Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Failed bullets

What calibers and bullets have you hit elk but never recovered them? Be honest now. What do you attribute the failure to?

Since when is not recovering a bullet a failure?

I think he means never recovered the elk. and round and round we are about to go......

If the Elk walked or ran away? 99% of the time it was not the bullets fault, what are you looking for an excuse?? Roi7

Read again...

More than likely bullet placement is the problem, not bullet construction.

Ed, in the English language, the reference to them applies to the first noun in the sentence, hence the reference to bullets and calibers. He needs to make the question more clear.

Only failure to recover the bull was with a .35 Whelen 225 gr Trophy Bonded Bear Claw at about 240 yards. Tracked sparse blood for over a mile and lost the track. It was obviously poor shot placement as every other critter I shot with that load only went a few steps, if any. I have never recovered a Barnes TSX or TTSX bullet, but all the critters went down immediately. Happy Trails

Bullets don't fail. Using one of the wrong construction, pushing them too fast, and error in shot placement usually is culprit 99% of the time. All human failure

Game that didn't bleed were all misses...i assume. Game that bled and "got away" were bad shots...i assume. Theres no way to actually know what happened in the first two scenarios. Game that died and i actually recovered a bullet...well, the bullet worked i guess. That said, there have been numerous posts about bullets working and not working on the campfire. I have recovered elk that had been shot in previous seasons and lived and elk that i shot but thought the bullet should have behaved..."better".

Pictures of bullets recovered from elk that were shot in a previous season and lived until i shot them...

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...mium-bullets-needed-for-elk#Post15625911

This has been hashed out Ad nauseam, but here goes again: I've hit 8-10 elk on the shoulder/shoulder blade with 6.5 mm 140 hunting bergers. I only lost one but had to run down a few others and finish them off with head shots. Once I got them home and cut up at least two had a spiderwebbed cracks on their scapula from where the bullet hit and didn't penetrate, just like how a rock chip spiderwebs a windshield. I now wish I looked more at the other elk shoulders blades, and took pictures.

John Burns has me half convinced it is my particular barrel being hard on the bullets and not the bullets themselves, as I am having 147 ELDs from a few different lots explode in mid air with the same rifle and sub 3000 FPS MV, 1/8 twist ballistics.........I dunno but it has made me wonder.

My only other experience with bergers is from when the hunting VLD first came out several years ago, out of some sort of .300 caliber round some guy I was guiding had. They were less than impressive on elk as well, but they were also the first generation.

14-0

Only bull that made it out of sight was hard quartering to me, showing his left side. The 180 grain Partition hit him pretty far back in his left lung, nicked a lobe of his liver, then traveled above the gut to lodge in front of his right femur. He made it about 75-100 yards. I recovered the bullet.

Partitions, Core-Lokts, Eld-x.

300 Wby Mag, 7mm Rem Mag, .30-06, 7mm-08.

I've never lost a game animal that was hit where it was supposed to be hit.

But, I have had what I consider bad bullet performance. Yeah the animals died.....

I shot a really big buck in Va, last muzzleloader season.

I was using a 250gr Barnes TMZ....just like the TTSX. MV around 2100. Shot was 60 yards.

Punched him through the shoulders and center punched the heart. Obviously didn't go far, but the exit wound was identical to the entrance wound.

Looked like it didn't open at all.

Not to sure I'm going to use them this ML season.

I would be willing to bet that 99.9999% of elk that are lost after being shot with hunting bullets are lost due to either poor shot placement or poor tracking skills. Today's bullets are very effective and if placed in the vitals will kill any elk that ever lived.

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THIS Rio7

My point exactly. It is not usually the bullet that fails but the man behind the gun. Cup and core bullets work just fine if you put in them in the proper location. The only surprise was no one attributed it to hitting a twig or brush deflecting the bullet. No need for ad nauseam.

If the elk was “never recovered” you don’t know what happened.
Bullets only fail if they do not meet claims made by the manufacture.

None.

284 160gr accubond

308 200gr partition

338 225gr barnes x
338 250gr partition

375 235gr barnes x
375 250gr barnes x
375 300gr partition

cup and cores are for locals.

I've never lost an elk that I hit but I have had a bullet come apart. 180 gr AB out of a 300 WSM. It hit a rib and blew up. I found the jacket inside the ribs on the far side and later found the core in the heart. I can see that if it hit a leg bone but not a rib. I really lucked out with that little bit of lead in the heart. It was enough to ground him within 10 yds.

I've had consistent failures with three 180 grain Nosler Combined Technology slugs on elk launched from a 30-378 at an average velocity of 3,385 fps. Right in the kill zone and the slug never makes it to the far side of the body cavity. Obviously its coming apart, but none of the elk have complained. Did not get an exit wound on an Alaska moose either.