Originally Posted by Mule Deer
Would appreciate a detailed critique of the Berger performance.


Quoting myself, from a different thread:

Originally Posted by T_Inman

140 berger, which I am putting on my shït list for the second time. The AMAXs were WAY better.

I fired a shot, to which she didn't flinch. I may have missed (I still don't know), despite the crosshairs being right where they needed to be. She stood there, but had quartered towards me as I jacked another round in. I shot a second time, aiming directly onto the onside shoulder, then she took off running. I found ZERO blood, even with all the snow. I followed her tracks for 60-80 yards, and found her bedded. Her head was up and she started chirping at her calf which was standing there in the trees. I put one more round directly into her neck from about 5 yards. I HATE it when they do that and actually kind of felt bad.

I looked for a bullet hole (besides the neck shot) and found nothing. After getting one shoulder off, I realized her lungs were absolute mush. How she was alive, let alone with her head up I will never know. Her offside shoulder was clean. No bloodshot meat, no nothing. Clean looking. The onside shoulder was broken and an absolute mess, which means the bullet(s?) penetrated that but didn't make it past the lungs, which supposedly is how these bullets are designed to work. I have absolutely no idea which shot (or if both) did all that damage. I can't blame her still being alive on the bullets as the lungs were absolutely DESTROYED, but I just can't bring myself to shoot another critter with those bullets. After shooting 4 elk and one mule deer with them this year and last, I have concluded that they're too erratic performance wise for me. My sample size is small, but my lack of confidence in them is HUGE.


To be clear: when I said "Not impressed at all with the berger's on game performance........again......"...I was referring to my experiences several years ago when the bergers were fairly new. I know a bigger sample size would be preferred, but Saturday evening I lost what little confidence I had in the bergers.