Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Bullet Failures

So far I've seen BT's, Accubonds, Partitions, Silvertips, Interlocks, Speer's, some random SP, and Corelokts work well.

The BT was kind of explosive but killed the deer. Everything exited.

I intend to continue my bullet testing on big game at the next available opportunity, but I won't lose any sleep about the Interlock failing from my .358... :-) Hope i don't have to eat those words.

-jeff

"...a deer with a huge shoulder wound. It was mid- shaft on the femur bone with the surface of the bone exposed with a periferal wound about 6" in diameter and about 1" deep."

"Although technically not a shoulder wound"

You may not find this terribly humerus...

But a shoulder shot baring femur is proof of tremendous bullet damage... Did the bullet hit the rear leg first and move the femur forward, or did the shoulder get transposed aft?
art

no stones or heels just my experiences and questions...I shot a small doe at 136 yards with a 30-06 and a Remington 180 grain round nose corelock, the bullet passed thru the center of the chest out the left side spraying blood for 10 feet behind where it hit the deer and only took out one lung. The deer ran off....we found it and killed it but the bullet did not look to have opened as the front hole and the exit hole were no bigger than a quarter, the lung was gone however...was this a bullet failure? I also had one of the early ballistic silvertips blow up on a rib of a big spike with peices going multiple directions, but most of it still managed to exit, this deer ran as well but only 30 yards, when found one large peice had turned right and penetrated into the stomach cavity which pxssed me off..was this a bullet failure? My friend shot an 8 point with a 30-06 with deer quartering away thru back of lungs into right shoulder, what was left of the bullet was under skin of right shoulder deer ran but dies, was this a bullet failure? 180 AB from a 300WSM into an 8 point at 22 yards thru the lungs and heart, deer ran 30 or so yards, again small hole going in 50Cents coming out, was this a bullet failure? I ain't gona get worked up to much about any bullet that kills what I shoot it at. If I lose the animal and am sure that I hit it, this is where I am going to be pxssed. We are getting too technical here, we deal with blood guts, eat half cooked meat and drink mud called coffee, sleep with bugs, sit in trees and walk hundreds of miles over a lifetime doing this stuff and then we get on a keyboard and try to make it more scientific than it can be. Just my opinion.

Or as Yeats said, in his great poem "The Second Coming":

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

-jeff (what is the best caliber for "what rough beast", below?)

------------------------------------------------------------
The Second Coming, W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Been gone a few days and haven't checked this thread much.

Yep, the 165 GK isn't eggzackly a varmint bullet, but it killed a good many coyotes when 30-06 it was the only centerfire I owned and coyotes were targets of opportunity when hunting deer. I did some sewing to sell the fur and that bullet normally makes a fair sized exit on a coyote.

I had one of them pencil through a small snowshoe hare, .30 hole clean through ribs broadside and didn't knock the rabbit off its feet. I was about to shoot it again thinking that I'd missed when it keeled over.

On the coyote, I don't think it was a pencil through. The coyote was on crusted snow and any cut hair or pinprick of blood would have shown. Plus a hit in the front of the chest with that bullet as he sat up slightly above me would pass through the rib cage and exit between the withers or slightly behind. That would hit the spine or close enough to it to disrupt things for at least a few seconds. Very far off center and it should have been cutting a longer exit hole on the curve of his body and even farther out should have done shoulder damage. So, I claim that the bullet vaporized due to the twist rate in the 03-A3 and the 56 grains of IMR 4350. Couldn't have been operator failure and a miss. Had to be bullet failure.

Through the years I've had maybe three or four mystifying shots where I have no idea what happened but the animal acted like it was a clean miss. This coyote was one of them. I never feel too bad when I figure out why I missed a shot: flinch, contorted field position with shaking body, barrel against a rock, hit a twig, wind gust on a long one, etc. But when the hold and everything is good with a rifle of consistent tight accuracy, I wonder what happened on a gimme shot.

Emphatically agree about a bullet doing what it should. My bullet failures have been a result of using the wrong bullet for the job: I.e. a bullet too light and frangible for big critters, or one stoutly constructed for big game penciling through small critters. I've seen a few bullets simply not perform as they were supposed to and recovered a few of those from dead critters. The kills were in spite of poor bullet performance, erratic bullets that did not have consistent performance and I quit using them on critters bigger than deer.

I have to say, I've never had a bullet failure. I'm also a believer that if you recovered the critter, the bullet worked just fine.

That being said, I learned the hard way what other posters have already said. Use the right pill and caliber for the job... I had a bad experience with a couple of antelope back in the early 90's and 95 grain Nosler Ballistic tips. Both were hit in the shoulder and upon autopsy (after a 2nd bullet) the shoulder hits were just too much for the old BT's. Early on in my coyote calling career, all I had was an -06. More than once I had 180 grain Partitions fly right on through song-dogs at close yardages. I would have thought it was a miss, except the snow painting told a different story. Then I once shot a coyote with my old 243 (long since been turned into a 260) with a 100 grain partition at powder burn distance. He took it square in the chest looking right at me. There was no exit wound. While skinning him it was obvious that all his innards were turned to jello though (he died like he was electricuted.)

These days I pretty much stick to Partitions on big game. I've never had one let me down.

I have not had a bullet "fail",but I was brought to shooting big game rifles by some experienced,well-traveled big game hunters who, to a man, shot nothing but Nosler Partitions in every caliber.This was back in the 70's when the Partition was really the only thing available in the way of commonly-available premium big game bullets.Along the way I educated myself and read a lot of what Bob Hagel, Warren Page, etc said about big game bullets and pretty much stuck to their script.

Since I have never believed the tale about using softer bullets to kill deer-sized game, I used Nosler Partitions for everything from deer on up,and still do. Along the way, I "discovered" Bitterroots,and used them extensively, laying in a large supply that will last the rest of my hunting career. Seeing their performance on game up to Alaskan Brown Bear led me to the conclusion that I did not need to try any others,because I am not in the bullet-testing business, but rather prefer to hunt without "guessing" what the bullet will do.

Along the way I have seen what I considered to be less than sterling bullet performance from some bullets used by others,and I am not pursuaded that, just because you recovered a bullet from a dead animal, that the bullet worked fine, because each shot circumstance is different and the fact that you got away with using a sub-standard bullet a couple times does not guarantee you will be that lucky again.After all is said and done, it's the bullet that does the killing and you are far better served to spend your hard-earned money on great game bullets than anything else in your line-up of shooting gear.

I would much rather, for example, hunt elk with a 270 and a 130 gr Bitterroot than a 300 RUM and a 180 BT; I KNOW which will do the better job, will have the larger frontal area and which will retain the most weight after punching through a bunch of elk meat.

Just two in 40 + years of big game hunting, one was with a 240 gr bullet out of a 44 mag, I was shooting one of those little Ruger simi autos,back then, that bullet a factory Remington load, slipped the jacket and broke up some what, there was four pieces of bullet recoverd. Strange thing as I recall, never seen it before, the other was a 160 gr Hornaday RN 6.5 out of a 6.5 x 55, I hit the ball joint on a white tail, and well I recovered the bullet. The only 160 gr 6.5 bullet I ever recovered, I still have it, it kept just about 62% of its weight, and looks like a little mushroom. The thing is that if you hunt long enough, and shoot a bit of game along the way, you will see some strange things. You see less of it today, than in the 1950's and 60's, back then the new high Vel cartridges were coming out and it took time for bullets to catch up. Nosler had some problems with the first generation BT's as I recall,or hunters did. They make millions of bullets a year, and there is bound to be in all those bullets a few that turn to crap for no reason other than they did. Over all, bullets today even plain cup and core bullets like Speer or hornaday are so much better than they were thirty years ago. The bottom line is just pick a good hunting bullet that is up to that task that you want it to do.

Thanks for the replies guys, I appreciate it. All except Bigstick (Steelhead) Steelhead, have you got a big fat wife too??

If you aren't Bigstick, which I suspect you are, he had a very fat wife. F45kin' whale. Seemed to like it that way, too. Trust me, a skinny woman can DEFINATELY keep you as warm as a FAT one...............she just doesn't sweat as much...........so don't use that excuse...............and you probably shouldn't bother replying (but you will, because you are a sucker) because you are on ignore.


I just imagine what an a#$hole would say, and respond to that.

Yep, wisdom abounds with you.

Are you really Big Stick, Steelhead?



I sound like a native....grin

Yeah Steelhead, C'mon, level with us. We won't tell.

Yep, that about proved it......

The best part of you, really did dribble off someone's chin.....................

Andy dickhead that will drag another man's wife into it, esp. when the dude ain't even here, ain't even involved, and has nothing to do with it, is a lowlife POS.

Steelhead is OK in my book. Mauser, don't become a Naval Aviator. That type of humor is the norm. You have to have some thick skin at times but it is entertaining!

RH