Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Old bullets = more fragile bullets??

This by no means empirical with a test sampling of just two bullets, but here's my limited experience.

We had a brother and sister from our church stay with us while they finished college. Their parents jobs took them out of state but both wanted to stay to finish their school as they both had scholarships in Alaska. While they were with us they expressed an interest in hunting as both had been several times with their dad but had never been the hunter, only tagged along. Both loved to shoot. I worked with both of them and they applied for tags for caribou and moose. The sister drew a cow moose tag. I offered her the pick of any rifle in the safe. She chose the 1908 Mannlicher Schoenauer 8x56.

I had four boxes of Western 200 grain Lubaloy ammo I had picked up shortly after buying the rifle. Being Bullseye boxes I believe dates them to 1939-1945 putting the ammunition in the 75+ year range. I sacrificed one partial box to make sure they were still good and decided to hunt with them. I was going to be right beside her to back her up.

She spent several hours at the range with me shooting to get used to the rifle and work on her shooting skills from various field positions. When the time came on a cow just 50 yards away she got a galloping case of buck fever. Fortunately she had shot enough to know not to break the shot if it didn't look right. Her first shot was a bit high after what seemed like an eternity of fighting the shakes. I had her using a monopod and not sure if that helped or hindered. Her second shot was freehand as she had dropped the monopod in the excitement of the first shot. That one was a good heart/lung shot and the cow quickly dropped.

We found both bullets, with nearly perfect expansion under the skin on the far side. So two bullets doesn't really settle the question but it worked perfectly in this instance.