I consider it bullet failure when the bullet fails to perform in the manner expected given the design of the bullet, speed, range, and tissue/bone hit. I've had three times I'd consider the results bullet failure because the bullet didn't perform in accordance to it's design (or my intended implementation of it's design). All 3 times ended up with dead animals though. Just my simple definition of it and it's very subjective......I ain't webster's....
Totally agree with this definition.
Was hunting elephant in Zim (2010) and got an unexpected close range charge from a bull. Rifle was a .470 and ammunition was Federal Trophy Bonded Sledgehammer 500 grain solids. Perfectly placed frontal brain shot, but he didn't drop. Fortunately, he did turn to my left and I fired again. This bullet entered through his left ear and he went down hard, as dead as Marley's ghost. BTW, the distance between where he dropped and where my empties lay was thirteen (13) paces.
We did a necropsy afterwards and dug the first bullet out. The nose was riveted, the base was fishtailed and the bullet had bent about 80 degrees. This failure was why it never penetrated to the brain on the first shot. Took the bullet to the Federal booth at SCI in 2011 and they said they would open a file on it and get back to me. They wanted to test the metallurgy, etceteras. Never heard from them again.
After that experience, I only use Barnes monolithic banded solids (as loaded by Barnes) in my .470 NE and .416 Rigby. My experience has shown that any bullet can deform when punching through several feet of bone, but Barnes solid deformation is minimal compared to the Federal Trophy Bonded sledgehammer. I will never use Sledgehammers on DG again.
