I have seen a handful of very weird terminal paths from bullets in my life. The 2 weirdest ones were when I was 16 years old and then again last year.
When I was 16 I tried a Lee REAL mold for my 58 caliber Hawken copy. They were large and heavy. I think 330 grains of something around that size.
I used 120 grains of powder and I shot several animals with them and found they often veer off course in the bodies of game and farm animals. The one that was the oddest was a mid size mule deer buck I shot broadside in the center of the chest on it's right side. The buck fell fast and when I got to it I found the entrance where I aimed, but the other side of the chest had no exit. As I was gutting it I found the bullet turned about 80 degrees and existed the left ham. Because the bullet exited I can't say if, or how much it deformed, but it did a "left face" in a hurry and only went through the chest about 1/2 way or maybe a bit more before it did. I would think that a 330 or 340 grain 58 caliber bullet only going about 1350 FPS on impact would not do such a radical turn, but that one did.
Then last season I shot a white tail with my 300 savage with a Nosler 150 grain Ballistic Tip and it did almost the same thing, but even worse. Center of the chest, broadside, and the hit was exactly where I aimed, but the bullet turned hard left and cut off 6 ribs, but only did a small amount of damage to the first lung with bone frags. The bullet went through to the gut sack but didn't hit the guts at all and entered the front of the right rear leg and was found about 1" from the back of the ham That bullet turned an honest 90 degrees and the very odd thing was the fragments of lead were all in the first 8" or so of the path. The bullet is on my mantel now and its only an empty jacket. So the 1st thing that I can't explain is the 90 degree turn with only about 1-1/2" of penetration in the direction of the bullet's flight path, but the second thing that is REAL weird is how the jacket could have gone that far after the core was gone. From the rear of the chest to about 1" from the skin on the ham, and on the SAME side I shot the deer. That deer took off and I killed it with a shot to the brain. If I had missed the head shot (the head only was above the grass as it ran) I am sure it would have gotten away. There was no blood trail and it took me about 10 minutes to find it in the high swamp grass even though it fell only about 140-150- yards from me.
I have shot that same bullet in the past in 308 and 30-06 and in other cases it did very well. That one was very very strange.
