Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles What is bullet failure?????

Bullet failure.....

Is that the same as Projectile Dysfunction?

Wisdom

R O F


Jerry

"Bullet failure" is the failure of a bullet to perform in the manner for which it was designed and marketed, My definition, others may vary.

For example:
* The tip falls out of a tipped bullet before it impacts a target (including before even being fired).
* A bullet designed to provide high weight retention, even if bone is hit, instead disintegrates and weight retention is low.

Massive exit wounds are NOT necessarily due to bullet failure. A bullet hitting bone can cause bone fragments to blow a fist-sized exit. BTDT, with monos.

Entrance and exit holes don’t tell the whole story. The wound channel in between them is a better indicator of terminal performance.

Rephrase as "bullet company failure".

When a company advertises a certain bullet as a "big game bullet", most will rightly assume that it will work fine for deer with any given shot opportunity. That just isn't reality. Hornady isn't the only one to blame. Winchester and Nosler have done it, Speer and Sierra have done it. It can be factory ammo or component bullets.


Or, in some cases it is the consumer, using the wrong bullets for the wrong application. Sure, a 130 grain hollow point out of a 300 Win. Mag. will kill a deer with a broadside lung shot, so will a 22 LR. That's not the point. Having a entrance hole you could throw a softball through isn't really great performance for a big game bullet.


You have to think of the worst case scenario, and the worst thing that could happen with a shot, or sometimes, the only shot opportunity that arises. Many bullets on the market will not get sufficient penetration when it is needed. Having a bullet stay in an animal has nothing to do with how much energy that animal "absorbed". The energy is transferring along the entire path, starting when the skin on the entrance hole is pierced.


Here in Michigan, the hot cartridge is the 450 Bushmaster. There have been probably 10,000 or more sold here in the past few years. However, 95%+ hunters are using the Hornady 250 grain FTX factory load in either the black or custom ammo box (same exact load, different marketing). They took a muzzleloader bullet, and loaded it in the 450. And the actual field results are not good. Numerous reports of lack of penetration, bullets fragmenting, and no exits, even on broadside shots. This is a 250 grain bullet at 2200 FPS. Pretty pathetic coming from a company like Hornady. Yes, the choice of that bullet was a failure, on the part of Hornady. The accuracy is great, but that can't be credited just to the bullet.

I have collected and studied terminal performance for decades. I have in excess of 200 bullets recovered from game animals. Many from clients when I was an elk guide. I use almost exclusively Nosler Partions after watching other types fail. In the last decade I have been trying conventional bullets just because. This year I has a failure in a 250 Savage used on a mule deer doe. I shot her facing me slightly quartering. The bullet was the world renowned Remington Cor-Lokt round nose. Impact velocity was estimated at 2500 fps. The bullet hit one small rib and then came apart. I recovered the jacket from the stomach cavity and after 3 attempts with metal detectors I was unable to find the core. And no it did not kill her. About a half hour later I tracked her down and finished her off as she was walking away.

Crap that's funny......

For me, varmint bullets that fail to come apart and big game bullets that do are both examples of "bullet failure".

Not what I want either of them to do and i try to choose accordingly.

X2 when an adequate caliber and bullet weight/construction was used for the intended game

I had a 7mm 140 grain Barnes TSX not open on a grizzly once. The tip got bent when it entered and it just bounced around in there like a FMJ. I recovered the bullet under the hide on the same side that it entered.

The bear still died, but it was a bit of a rodeo.

Thats what partitions are supposed to do. enter, expand and disperse the front half and the rear shank keeps on trucking with caliber size exit.

I had another bullet failure today here in Montana

I say the shooter decides what constitutes a failure. I have certain expectations of the bullets I shoot. If I shoot a Nosler Partition out of my 6.5x55 at 2800 FPS and it blows apart penetrating only 6 inches into the vitals, that's a failure to me irrespective of whether or not the animal dies. I know people who would be thrilled with the performance as long as the deer died. They wouldn't hold any curiosity of what became of the bullet after the deer dropped.

Federal didn't make Silvertips, Winchester did. I killed alot of deer with 170 gr. .30-30 Silvertips and always got quick kills with good expansion from them. They were my favorite until Winchester discontinued them a few years ago.

They were my favorites too.

Jordan, The wound channel matched the entrance/exit wounds.

Chet, I hear of more “failures” with monos than anything

There is really no such thing....it always fall back to the shooter....if a bullet fails it was still the shooters poor choice of said bullet for a situation.
I have had several bullets blow up on impact....always my fault , poor choice in bullet for that given situation...
Som say the old cor loc tend to fail but has not been my experience..

Rainierrifleco. , the older Rem Cor-Lokts had a thicker jacket and kind of a thicker band at the cannalure. Stating around 1970 the Cor-Lokts just became a thin jacketed standard cup and core bullet. If you look at Remington catalogs from before and after the early 70.s they show pictures of their sectioned bullets and you can see the older had heavier jackets and a waist. Their round nose has a heavier jacket than their pointed bullets. I have had terrible luck with Remington bullets in the past and this years experience even with older round nose has left a bad taste in my mouth. I have seen maybe a 100 head of big game, mainly mule deer and elk shot with Partitions and have never seen a failure. Many people believe they didn't expand because the exit hole is small. They have a very thin jacket at the nose for rapid expansion and usually loose the front lead, and the jacket peels back to just barely larger than caliber for a deep penetrating flat nose solid. Judman had heard that some monos have failed. I had one fail on a broadside lung shot mule deer. The bullet was a VERY early Barnes and they had this problem that the supposedly have corrected.