Does make you wonder if the barrel interior finish has bearing on Berger results? Maybe a rough barrel has harmed the integrity of the bullet jacket and it expands on the surface rather than penetrating a few inches before expansion?
It is thought provoking logic. The main rifle I am talking about performed fine on game with the old 140 AMAXs, but did this with 2 different lots of 147 ELD-Ms.
![[Linked Image from ]]( https://i.imgur.com/P3oFInG.jpg)
This also doesn’t explain why in that rifle I get an occasional Berger that breaks bone seemingly fine and acts like a conventional bullet. To add to the randomness, I recovered 2 from last year’s caribou that are (a guess) 40% retained weight, core intact, never hit bone other than maybe a rib and didn’t make it past the first half of the broadside bull. I hit him 3 times in the chest and I still had to cut his throat 5 minutes later though he was comatose. I HATE having to watch critters die like that. All bullets do weird things but it seems like bergers have more of a track record for it, for me at least. Maybe my particular rifle does have something to do with it.
