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Worst bullets for killing game?

Simple, the ones that miss!🤣

I wasn’t impressed with them at all. I hit a 220 pound sow trapped in a feeder pen with a 140 Berger out of a 264 Win mag. She went down, got back up a minute later, went back to eating corn like nothing happened. She had a big flesh wound on that shoulder. I had some loaded with 140 partitions with me. She did not get up after hit with a partition. It was 60 yards to that pen.

The 168 VLD has been a real killer on deer and pigs out of a 308.

All bullets that hit wrong spot are bad ..
Stunt shooters beware..

The early Nosler ballistic tip bullets were chit for hunting bullets, I hear they are better now but I have no desire to try them again.....Hb

The very early 130gn .270cal Hornady SST's shot out of my 270WSM were the worst performing bullets I've ever seen, they were super fragile and vaporized at the slightest resistance. From memory, the 270cal 130gn bullet was the first in Hornady line of SST bullets, I only used them a few times then switched the 140gn Accubonds and never looked back.

Nosier bt out of a 250-3000 blew up on the shoulder of a big buck. No more. Edk

I'll echo what others have said - the early Ballistic Tips were ghastly.

I wouldn't really call it a failure, since they killed the crap out of the deer, but the old Hornady 240XTP out of a 44 Mag rifle were absolute meat grinders... looked like a hand grenade went of in there. Behind the shoulder shots, I found jacket fragments clear in the rear quarters.

I ended up switching to flat point 240s after a couple of those shrapnel bombs.

I agree with that notion, although some game bullets do turn out to be "softer" than expected, while others might be the opposite. The early Ballistic Tips and SSTs (along with the current W-W Deer Season XP) are pretty dang quick and violent on expansion. If you know that going in, you can work with it. If you don't know, that's when you get some bad experiences.

I was thinking about this the other morning when I was driving to work. People complain (myself included) at times, when it comes to the cost of a controlled-expansion bullet, say it's a 150gr .308 bullet. But that bullet has to be able to work near and far at speeds from close-range 300 Magnum hits to 400yd 308Win hits. That's asking a lot. And it needs to work on a broadside 100lb whitetail doe in those scenarios, as well as an angling shot on a 300lb mule deer buck. Years ago, you just bought 150 cup/cores for your .308Win and 200gr cup/cores for your magnum, as the bullet company had (hopefully) made that simple and cheap bullet to be effective within its intended design parameters. That's why nobody was that surprised if you blew up a ton of meat with a 150gr cup/core from a 30yd shot from a 300Wby. You were obviously using a bullet that was meant and built to perform nicely in a 300 Savage or .308Win. As a hunter, you were expected to research this and know what's what.

I don't use Bergers anymore. I have shot several deer and pigs with the 140's. I have not lost an animal, but just not happy with the results. Little to no blood trails.

" The bullet penciled through" (or some form thereof) is repeated in this thread.

How do these "evaluators" know this?

It is the vast majority of my experience that a bullet passing through an animal has escaped any chance of such scrutiny and definitive conclusion as to its actual performance while inside the animal.

Perhaps the only statement making less sense is concluding "bullet failure" based solely on appearance of a bullet (or pieces thereof) recovered from inside an animal that the bullet successfully killed.

Early Ballistic Tips (never touted as sturdy) WERE more fragile than the current ones, but it became then and is the bullet of choice now for our Deer/Antelope camp of 54 years. If dead game is the measure, they have never "failed".

Early Ballistic Tips WERE more accurate, too.

An early 150gr Ballistic Tip from a .270 impacted the BALL of the shoulder of a 6x6 Bob Marshall bull, and exited through the BLADE of the far shoulder at 175yards, rolling him in a cloud of powder snow, dead before he quit skidding.

I’ll play.

The old red and white box Federal 150 grain 30 cal Hi Shok bullets. They didn’t hold together well when hitting the brush I tried to shoot through as a kid.

They worked fine when I learned to wait for open shots.

A far better way of conveying what I was trying to say. I love it.

^^^^^^^^
Got to be one for the “You Gotta Be Sheiting Me, Private Pyle” file. Barnes TTSX and LRX are stone cold killers.
Sorry, bro.

Speaking solely of my experience. When I refer to a bullet “penciling through” or ice picking, it’s in reference to a bullet failing to expand. When you drag the guts out of a deer and the lungs have a hole approximately bullet diameter it’s a pretty good sign expansion didn’t happen. I saw this more than once when I was loading the early Barnes X bullets without a chronograph and found out later I wasn’t getting enough velocity to keep them in their design window for expansion. I also recovered a couple that had barely begun to open, the petals were no wider than the bullet shank.

They weren’t bad bullets, I just wasn’t using them correctly.

https://www.hornady.com/bullets/rifle/7mm-284-162-gr-interlock-btsp#!/


Running shot on a large mule deer buck at 300 yards uphill , the bullet completely disintegrated , there was pieces everywhere. small entrance wound, no exit. 7mm rem mag.

"When you drag the guts out of a deer and the lungs have a hole approximately bullet diameter it’s a pretty good sign expansion didn’t happen."

OR it's a pretty good sign expansion happened way too early, and the "pencil hole" was caused by a fragment or base section. OR its an equally good sign the bullet may have been damaged prior to arrival at the animal. Without the recovered bullet or a degree in forensics, we cannot know.

Your ones recovered are fair support of your theory (begging the question how they were recovered), and your conclusion toward possible misapplication is commendable.

Finally, when you drag the guts out of a deer, usually he's dead. Good job, bullet!

As mentioned, the early BT's sucked, and I personally never cared for the original Barnes X.