Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Who wrote this?

Bullets are much better made than they once were. But heck, they had to improve. Some people talked about bullet failures, but you shouldn't forget those new, more powerful cartridges that kept coming to market. They required better, more stoutly constructed bullets too.

If you go back to the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, little things like jackets, spitzers instead of RNs, and a bit later, interlocking rings, made bullets better. They were big improvements, and important steps along the way.

Improvements never seem to be good enough however. Back before tree huggers determined that lead bullets were bad for wildlife, the standard was a big chunk of lead, shaped into a round nose, or a simple jacketed bullet - often an RN. From a technological perspective, heavy, jacketed projectiles made sense on large or dangerous game. After all, heavy lead bullets worked from 45-70s and other cartridges of that time. And of course, H mantels, bonded and copper bullets weren't mainstream yet.

Although they weren't the answer to every shooting situation, heavyweights usually got the job done. Just think of what was in common use back when Elmer or Jack hunted large, toothy creatures - a 220 grain bullet, fired from a 30-06.

More powerful offerings like the 7mm and 300 Magnum were born before there were many bullets that could hold together at their increased impact velocities. Bullet design had to catch up...again.

It's always about the need to improve.

Copper bullets have given hunters more options. Before about 1990, not many people, apart from poachers, would have considered using .224 bullets on whitetails. That was until Barnes figured out how to make the petals peel properly. They are also cheaper than Partitions and not as "old school". Their only possible downside might be that they have to be pushed fast, but their R&D folks did a great job notwithstanding.

We always complain about bullet performance. What will be next? Designers continue to make something better. It's the circle of life.

---

We can't return,
We can only look, behind from where we came.
And go round and round and round, in the circle game.

Joni Mitchell wrote it, but Buffy Sainte Marie did the best version.

I resemble that remark. However, the reasoning behind it is not quite right.

I'm into Hornady IL SP's for the simple reason that they do what they need to do at the cheapest price. I only got into shooting in the early 80's and into reloading in 2000. The "Good Old Days" for me are a world where there was already premium bullets. However, the idea of spending $10 for 100 versus $20 for 50 seemed like a concept that needed careful thought. Best? I've only had two bullets recovered in all those years-- 3 if you include the whole rest of camp. The rest all went into the dirt. 2 were Hornady IL's. One was a cast lead bullet out of a .54 Hawken. With few exceptions, the deer died right where they stood, or you could go stand in the tracks and see the hooves up in the air. In the one case (30-30 WIN) I finally got my sons to fess up that they were closing their eyes. Once they started keeping their eyes open, the deer fell dead. There may be a lot of stuff going wrong in our camp, but bullet failure is not one of them.

Back before my first boar hunt, my buddy Jerry took me to the store to find some bullets. He was going to teach me all he could about reloading. He showed me the red and white boxes (Hornady) and the black and gold boxes (Nosler).

" Ya use the red ones for practice and deer and pigs and such, and you switch to the Noslers when ya really need it."

That was about 1984. I've never felt the need yet.

To relate that back to O'Connor and Keith: Remember that it still makes sense. If you're not sure if the bullet may hold up, going up in weight might very well fix it. If you're used to hitting whitetails in the ribs and now you've got to break shoulder bladed on an elk, bullet weight and diameter are two things you can control. Paying 2X or more better bullet may not be the best way to go.

Well, for my part, and I'm no ballistician or whatever you call him, but basic bullet performance to me is more dependent on bullet construction, not caliber. Yeah, a .375 has got more ass to it so it can penetrate farther, but that could also depend on all else being equal.

The theory of it is that if you have a bigger bullet and it sheds weight as it goes through, the chunks will be bigger. With a larger caliber, the idea is that it makes a bigger hole than a smaller caliber. You can argue about weight retention and all, but you can't argue about the idea that a 44 bullet makes a hole going in that's bigger than a 22. If there isn't any truth to this, then the 45-70 would have died out decades ago. And now, btw, we're back to the whole Keith vs. O'Connor argument at its core: (big and slow vs. small and fast)