Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders TC Shockwaves

I shot a deer yesterday with a TC 250 gr Shockwave, the yellow tipped, non-bonded one, over three 50 gr T7 pellets. Shot was at 140 yds. The bullet appeared to have blown up on the surface, as you could fit a soft ball in the entrance hole, with no exit. The poor thing was still alive when I walked over to it, so I put a second one in it from about 5 feet. Small entrance hole, and a caliber size exit hole that looked like it never expanded.
I think I am going to buy a box of Barnes bullets. I am not thrilled with the eratic behavoir of the Shockwaves.

I would suggest you give the shockwaves some further testing. I have killed alot of deer with them and I have never seen anything like that happen. I do belive what you are saying but could you have possibly damaged the jacket when loading or something?.

The T/C shock-waves made for them by Hornady and the same bullet as the Hornady SST has been a very reliable Deer killer with very few reported problems. No bullet is absolutely "perfect".

Do you hit the shoulder blade, knuckle joint or what??? At 140 yards your velocity loss should have been 200 FPS or more which would have been about 1800 FPS impact speed, Assuming a muzzle exit velocity of 2050 FPS to 2100FPS.

You said no "exit hole" did you find any bullet fragments, bullet jacket etc???

I am scratching my head on this one!!!

Personnally I do not think you need 3 pellets to kill a deer

I have shot 24 deer with a 200 gr. shock-wave and 95.0 or 105.0 of 777 loose powder and "no" problems...just dead deer.

In fact one of Dr. Encore's "rifle" patients killed a "nice" 8 point yesterday morning at 30 yards with a 200 gr. shock-wave and 105 grs. of 777 with complete penetration (DRT) and no bullet problems. That 200 gr. shock wave is leaving his barrel at over 2000 FPS. Go figure.

Doc

The only reason I was shooting 3 pellets, was that it appeared to shoot more accurately with 3 as compared to 2. This is a TC Omega by the way. I started with 2 pellets and wanted to go that way, but ended up happier with three. The impact velocity at 140 yds should have been about like a muzzle shot with two pellets.
I was using a tapered free spinning bullet seating tip on the ram rod, so I do not think I damaged the bullet jacket.
The bullet impacted the rib cage, and there was a chunk of ribs blown out on the ground on the entrance side.
This is the first deer I have killed with a muzzle loader. I have killed a lot of deer with centerfires. The hole in this one looked like people's descriptions of shooting deer with bullets that were too soft.
I realize that this is a very limited sample size, and that Hornady and TC sell a lot of these bullets. It is just flat out weird that I saw such a swing from one extreme to the other with these two shots.

I have seen this only 1 time shooting at a deer through some grass and scrub. The bullet begins opening before it gets to the deer and can make a mess.

its a muzzleloader,its not going to perform like a centerfire. i hear people complaining about all kinds of ML bullets not performing,well remember its not a high power rifle. stay off the shoulder and any of the popular bullets will kill just fine.

i hear more complaints about powerbelts then any other bullets,but me and all my friends use them and very seldom have one get away.

SPR1

Buy yourself a box of the bonded shock-waves and continue shooting your same 3 pellet load and the HPH-24 sabot that comes packed with the standard shock-wave.

Evaluate the over-all bullet performance after all your ML seasons are over with.

Doc

I do have a couple boxes of the bonded 250 grain Shockwaves with the easy glide sabot. Do you find that they shoot interchangably with the non-bonded?

They should shoot the same along as you use the same sabot (HPH-24) you were using with the yellow tipped shock-waves.

Doc

I just shot some of the yellow tipped 200 grainers out of my Encore, they grouped very well. Now I'm not sure if I'll hunt with them or the 240 gr dead centers....