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

I don't hunt moose or rams as there aren't any around here. The last deer I shot with a 100 gr. power shok from my .243 was quartering to at 50 yards. The bullet hit the ball/socket joint and blew it to pieces, continued on through the chest cavity pulping the lungs and exited at the last rib on the far side. Plenty good performance for me.

I would like you to explain how bullets like FMJs and solids designed for the deepest straight line penetration tumble, but not expanding bullets.

Edited to add:

Never mind. The only time what you are peeing down your leg about comes into play is if the bullet is not stabilized or is only very marginally stabilized, Even at that, with a pointed bullet the front has far, far less resistance upon entering an animal if it has not expanded so the tendency for tumbling based on a heavier base is substantially offset. Further, the whole argument you are trying to put forth falls on it's ass when boat tail bullets are the subject since in their case that base is lighter.

Bent monos are a very, very strong indicator that the bullet was traveling sideways at impact. Monos tumbling because they are considerably longer than lead core bullets of the same weight is a pretty common occurrence. People think they need to shoot the heaviest bullet available for the caliber and they quite often to not have a barrel twisted to stabilize them. The same people who talk the kind of nonsense you are talking often enough don't even bother to sight in at 100 yards much less any further.

I have carefully examined a lot of deer shot with monos and have yet to see evidence of them tumbling once inside an animal. I have seen a lot of instances where they managed a side profile impact on paper even at as little as 25 yards. Far more with monos than all the rest of the lead core bullets I ever used in my life and I started loading them in 1956. A mono after going through a plastic sign backer and striking red oak 15-20 feet back hasn't shed enough velocity to make much difference, and I have seen them already tumbled enough to go butt first into the tree and when they do that they usually have a very characteristic tip deformation that looks just like some of the pictures in this thread, and typically do not bend..

Bullet Failure



It didn't expand.

It didn't make two holes.

It didn't butcher and package the pork.

It didn't ricochet off bones making a huge gory wound channel.

It retained over 90% of weight







Don't EVER use CB shorts. It is a heavy burden but I'll do what I can to dispose of current production.

Thanks, Miles, for showing us a perfect example of confirmation bias. And a perfect example of social Marxism before you edited your comment. Most of us look at results and try to draw conclusions, rather than having a set value in mind that cannot be altered, regardless of the outcome, thus it was "shooter error". I could tell you some stories that were not shooter error that involved a couple boxes of 22 cal 53gr bullets and very close range shooting. But then you'd have to give up your set value of Barnes bullets being fail-proof.

I never had a Corlokt fail.....reckon the clock is ticking on that one.

Not all FMJ and solid bullets are designed for or achieve straight line penetration. In fact pointed FMJ and/or solid bullets tend to tumble (or more accurately, swap ends) in flesh, as the centre of mass is well to the rear. As the bullet decelerates rapidly on striking flesh it starts to yaw and eventually swap ends, as the heavier base overtakes the point. This effect was first noted over a century ago, and also noted to dramatically increase the wounding potential compared to earlier round-nose designs which tended to maintain stability and a point-forward track, though the results were and are variable. Some bullet designs were modified to accentuate this propensity, such as the British Mk VII .303 bullet.

The tumbling puts a massive bending stress on the bullet too, enough with some designs for bullets to break at the cannelure and even fragment as a result. These results have been well documented.

A bullet which is is comparatively blunt - more or less a cylinder - will have a great deal less propensity to tumble, and more likelihood of travelling more or less straight in flesh. This is because the weight is further forward. You'll notice that solids intended for really big game tend to have a very blunt form, and it is for this very reason.

A bullet which mushrooms on impact effectively adopts a weight-forward form, again enhancing the likelihood of travelling more or less straight, rather than tumbling.

I see no reason why a monometal bullet of pointed form which does not expand won't behave like a pointed FMJ when it comes to tumbling. It might have less propensity to come apart than a thinly jacketed FMJ with a cannelure, but that would be about it. Non-expanding monometal pointed bullets aren't new, and their propensity to swap ends after entering flesh, just like the FMJ counterparts, was first noted over a century ago.

The man from Oz makes a good point, no pun intended.

300 grains for the .44 mag



Stuff dies and the bullets resemble this, day in, day out.



97% retained weight, pure lead.

Bullet failure is when I miss the animal and blame the bullet.
I switch bullets, shoot and animal, it dies, and I confirm my conviction.

This is how I eliminated Berger VLD hunting bullets from my act and now use NAB, NBT, and HNDY SST.

When I shoot a deer I don't want violent expansion and a big area of bloodshot meat. I want the bullet to travel through and make a hole in the offside. I shot one last weekend with a 30-06 Remington Core- Lokt 165 and the bullet didn't exit. It bruised up too much meat. Bullet was half the original weight. It did kill the deer within sight so it wasn't a total failure. But I prefer a bullet that stays together better and won't use Core-lokt again. I retired my 243 over code lokts.

To answer all of the people who think a rifle bullet is designed to tumble in one post.

Air is a fluid medium and bullets that tumble in air are poorly or not at all stabilized. Bullets striking flesh and bullets striking water behave quite similarly. Line up a dozen milk jugs of water and shoot them. If you blow up the first one and the bullet deflects out and never touches another do you want to shoot Bambi with it? Not if you have half a brain! I test EVERY bullet in EVERY rifle I use in milk jugs like this To prove to myself that they will open at a minimum velocity and that they are spinning enough to be stable. If you do not have enough spin on a bullet it will indeed tumble and deflect as a result which is useless for hunting BECAUSE IT BECOME POKE AND HOPE THAT IT GOES WHERE YOU WANT IT TO, not where you are intending it to go. That by definition is shooter error. Either you choose a bullet for that rifle at that a speed and rotation that stabilizes it in flight and through the target or you live with the consequences. Blame yourself, it's up to you to make sure that it works right. That applies to factory ammo just as well as hand loaded ammo. Testing it to be sure it does what it is supposed to in your rifle is what teaches people that a 58 grain VMax at 3600 FPS is not a Bambi killer any more so than a 70 grain .224 TSX in a 12 twist .223 is. Neither works for [bleep] and it is always on the shooter for those kind of failures.

Rifled barrels are there to stabilize the bullet! Twist rates are the critical item in that equation. You have to stabilize the bullet for the target!

Now those I do NOT trust. Seen them blow up, up close and at distance.

Love to hear the details of the bullets "blowing up"...

Both out of a 7mm rem mag. 168 gr VLD. Blew up on a mule deer shoulder shot under 100 yards. The other was at 350 yards. Both superficial wounds about the size of a small paper plate. No penetration to the vitals. Had to be put down by shooting them again.
Do not ask me how but when they were shot again they worked ok.

Sigh.....


Educate yourself-

https://www.ar15.com/ammo/project/Self_Defense_Ammo_FAQ/

http://www.rkba.org/research/fackler/wrong.html


Google Gary K. Roberts and Martin L. Fackler. Read.






You doubled down on your ignorance. Are you going to triple down and run into stupidity?

After years of avoiding this site for all the BS published, I now drop in every few days to see how long you can endure it, Form. It says nothing good about my character that I enjoy it, but really do wonder how long you'll keep trying. I hope you're making a difference.

Before there as a www, there was usenet with a gun forum, rec.guns.


Before the www got going and there were gun lists ~ 1995, I had already realized a gun forum could not discuss terminal ballistics in a civil way.

Over 20 years ago the fight always seemed to be the FBI reports.

From 1989:

There is no valid, scientific analysis of actual shooting results in existence, or being pursued to date. It is
an unfortunate vacuum because a wealth of data exists, and new data is being sadly generated every
day. There are some well publicized, so called analyses of shooting incidents being promoted, however,
they are greatly flawed. Conclusions are reached based on samples so small that they are meaningless.

http://gundata.org/images/fbi-handgun-ballistics.pdf

He certainly is for me. How I select, mount, zero, and use scopes over the past year has been styled off of reading his posts, doing what he says, and marveling at how well it works. I hope he keeps it up for a long time.

"Data from ballistics studies 10, 13, 14) show quite clearly that:

Bullets fired from a properly designed rifle yaw no more than a few degrees in flight, regardless of velocity.
In their path through tissue, all nondeforming pointed bullets, and some round-nos"ed ones, yaw to 180 degrees, ending their path traveling base forward (Figs 3 and 5).
Anyone gullible enough to believe Fackler in any way after reading the following"

Is too stupid to hold a discussion with. All it takes is a very few videos of bullets going through ballistic gel to demonstrate Fackler is FOS. Just like you.

Laughing....

Laughing....