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HUNTING NOTES

A few years ago I got to look through the late Finn Aagaard's hunting notes. They were extensive, because he made most of his living as a guide in his native Kenya and later Texas, where he moved when Kenya banned big game hunting. In the U.S. he also started writing for magazines, making more than occasional references to his notes.

I always admired Finn's articles, and told him so at a SHOT Show in the 1990's, when I spotted him and introduced myself. We visited at SHOT yearly, corresponding in between, and planned to hunt together, but then he passed away, too young, in 2000. But a few years later I got to read his notes, thanks to his widow Berit, who brought them to a shooting event in Texas.

These days I'm about the age Finn was when he left us, and have noticed my memory isn't quite what it used to be, but due a similar compulsion, also have notes on each of my big game animals, including the rifle, sights, ammunition, shot placement, range, etc. Like Finn, I also keep a list of big game taken by hunting companions, after witnessing the shot and results.

As I started to write more about rifles, my notes (like Finn's) began to include more details, such as whether or not the bullet was recovered, and how much weight was retained. (The recovered bullets are organized for future reference--another form of notes--in an over-sized, multi-layer tackle box, but soon may require an additional box.)

In the 1990's firearms companies started inviting me to participate in "field tests" of new rifles, scopes and bullets. Many invitations were primarily for potential publicity, but eventually many were actual test-hunts, before final products were released. Some companies had been burned when they introduced a new big game bullet without actually testing it on game. Instead they'd shot them into test media, and even the best bullets don't always behave so consistently in big game. Soon I started taking "trip notes" in smaller notebooks.

[Linked Image]
These are just some of the volumes of "trip notes." The personal game notes are in a bigger loose-leaf book.

Eventually these trips extended to "cull" hunts several countries, where lots of game was taken because of too-abundant animals on private land. In many of those countries game meat is legally sold, so results in a profit for landowners above what they charge for hunting. Many African landowners used to hire professional cullers to get the meat to market, but In the 2000's some realized safari hunters would pay to cull meat animals, resulting in even more profit.

I went on my first African cull in 2002, and on several more during the next decade, the largest a month-long hunt on two big ranches, where 19 hunters took 185 animals from springbok to Cape buffalo. I accompanied one or two other hunters each day, but also interviewed everybody each evening. They were happy to cooperate, especially after their first beer.

The Barnes Triple-Shock X-Bullet and Nosler AccuBond had been introduced 2-3 years earlier, and were selected for 60% of the rifles used on the hunt. Almost every hunter brought two rifles, what might be called a "deer" rifle and one chambered for a larger cartridge from various .300 magnums to the .375 H&H. Most hunters chose TSXs or ABs for both rifles, though two guys used TSXs in one rifle and ABs in the other. Not far behind the two new bullets was the Nosler Partition, used primarily by older hunters.

After Partitions, only one or two rifles used Speer Grand Slams, Swift A-Frames, Trophy Bonded Bear Claws and Winchester Power-Points. The Power Points may seem to be an odd selection due to the preponderance of "premium" bullets, but were relatively heavy 220s in a .325 WSM and 225s in a .338 Winchester Magnum.

My two rifles were a 7x57 and 9.3x62. The 7x57's handloads included three bullets, 156-grain Norma Oryxes, 160-grain Sierra GameKings and 160-grain North Fork Soft Points. With the same charge of H4350, they all shot to the same point of impact at 100 yards, so could be used interchangeably. (This worked so well that in 2008 the 7x57 went on a 3-week African cull with FIVE different bullets.) The bullets for the 9.3x62 were Noslers, 250-grain AccuBonds and 286-grain Solid Dangerous Game Bullets.

I also took a few animals with my friend Sandy Venitt's .300 Winchester Magnum, the only rifle he brought, with some prototype 180-grain Nosler E-Tips. The bullets arrived too late for me to change my choice of rifles, so I loaded a box of .300's for Sandy's rifle. Along with another friend, Larry Tahler (the organizer of the hunt), I also got to use the Sako .22-250 owned by Rob Klemp, one of the several PH's on the hunt. At the time the rifle was on its fourth barrel, due to culling around 12,000 springbok. We added some more, plus a medium-sized kudu bull with an injured leg. It was Larry's turn to shoot, and he put a 55-grain bullet in the heart as the kudu limped in a slow run 75 yards away.

Large shooting-industry bullet tests also became more common. One provided a bunch of information on the then-new .270 WSM with Winchester ammo featuring 140-grain Fail Safes. It took place on the huge King Ranch in Texas, and included 15 hunters, each allowed to take both a bull and cow nilgai (the tasty elk-sized antelope originally from India) plus a pig and javelina. We all got two nilgai, and enough pigs and javelinas to total over 50 animals.

Another big bullet test took place in New Zealand, with Berger Bullets. Some hunters had discovered Berger Match VLD's worked well on big game, but further research was in order. Seven hunters participated, mostly taking feral goats, plus feral sheep and red and fallow deer. The interesting thing about both the Texas and New Zealand hunts was that upon arrival, the guides predicted the bullets were NOT the right choice for nilgai or feral goats, both considered very tough animals. But by the end of the hunts they'd changed their minds completely--and Fail Safes and Bergers are at the opposite ends of the bullet-expansion spectrum.

Other industry hunts have been good bullet tests as well, though that wasn't their primary purpose. In 2017 I went on a South Texas deer and pig hunt involving Franchi's new bolt-action rifle. All the test rifles were .308 Winchesters, and the Fiocchi ammo provided was loaded with 150-grain Hornady SST's. We took over 30 deer and pigs, and analyzed the bullet performance at the skinning shack each evening--at least what we could, since all the SST's exited.

Enough test-hunts taken place that there's now a special section for the trip journals on my bookshelves. Between the "personal" experience (animals I took myself, or a partner killed) and interviews, the data-base is over 1000 animals, ranging in size from under 100 pounds to around 1500, about evenly split between my own animals, those my partners took, and interviews during hunts. While 1000 animals doesn't compare with Rob Klemp's springbok numbers, the results are far more varied, including more than 100 cartridges from the .223 Remington to .458 Lott, and several dozen different bullets made by companies from A-Square to Woodleigh.

Many of my articles involve close looks at long-held beliefs common among hunters, and the notes have provided considerable information. One was the notion that boattail cup-and-core bullets lose their cores more often than flat-bases. I tended to believe this myself, partly because the first separated bullet recovered, back in the 1970's, was a 130-grain .270 Sierra GameKing boattail from a mule deer buck.

In the process of looking over the notes, including bullets from the tackle box, I decided there were four "degrees of separation":

1) Separation resulting in a failure to penetrate the vitals.
2) Where the core leaves the jacket on impact, but continues into the animal.
3) Where the bullet comes apart after entering the chest cavity.
4) When jacket and core are found loosely together, or close to each other, on the far side of the animal.

I was somewhat startled when my notes did NOT reveal any more tendency for conventional hunting boattails to separate. A good example is that first separation on the mule deer buck, followed by a second incident the very next year on a similar-sized whitetail buck.

I shot the mule deer at about 75 yards as it bounced away up a hillside, and the buck collapsed on the spot. The entrance wound was just about where I'd aimed, at the left rear of the ribcage, and I didn't think much of it until skinning and butchering the buck later, finding the empty jacket at the entrance hole, just under the hide. While butchering the meat I found the core in the right shoulder, which obviously killed the deer

The next fall I shot a similar-sized whitetail buck at 200 yards, this time the rifle a .243 Winchester with a 105-grain Speer Hot-Cor flat-base. He stood broadside, and since the rifle was sighted-in 3" high at 100 yards, the bullet landed somewhat higher than I'd aimed at 200. Again I found the jacket just inside the entrance hole, but only found fragments of the core in the crater blasted through the lower part of the spine.

The other three kinds of bullet separation also resulted in about a 50-50 split. One Hornady 117-grain .25-caliber boattail Interlock came apart on the shoulder joint of a quartering-on mule deer doe at 100 yards, but the deer limped a few yards and stopped, and another bullet in the ribs finished the job. A flat-based 150-grain .30 caliber Winchester Silvertip came apart on the shoulder joint of a young mule deer buck at around 200 yards. This time the deer had to be tracked a half-mile before a second rib-shot put it down. In both instances, muzzle velocity was around 2900 fps.

I've also found quite a few cup-and-cores under the hide on the far side of animals, with the core loose in the jacket, or lying nearby. Again, such results ran about 50-50 between boattails and flat-bases. Instances where the bullet came apart inside the animal were rare with "conventional" cup-and-cores, but common with Berger hunting bullets, which at typical hunting ranges often disintegrate into pieces found scattered through the organs, or against the ribs on the far side.

Many hunters would consider this a liability, but one additional characteristic of Bergers (and some other "target" bullets with tiny hollow-points) is unlike softpoints and plastic-tips, they do NOT start expanding when they hit skin. Instead they typically penetrate 2-3 inches before starting to open, which on rib shots is inside the chest. As a result, Bergers mostly destroy innards, not meat around the entrance hole. In fact, sometimes you have to part the hair to find the hole.

In my experience, Bergers usually don't "hold together" conventionally until quite a ways out there. In New Zealand the only bullet recovered with core inside the jacket was a 140-grain 6.5mm, shot into a big billy goat at around 500 yards with a .264 Winchester Magnum. About a quarter of an inch of the core remained intact inside the base of the jacket. Many hunters would consider this terrible bullet performance, but the goat died very promptly, due to massive damage inside the chest.

This is one reason I started recording the distance animals travel before falling after a typical chest shot. On average, Bergers have dropped big game quicker with behind-the-shoulder hits than any other bullet.

Next in line are a bunch of bullets that average around 50% weight retention, give or take 10-15%. This isn't just my experience, but that of Mike Birch, one of the PH's on two of my African culls, who prefers Hornady Interlocks in his .270 Winchester for culling most plains game. He volunteered this information one evening when a bunch of clients and PH's were sitting around BSing over beers. (By the way, every time I read or hear that "African PH's believe in ------ bullets," I remember that evening, when just as much arguing went on between the PH's as any bunch of hunters.)

These days the average 50% weight retention includes a bunch of bullets, such as Nosler "hunting" Ballistic Tips, the Long Range version of the Nosler AccuBond, and just about any variation of the Hornady Interlock, including the ELD-X and SST.

Of course, the weight retained by cup-and-cores varies with muzzle, impact velocity and what part of an animal it hits. (Variation also occurs with tougher premiums, just not as much.) At muzzle velocities of 2600-2800 fps, some cup-and-cores will retain weight more like Nosler Partitions, and of course often exit. The highest weight retention of any cup-and-core I've recovered was 85%, from a 165-grain Speer Hot-Cor started at about 2800 fps, but many others have retained 60-70%.

Which bullets drop animals quickest depends on several factors, not just bullet placement but the animal's "emotional" state. One fine example is a pair of springbok taken on my first African meat cull.

Among the bullets I used on that hunt was the then-new .375 260-grain Ballistic Tip, handloaded to around 2700 fps from a Ruger No. 1. Several ranch workers on horseback rode around a big, open valley to keep game moving, and this pair of springbok showed up about 100 yards away from me, stopping broadside. I aimed behind the shoulder on the lead animal, and at the shot it collapsed. The second one jumped forward at the report, then stopped and looked around, again broadside. I held the reticle in the same place--and at the shot the springbok started running, after about 100 yards suddenly tipping over. Both shots landed in the same place, and resulted in exit holes that could have accommodated a softball. But the second springbok was startled, and the first wasn't.

The .375 Ballistic Tip not only shot lengthwise through springbok, but broke both shoulders and exited on a gemsbok bull. The only one recovered came from another gemsbok bull that weighed 550 pounds on the ranch scale, where the empty jacket ended up under the hide on the far side, weighing 128 grains. However, the bullet was only available for about a year, because Nosler turned it into one of their first AccuBonds, when their tests determined bonding improved penetration. (It doesn't in every Ballistic Tip, the reason there no 100-grain .25 AccuBond.)

Aside from massive internal-organ damage, another way bullets drop big game quickly is by breaking the supporting bones of the front legs and, often, the spine. If the spine isn't hit the animal can still go a little ways, but with both legs broken they don't go far, though sometimes require a finisher. The gemsbok shot through the "shoulders" only staggered about 30 feet, but I once saw a big mule deer buck go around 25 yards after a similar hit.

The shoulder/spine shot requires stouter bullets, though not always as stout as some hunters believe. Probably half my two dozen trips to Texas involved whitetail and pig culls, and I've often used the shoulder-spine shot to anchor them, especially in the Brush Country. South Texas whitetails aren't all that big, and loads as light as the Federal Power-Shok ("blue box") 100-grain .243 Winchester have dropped mature deer with shoulder-spine shots--with most exiting.

At the other extreme are bullets designed to retain all their weight, such as the late lamented Fail Safe and various monolithics. On animals shot in the ribs behind the shoulders, they have resulted in longest average death-runs of any bullet type. However, because they typically don't lose any weight (and at most lose some or, occasionally, all of their "petals") they result in the second-least amount of meat damage around the entrance hole, next to Bergers. In fact, while recently working on another article, I discovered 70% of the animals Eileen and I have taken over the past five years were with monolithics, for two reasons, the first less meat damage.

Second, monolithics tend to penetrate deeper than lead-cored bullets of equal weight and caliber. The exception would be the Fail Safe, which had a lead rear-core locked inside the jacket with a steel cap, but the expanding front-end worked just like the Barnes X, Nosler E-Tip and Hornady GMX. Combining penetration with lighter bullet weight really helped after Eileen started developing recoil headaches around a dozen years ago, but I am becoming fonder of lighter recoil as well.

[Linked Image]
Eileen has added to the data-base for 35 years now. She took this cow elk locally with a 100-grain Barnes TTSX from her .257 Roberts, but has also taken part in cull hunts in Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa.

Recently the data-base hasn't increased like it did from 1990 to 2012, because I decided not to travel nearly as much, instead hunting near home with family and friends. Due to pretty full freezers, Eileen and I only took three deer in 2018, two mule deer bucks and a doe whitetail. I also helped a friend's daughter take her first big game animal, a whitetail doe, and also accompanied a companion on the lone "industry" hunt of the year, a New Mexico cull for mature bucks with fewer tines than the normal 4x4 conformation.

Here are the results, in the order taken:

1) Phoebe Haefele took a mature whitetail doe at 160 yards, with a 139-grain Hornady flat-base Spire Point at 2800 fps. The deer stood broadside and the bullet broke shoulders and spine, exiting.

2) Holt Bodinson shot a big-bodied old mule deer buck, with a single-fork antler on one side, and a few very small tines growing out of the pedicel on the other, with a 6.5 Creedmoor and Hornady's 143-grain ELD-X factory load. The range was 311 yards, and the buck went 30 yards before falling. The bullet entered the middle of the left ribs and was found in the right shoulder, retaining 74% of its weight.

3) I shot a mature 3x4 buck with the same load at 101 yards. Due to Gambel oak brush, the only really clear shot was through the shoulders and spine. During skinning, I found the bullet under the hide of the far shoulder, the jacket and core maybe half-an-inch apart, together weighing 60.5% of the original weight. (My buck yielded 100 pounds of boned meat, a pretty big mule deer, but Holt's was noticeably bigger.)

4) Eileen took a whitetail doe on a local state hunting area, where centerfire rifles aren't allow due to nearby ranches. She used a 20-gauge slug gun with Winchester's Partition Gold sabot load, a 260-grain .45 caliber Nosler handgun bullet at 1800 fps. The bullet went broadside through both lungs and the top of the heart at 20 yards before exiting--yet the deer ran 120 yards before dropping. (The only previous deer we'd taken with that load was a mature Iowa whitetail buck I shot through shoulders and spine at 40 yards--which also exited.)

5) My Montana mule deer buck was not quite as big-bodied as the New Mexico buck, with smaller 2x3 antlers. The bullet was a 129-grain Nosler AccuBond Long Range, started at 3000 fps from a 6.5 PRC. The buck stood broadside at 159 yards, and the bullet landed behind the shoulder. He staggered sideways two steps and collapsed. The bullet was found under the hide on the far side, retaining 38.5% of its weight.

This fall Phoebe and her father Fred are coming to hunt mule deer, and possibly elk, and we'll be hunting deer for sure--and possibly elk, depending on how much elk we have left in the freezers during the annual pre-season shuffle. We're waiting on draws for other animals. But whatever happens, some new notes will be added.

[Linked Image]
My hunting partner Rob Lancellotti took his first elk on a Montana hunt in 2012, where four of us each got 6-point bulls. Rob's shot was the longest, 345 yards with a 180-grain Nosler Partition from his .30-06--which was also the biggest bullet any of us used. This is one of the hundreds of animals in the data-base taken by hunting partners I was accompanying.


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John Steinbeck
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Good read top to bottom!
I am one of the old guys who has complete faith in Partitions but......I have often wondered about the fascination with Bergers. Now I feel the need to give them a try. Reductions in bloodshot meat is a great characteristic. The explanation (and experience) of their performance makes them kinda intriguing.


Imagine your grave on a windy winter night. You've been dead for 70 years.
It's been 50 since a visitor last paused at your tombstone.....
Now explain why you're in a pissy mood today.
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Interesting article, JB. I also keep notes, usually on the back of the reloading data sheet for the caliber used. My tally is much smaller than yours or I'd have to have a notebook!

My wife thinks I'm morbid when I talk about "testing bullets" and how each one performed. I'm still looking for the perfect bullet.

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fishdog,

Bergers definitely work at "normal" hunting ranges, but many who try them make some mistakes.

First, like many handloaders their minds automatically connect "long-range hunting bullet" with high muzzle velocity. Berger doesn't recommend them starting over 3100 fps, as I recall, and I like no more than 3000 myself. The long-range part comes from their high BC's, and they open well even at 500+ yards when started at 3000, or even less.

Second, they often shoot shoulders, even though Bergers kill so quickly. I haven't had one come part on bone yet, and I've deliberately shot them into shoulder bone on deer-sized animals--but always with muzzle velocities no more than 3000. In fact, one of the problems we had in New Zealand was the first several goats we shot all involved at least one shoulder. While they all dropped right there, one of the things we wanted to test was how quickly they killed with rib shots, so at lunch that first day we all discussed using only rib shots for while. Eileen started answering the question by shooting a big billy at around 200 yards across a canyon maybe 3 inches behind the shoulder. The goat dropped immediately, rolling down the slope.

They also don't penetrate deeply. At closer ranges about 18-20" is about all you can expected from most of 'em, but if feel the need for deeper penetration you can use the old rule for cup-and-core bullets, and use a heavier bullet at, say, 2700 fps.

I really like 'em for meat-saving shots on pretty much broadside animals--but try to place them so the EXIT hole (if there is one) doesn't hit meat.


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Good reading! Thank you


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Thanks for the excellent insight MD!

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Good read, John. A question about those .308 150gr SST's - did many have to penetrate through a whole lotta pig? Impressive none were caught, I presume they were examples of the "toughened up" SSTs.


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"Jimmy, some of it's magic,
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M D,......... A good read indeed. Thanks for sharing your insights, experiences, and observations. I'll never need an actual notebook but I have written some of my hunting experiences and observations down. Many years ago an old hunter told me to do that. Because he had done it and was glad he did because otherwise he couldn't recall all the important details.

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Son of the Gael,

The biggest pig killed, which weighed close to 200 pounds on the ranch scale, was shot through both shoulders. The biggest deer killed was also close to 200, and was quartering somewhat to the shooter. The bullet landed just behind the big shoulder joint, and exited the flank on the other side. Personally saw two bucks shot through both shoulders.

That said, the advertised muzzle velocity is 2820 fps (I looked it up on Fiocchi's site) but the rifles had 22" barrels, rather than the standard SAAMI test-length of 24", so actual velocity was probably in the 2750 area, give or take. Still, I never expected ALL of them to exit.


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JB, thank you, that sounds plenty tough enough.


'Four legs good, two legs baaaad."
----------------------------------------------
"Jimmy, some of it's magic,
Some of it's tragic,
But I had a good life all the way."
(Jimmy Buffett)

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