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

if nothing else water media is a 'hard' test of a projectiles integrity-construction and not what one typically encounters
(so is crash testing cars into controlled environment immovable walls not the conditions drivers usually encounter in
an impact)
but Large vats of water are valued and very effectively used as a practical bullet stop method when doing other testing.

Wet telephone books can provide for extraordinarily impressive wound channels and exit -holes , despite the fact
shear and tensile properties of wet paper are far from that of live tissue.

Ballistic gel is also another somewhat deceiving test.



there's an explanation Ive heard on forums for shot animals taking steps

,...' looking at the internals and blood loss - they were already dead but didn't know it.'

Is there ANY test that accurately represents what a bullet will do in flesh and bone? I’d say no. Gelatin can be correlated to the density and viscosity of muscle tissue but doing so requires careful preparation and calibration. Even then it is not an exact match for flesh, let alone bone. The best that can be said for it is that properly calibrated gelatin is better than some/most other media for some test types.

The downsides of gelatin include the time, effort and cost of preparation and calibration. While uncalibrated gelatin can be used, any test results obtained with such gelatin are much less informative because there is no way to compensate for differences in density or viscosity.

Enter water jugs. They are quick, easy, consistent and cheap (often free) and no calibration is required. Density remains virtually constant over a wide range of temperatures – from just above freezing to too hot to handle. Viscosity is about 50% higher at 50F than 90F, so if that is a concern simply choose a narrower range of temps in which to do your testing. (I prefer hot summer days.) The downside is, well, things get wet. Wear your mudders. (I wear my hunting boots.)

Over the years I’ve tested a lot of different rifle bullets in water jugs, as well as some for handguns. (I’ve also used cinder block and other media and find water to be much more informative.) Water jugs, in spite of being a “hard” media, do provide useful information regarding bullet performance, as do “soft” media targets. What I’ve found is that while results are not identical for water and flesh/bone, there is a decent correlation. My goal for big game bullets is reliable, controlled and limited expansion with high weight retention. Some bullets provide this behavior over a wide range of impact velocities in both water and flesh/bone, others not so much.

One test I ran sent standard cup-and-core bullets through single one-gallon milk jugs filled with water with witness targets a foot or two behind the jugs. Anyone concerned about lead ingestion should give this a try. Almost every C&C bullet target looked like it had been used as a shotgun target.

Another guy wasting their time..

Your statement that the results obtained of shooting water jugs "isnt [sic] representitive [sic] in any way of what a bullet does when it hits flesh" is demonstrably wrong. I've recovered bullets of various designs from both water and animals and challenge anyone to tell which are which. Other bullet designs that have come apart in animals have also come apart in water jugs. Water jugs may not be the best test media for all purposes but it is an excellent media for some - especially for informal testing for the reasons stated in my previous post - and there is in fact a positive if less than perfect correlation between the results so obtained and those one that are observed in flesh and bone.

There is, in fact, NO media, including calibrated gelatin, that has a perfect correlation with results obtained with flesh and blood. None.

It's my time and whether or not it is "wasted" is for me to decide, not you. From my perspective, the time spent shooting water jugs with friends has been highly enjoyable and provided results quite similar to what we've seen in the field. "Wasted"? Not at all, although I will say the results were pretty much as expected.

Could you please elaborate on this? Is this based on qualitative observations, or did you record measurements and do a comparison of data from jugs vs. animals?

Coyote Hunter, I agree with your thoughts. While water jugs do not perfectly replicate animal tissue....it does give some idea of what to expect from the bullets reaction upon contact with flesh. If a bullet comes apart, or dramatically sheds weight when penetrating a few water jugs.....what will it do when contacting heavy bone or is required to penetrate “many” inches of animal due to the shot angle required.

I’ll take a bullet that will repeatedly retain a high percentage of weight, while penetrating more than two or three jugs. If I could be guaranteed a perfect broadside shot every time, and at distances where the “diminished” velocity will help keep the bullet from “grenading”.....I might, just maybe, consider that bullet! Upon reflection.....”He’ll No”, I wouldn’t! Water jugs may not be the perfect test medium.....but they beat the heck out of hoping and guessing! memtb

Penetration and weight retention is one way people choose to judge bullet perfromance. With an FMJ being the ideal bullet, I guess?

I am not exactly sure if I am reading this correctly, but I have seen water jugs and recovered bullets and compared them and they seem to work for me. I don't really care that jugs aren't animals, they are decent enough to know what to expect most of the time. They aren't infallible by any stretch, but it is better than guessing and gives me a point of reference.

Just as one example I have of similar results.





That was shot into a bull elk at about 150 yards from my 338..

Here is the same bullet from the water jugs.





Partitions, Accubonds, BBC's and similar have all been about the same. I don't mind wasting my time to be honest. I'd rather have an idea of how something works than take the larger chance on an animal.

Beats the heck out of bullet that comes apart, and fails to reach the vitals! Hard cast bullets, and solids (used for the large African game) seem to kill pretty well. The don’t expand, or do so minimally, and yet are relied upon by those who are knowledged hunters! memtb

Ideal for what purpose? Compliance with the Geneva Convention, to which the USA is not a signatory, perhaps. Certainly not for what I want in a hunting bullet, whether for varmints or big game.

Ideal for penetration and weight retention, obviously. But it's not what I want from a bullet either so we agree on that.

How much actual experience do you have with testing in properly calibrated ballistic gel?









To all-


The problem with water jugs is they VASTLY overstate expansion of bullets. So hard bullets come out looking much better than they really do in tissue, and soft bullets look worse.

That’s all you can get out of jugs- looks. What wounds they will create and how well they kill can not be correlated from jugs. Performance in ballistic gelatin can be correlated to tissue, however.

Jeez, talk about "thin-skinned game." First, I didn't say anyone was "wasting their time," because how you spend your time is none of my concern. Second, my question was not directed to you, it was to CH and it was very specific. If you want to say "I shoot bullets into water jugs and I shoot them into game and they look the same to me" that's a qualitative anecdotal observation and that's not anything I questioned; your observations are your observations.

But if someone wants to describe the correlation between two data sets, that's a different ballgame, hence the question.

The only bullet failure I ever experienced was the very first generation of Nosler Ballistic Tips in the mid 60's.
I found tips on the outside of the entrance hole and the bullets failed to penetrate leaving many wounded animals.
I initially tried them in 2 Weatherby Mark V's .257 Magnum, a 7x57, 7mm Remington Magnum and a .300 Winchester Magnum.
Tried some 200's in a .338 during the early 90's with similar results then dropped them until the new century.

One of the reasons I favored Woodleigh's is that all bullets are tested on game before release and Aussies have no idea what ballistic gel is or any other synthetic substitute. There is enough feral game over there to test everything on muscle and bone with no seasons or bag limits. This was very helpful for a writer who also had a very experienced readership.
Things change, in my time, Speer was the hardest, Sierra the softest, Hornady and Nosler at the top of the tree with standard cartridges.

In today's market, we have the very best bullets in ballistic history so whinging about it and trying to score points is really quite silly, as it doesn't sway opinion or create friendships.

SP, that was absolutely not directed at you in a poor way. I apologize if it looked like I was pointing out what you said, I was just quoting you with the comparison of jugs versus animals taken. I have a pretty decent amount of game recovered bullets and jug recovered bullets that I have collected over the years, so I meant its easy way for different folks to test bullets all over the place and have a cheap medium which we all have access too. No issues here man, I listen to learn from all of you and love to see what bullets do and how they act on animals. It's looney'ism to the nth degree, but I enjoy learning from everyones experience.

It's all good B, and by the way, what were those bullets in your photos?

None. Nor do I ever expect to do so as I would consider it an unnecessary waste of my time and money.


You just correlated water jug testing to actual performance in tissue.



That may be all you get out of jugs.

Most of the bullets I've recovered from game look similar to those recovered from water jugs. Works for me.

Laughing....

Both qualitative and quantitative observations. The quantitative (measured) results that have been made were superfluous but done out of curiosity. In every case a visual inspection of the recovered bullets told me what I wanted to know, whether from water jugs or game.

So when you talk about "positive correlation" you're just talking about your personal observations of what the bullets looked like?