Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 7mm 140 Berger Hunting VLD for elk

How many BJ's did you give before you decided you didn't like them?

He didn't say wanting that version of bullet performance was obsolete. He meant that defining as a failure anything other than that version was obsolete.

Well then enlighten us - with my 175gr A-Frames in 7mm, I've always gotten expansion and always gotten an exit wound. 100%. With Bergers, I've NEVER seen one produce an exit wound unless the bullet failed to expand at all. I've never even seen a picture of the mythical one that worked right.

So with bullet A, you always get what you want. With bullet B, you never do. How is preferring the one that works "obsolete"? Or are you saying that having a blood trail to follow in the unfortunate circumstance that you need to track a wounded animal is "obsolete"? Inquiring minds want to know!

Work on your reading comprehension. The type of performance you prefer, high percentage weight retention, good expansion and an exit, is just fine. I never said it's obsolete. The bone of contention is your declaration that any other bullet performance is a failure by definition. What is desired is bringing the game quickly to bag, and there is more than one way to skin that cat.

Larry,

How many elk have you killed?

Thank you. As is usually the case, the guy who insists he's the smartest in the room is just the opposite. Reading comprehension, (and lack thereof) is tell-tale.

And one other thing. A bullet like a Berger hitting the shoulder of an antelope or small deer is different than the same bullet hitting the 18" vitals of an elk, as far as meat damage.

Are you really trying to claim that an wound pattern that gives you no blood trail is as good as a wound pattern that given you a solid blood trail?

If you can say that with a straight face, then frankly I have no respect for you as a hunter. Retrieving your game is is an ethical imperative, and in the worst case tracking is the only tool available to do that. It's impossible to do enough damage to the heart/lungs to guarantee an animal won't go a very long way. They may "typically" drop fast, but think how far you could move holding your breath before you passed out.

Worse yet, Bergers have a bad habit of blowing up so early that on a large animal, you may not even get to the heart or 2nd lung and just trash the hell out of the close lung. In that case, the animal could go miles - and again, no blood trail.

Funny how you have such a precise idea about bullet expansion when you don't recover the bullets.

I haven't claimed anything.

Of my rifles I'd be happiest lining up on a big bull with my 338 mag flinging 250 grain Partitions, but that isn't the point I'm arguing.

It's real easy to tell if a bullet expanded or not from the wound track and exit wound.

Do you even hunt?

Llama Bob, lets see some pics of your victims.

Oh, and this is way overdue.......

TO THE 24HCF GUYS;
Please accept my apologies for presenting information in this thread in which Dali Llama Bob agreed with. I must now look myself in the mirror and apologize to myself.
Please forgive me.
Sincerely,
JG

Well the "point" you're arguing makes no sense. Exit wounds are a good thing. They help you discharge your ethical responsibilities as a hunter, and as a practical matter make sure you get the meat. Similarly, making sure your bullet makes it to the heart and back lung is a good thing. Doing both requires a certain level of penetration, which in turn requires a certain level of sectional density and weight retention.

Many popular bullets have these desirable properties. Berger does not. So why precisely would anyone want to use the Bergers? They like losing game? It's not like the better designed bullets are hard to get - heck, they're far more common than the failure-plagued Bergers.

Not always, and yes I do, azzhole.

You want to come along and try to keep up with me, just let me know.

You strike me as one who'd rather sit around and talk about how you really need A-Frames to kill an elk.

No apologies necessary, it's not every day that Larry Root is reincarnated. That's what you meant by "Dali Lama," right?

The point is a lot of people have found that Bergers made a high percentage of animals drop "right now" for them, exit wound or not. Your preference for an exit wound doesn't invalidate what they have seen first hand, nor does it make the hyperbole in your argument against Bergers any more accurate.

The goal isn't to have a "high percentage" of animals recovered. It's to recover all of them. Without a good exit wound, there's no way you can be sure of that. An exit wound also speeds the animal "dropping" since it facilitates blood loss.

I have yet to hear a single reason why one would want to use the failure prone Bergers instead of the many reliable bullets that are readily available.

"Hyperbole??" That means bullsh**, right?

Read more carefully. I didn't say anything directly about recovery percentage. I said "drop right now" percentage being high. Not needing to track is a way to enhance recovery, right?

Question: If the chest contents of an animal are scrambled, and its blood is sloshing around in its body cavity rather than moving through its circulatory system, how would the blood also falling onto the ground make the animal fall any faster?

That's a reasonable working definition.

Internal bleeding drops blood pressure much slower than external bleeding.

Also, with a frangible bullet on a large animal, it's quire possible the chest is not "scrambled" and in fact the heart and far lung are intact or close to it. It all depends on the lottery of where the fragments happen to go, and that's why bullets that penetrate deep and track straight are better. That way you know if your shot is in line with the heart that you'll actually get the heart and both lungs. With a poorly designed bullet like the Berger, there is no such guarantee.