that I had a Wiesner extended or 'drop box' bottom metal added to the rifle as he used up all five of the cartridges in the rifle (pushing 400gr Barnes Monolithic Solids) and another PM got a 300gr solid from his 375H&H into the buff before he finally laid down and quit fighting. I got all of this on camera, with me running the Canon Shoulder mount camera and can provide the video of this rodeo if someone wants to see it and verify my story. The bullet from the 378 penetrated very little cape buffalo flesh. Barely nicking the onside or closest lung and not touching the offside lung at all. This bullet looked very much like a nickel and a penny that had been stacked together on a railroad track and smashed flat together. It was a freakin MESS. Total disaster of bullet megafailure.

So, the Cape buff is on the cover of my hunting in Zimbabwe DVD, obviously dead and recovered, but we did indeed have a catastrophic bullet failure event!

Monometals like a Barnes or well constructed solids for me, from now on. (I was already a disciple of these at that time, anyway)

WHY anyone would use cheap bullets, or even most cup and core bullets, on hard to hunt, expensive to hunt or hard to bring down animals ever again is a mystery.

MD,
I remember those comments back in the day also. They blamed, if I remember correctly, the Winchester Silvertips.

I can only claim one what I would call a bullet failure. I was shooting a Ruger tang safety M77 in 25/06 with a 117 gr Nosler partition moving at or around 3000 fps. Hunting in a Maine swamp around 1984, the buck came across the swamp at a pretty fast run, quartering at me. I was standing on a huge stump, swung on him, and hit him square in the shoulder. Upon impact of the bullet I saw through the scope just about the most amazing thing I've ever seen though a scope. It was raining pretty hard that day, when that bullet struck the bucks shoulder it looked like I shot a gallon jug of water at 50 yards. Every drop off water I think blew out of the bucks hide. Knowing after watching that hit I knew that buck was going to slide to stop in the swamp. To my surprise he made it to the edge of the swamp entering thick woods when I swung on him again as he was in high gear. Placing the next through the back leg as he disappeared at about 20 yards. Jumping down off the big stump & running to the spot where he entered the woods I saw my prize about 5 feet in the small fir trees.
During the gut job I found the first bullet broke his left front shoulder and blew what I could only describe as shrapnel through his lungs & heart. Nothing any larger than 6 shot with no exit of anything. Once I took off the skin you could see the complete destruction of the shoulder which ruined most of the meat from blood shot.

Some will say the bullet did not fail to kill that deer...and that maybe true...cause I'm sure the second shot did not kill him. So maybe we can again that the 25/06 and the 117gr Nosler Partition is not best suited for breaking large bones at close range.

Safariman...Your story is much better than mine...just say'n!

I had posted this image previously and believe it documents a complete bullet failure and one very marginal performance.

The 8mm S&B bullet jacket was retrieved from an Oryx I shot. The Oryx was healthy and showed no outward physical degradation. The jacket was recovered from inside the chest cavity, right behind the shoulder, but it was contained in a cyst. The Oryx had clearly recovered from what appeared to be a very well placed hit. The PH had no recollection of a hunt that would have yielded these results. (bullet in middle of photo)

The second bullet was a 250 gr. Barnes X shot at near point blank range and it clearly didn't expand as advertised. (bullet upper left)

If you hunt long enough and shoot enough animals you will see 'anomalies' as described in the original post. Pass throughs, non penetrations, explosions and non dead animals from 'perfect' hits.

As someone said, 'that's hunting'.

Just remembered some early nasty bullet failures from my early years of hunting in the early to mid 70's. I believed the then prevalent zebrapoop that one should hunt with the bullet and load that was most accurate in one's rifle. In the case of my hand me down 1917 Enfield 30/06 this was clearly 165gr Sieera Gamekings. I shot a half dozen or so small Califonia Blacktailed deer with that load at both short and medium ranges, say out to 250 yards or so. In every case the bullet completely disintegrated upon impact. Those 100lb deer were easy to kill so I recovered each one, but I messed up a lot of good venison and soon was looking for a better bullet. Moved on to the allegedly superior Speer hot core 165's and they did the same thing.

Hornaday Interlocks did much better on the next 8 or 10 deer (limit was two per year then) and Nosler Partitions better still until I came across an article by Ross Seyfreid about using a new bullet from Barnes called the X on feral donkey's and horses and other game in Australia and when I finally found some and used one on my first Elk in about 1985 or '86 I was and am hooked and loyal. 25+ years (can it be almost 30 years now?) of their use has only cemented my relationship with them. To the point that if a rifle or barrel will not shoot them reasonably well, the barrel or rifle go down the road rather than the bullet choice.

I recall just the opposite at the same point in my life. I had very little experience, then, with CF rifles and related stuff, but I knew with certainty that a 7 Mag bullet did not expand into the shape of "the deadliest mushroom in the woods" the moment it exited the barrel. I had a much better educated....make that 'he had better papers than I'...guy argue with absolute certainty that bullets expand the moment they leave the barrel, at least in the mags, perhaps their advantage.

Klik,

THAT is freakin HILARIOUS! Might be the best ill informed 'gun expert' knowledge / misinformation EVER. Wow.....

Right next to that is the guy who swears his 'special' magnum or quadruple radius shoulder super cartridge is "rising the moment it leaves the muzzle, and does not even begin to flatten out or slow down until it reaches 300 yards or so" Amazing stuff some folks can think up and believe.

Makes one realize the failure of our education systems to fail at the element of logical and constructive thought...or perhaps just basic observation.

rost495-

That is an easy question for me to answer, so I wanted to answer it. I wait for the right shot, which may be a neck shot, or I don't shoot. Period. I don't know if that means I wouldn't get a shot in your scenario. I am not a shoulder shooter. I guess I could be if I decided it was a good idea. Deer are soft, and the bullets I will take deer hunting should be tough enough to get to vitals. I wouldn't aim for the bone of the shoulder regardless of the bullet I had loaded.

I have learned that I make a hunting plan with compromises involved, from ammo to footwear. If I go out with the intention to shoot at a trophy buck, I will take the ammo that provides for the highest level of confidence for me, not the best exit hole.

I just don't get it. Partitions were the premium bullet when I began big game hunting, and I didn't ever have any of those in my gun when I actually shot anything. Cup and core did it all where I was from 30 years ago. I get the value of tough bullets. I have bonded bullets ready to put in the 'big' gun. I am not sold that they are needed to kill game. I am of the "internal destruction kills animals" school, and my experiences fit with this.

Obviously, many feel confident with tough premiums , and I wouldn't seek to take that away. It seems by and large like a sales pitch to me, though.

MagnumMan-

How am I full of

Magnum Man--

How am I full of crap?

Hunt and Shoot it seems odd that you would declare a premium like a Partition (really just a bread and butter bullet today)as a "sales gimmick"....in my world a sales gimmick is something that comes on the scene, is bought by suckers,and passes into oblvion in a short period of time....the Partition has been around since the early 1950's IIRC,and solved lots of problems for huters shooting high velocity cartridges,and I don't see many suckers using them.....pretty good track record for a "sales gimmick".

By your own admision you have never used one on an animal so I wonder how it is you can comment on how much damage a preium does, or does not do,to a game animal?

I never understood hunters who stand up and declare themselves as being solely neck shooters, or lung shooters,or surgical specialists with a rifle and ALWAYS shoot animals in just one place....it seems to ne that if they have much real experience as hunters, they are going to encounter a wide variety of shooting circumstances and conditions and its their job to be able to place a bullet where it will do the most good and that may be shoulder, neck or whatever it takes to do the job....and by this I don't mean ass end shots placed willy nilly, although hits to the pelvic area do have their place at times.


So, when someone comes on here and spouts about premiums being nothing more than sales gimmicks, do you really expect anyone to take you seriously?

I must not be expressing myself very clearly, BobinNH. I will try to do better. This has been a pretty squirreley thread that way, as I have been lumped into a few categories that I don't belong in. The failing is likely mine. Whether people take me seriously probably has more to do with whether my opinions align with theirs than anything else.

As far as partitions go, I think they are a great bullet, and certainly filled a serious need when they first were introduced. I think they fill the same need now. I believe they are the measuring stick for every expanding game bullet out there. I have nothing but respect for them, and for Nosler's magical way of getting such a complex design to shoot so well. I don't think of them as a tough design, because they open so readily and consistently. Many, many people I have known and hunted with have used them to good effect for decades. But here is the caveat: I have never happened to have been there to see an animal killed with one, and I've never shot anything while partitions were in my gun. I trust implicitly that they work great as a big and bigger game bullet at average distances, and a bit further. I just don't have any direct experience with this, and I've tried to make that clear.

I have heard stories of partitions blowing up on a shoulder. I have heard stories of many cup&cores not penetrating vitals, most often when shot at high velocity and/or close range. I have never had this experience; and I have no grounds to claim these stories false, other than they just don't match my experience. I've tried to make that clear.

I watched a failure of a cup&core bullet once, or maybe it was operator error, out of a 7RM at close range. Since the animal got away, I can't be sure what happened, other than I watched the bullet strike, and saw the dust kick up behind the doe. A sample of one means nothing in statistical terms. I understand this. It did sour me just a bit, and for a long time, to the 7 mag, especially when taken with other things I saw from that particular gun. This is not to say that it is a poor caliber or cartridge. I have known several hunters that have used it well for decades. My responses to the gentleman with the 7 mag that had some problems were simply an attempt to help him come to terms with his own experience. I don't shoot factory hunting ammo, and haven't for the last 20 years, and I don't shoot magnums at game. I did not agree with Tim_B's conclusions. I did tell him what I had heard and experienced. I thought I made that clear.

Finally, I am not here to attack anyone that picks a Barnes, A-Frame, North Fork, TBBC, etc. I have heard great things about them all. There are two things that I have witnessed in the years that I've paid attention to this sort of thing. First, premium bullets were once marketed to serious hunters doing serious hunting for serious game. Now they are marketed as do-alls for everyone. I can't disagree that they work, and work well. I disagree that they are necessary for most hunting in most situations for most people, including me. The second thing I have seen is the magnum craze that renewed itself a dozen years ago. I have seen magnums marketed as the best, greatest for all hunting and hunters, and a necessity for some hunting. I disagree. I think they are great for those that can and do shoot them well, particularly with one of the premium bullets. My view that so much of this is marketing hype stems from the fact that before there were expensive premium bullets, cup&cores killed animals year after year. Out of standard cartridges, these bullets work great, in my experience. I have heard, however, of some failures of tough bullets to properly expand at the lower velocities of standard cartridges. So the answer seems pretty simple to me. You want to shoot a mag, get a tough bullet. You want to shoot a softer, cheaper bullet, don't push them so fast that they can't get to the vitals.

There are thousands of caveats to these statements, such as when going after a trophy animal, or when you are unsure of the distances you'll be shooting, and other variables you don't want to have to account for. I have great confidence in softer bullets placed properly from standard cartridges, because that is what I have always done when I have been successful. This does not discount others' opinions or experiences. But if I am expected to believe that I HAVE to shoot a premium bullet to kill animals, or that they are the only bullets that work for bigger game, or other such nonsense, then I simply point to hundreds of years of history to claim otherwise. All bullets fail. The reasons why they do are as varied as the ways they are constructed and the animals they're shot at.

So many here are happy to jump on someone's ass about some little thing that seems off. I see few clarifying questions, and many insults. Not that this is directed at you, Bob. I have read your opinions and experiences for years, and have much respect for what you say and the ways you have said it. This is why I wanted to go to such great lengths to express myself, so that the concision that is present in fewer words from those like you can be found in my ramblings here.

Good day to you, Gentlemen.

Well I don't put much stock in stories. Experience is the only thing one can rely on. People on these forums will talk out of their asses on occasion.

I've shot partitions into the shoulders of more 400+ lb boar than I care to count and I've never had one not exit.

These were in 7-08 and 7 Rem Mag using 140 Partitions. More than a few with a 25-06 launching a 120 pill.

I had some early Ballistic Tips go tits up and fail to perform as they should.

Other than that, on hundreds of animals I've shot or seen killed by others, I've never seen a bullet failure that I can recall.

Some do perform better than others in a given set of circumstances. The hunter should understand this and pic the bullet that best fits his application.

Choosing a thin jacketed frangible bullet and sticking it in the shoulders of large animals, then complaining about how it performed is comical..

Between this and what you've posted elsewhere, a classic example of an understatement. I offer you a bag of Skittles as a peace offering...

Just shoot a 45-70 with a 500 grain cast bullet and quit worrying about bullet failure.