Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Bullet Failures

Tell me about those you've had, with details.

I saw a 180gr Remington Core-Lokt bounce off a black bear at 20 feet. I even picked up the bullet and loaded it for plinking.

How many places/times you gonna ask the same question?

I'd guess a few more since he's still confused why someone would use a premium bullet on deer...

I shot a deer with my 300 savage 99 at about 100 yds with a round nosed speer 150 gr. the darn thing hit exactly where I was aiming and turned the liver to jello and exited in front the r shoulder leaving a fist size hole and the deer kicked around for a couple minutes before it expired. it totally ruined a perfectly good liver but the heart was ok as it only clipped it and tore it loose.I hate when that happens.

I had a 150gr NBT "fail", it only went through 1 3/4 deer (stopped in the far shoulder of #2) at a paltry 285yd. Both were DRT, so it wasn't to bad of a failure. Now had I been using a better bullet, I might have gotten 3 deer with that shot, so perhaps I should "upgrade".

Was the cor-lok loaded to about 100 fps or thrown?

A lot of alleged bullet failures are most likely hunter failures. No bullet will work properly if it does not strike the proper place on the target.

Thrown from a pard's deck to the garbage eating bear.

I've had bullets fail to perform the way I wanted them to, but I'm not sure who's responsible - the bullet or me. The bullets had a reputation for being too frangible for reliable penetration when impacting bone or heavy muscle, but that is where I placed them. In my defense, I was not aware of this reputation at the time, but I learned darn quick. Hey, everything we know we had to learn at some time. Those failures were my education. I don't use those bullets for hunting any more.

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I once had a 180 grain hornady sp fail to make it through a juniper bush. I think it should have passed through and killed the deer I was shooting at.

I felt like a 150-gn Partition did less damage than I wanted, from a 7mm-08, on two different bucks that ran a ways.

That's about as close to failure as I can report. Been around 16 dead deer and 4 or 5 elk, and never yet seen a bullet recovered from any of them. These are the good old days, as far as bullets.

(Of course, since the above "body count" is paltry, maybe i just haven't seen enough to see a failure yet)

-jeff

I think the majority of hunters would be lucky to see failures. The game usually runs off and it isn`t known if the bullet was bad, the hit poor, not enough gun, or what exactly was the cause of our loss.
Thankfully, I`ve never had to speculate on one of my bullets yet. I have yet to recover one except for a old Power Point from a whitetail tossed by a 32 Win Spcl. Obviously that one worked. The few remaining kills have been pass throughs.

I have had a couple of cup-and-core bullets lose their jackets at the entrance hole when they hit deer. But both killed the deer, pretty much right there, so any "failure" is obviously debtable.

I have dozens of bullets recovered from animals, but probably only one out of every 4-5 stays inside, even on really big game. The fact that I recoverd them generally means the animal is dead. My general experience is that living animals object to having somebody try to pull a bullet out of them.

MD: Good post and point well-taken.....animals that get away tell you little about how the bullet did.....

Jeff: 150 gr 7mm partitions are actually pretty tough slugs...lighten up in that 7/08 and get some more speed....

My worst bullet failure occurred with a ballistic tip bullet in a 270 on an antelope hunt.
I was trying to fill out the block management form, and since I didn't have a pen or pencil in the truck, I was trying to use a bullet tip to write with. The Ballistic Tip, not being lead like the traditional cup and core bullets I used to use simply would not write. I was forced to spend 20 minutes scrounging to find swomething to write with.
Since this dismal failure, I have always been skeptical of those that raved about Ballistic Tip bullets.

I had two ballistic tips from 1995 (approximate date of manufacture) fail on the same piggy, 150gr from a .308 at less than 50 yards. Both penetrated 4" and stopped on a shoulder. Pig went down to a 3rd through the ear, in all fairness the pig went about 300pounds but under similiar conditions I have seen alot of other bullets give plenty of penetration.

Im sure this was one of the ealier BT, long before they were beefed up but I went to the failsafe until switching to the TSX a few years ago and have not seen anything approaching that kind of failure since then.

Royce-

What you needed was a bullet like this one (Patent No. 20030089264), with the cavity filled with ball-point ink.

--Bob

Bullshooter
Thanks for the information. I would be very interested in trying some of those bullets if they met the following criteria-

1. Contained a special ink the would write down to minus 30 degrees

2. Were available in both fine and medium point in blue and black ink

3. Had a ballistic coefficient of more than .6

4. Would explode violently on a marmot at velocities down to 900 fps

5 Could be counted on the break both shoulders of a Cape Buffalo at impact velocities of 3800 fps

6. Won't damage any meat on a 70 lb white tail shot repeatedly in the rump

7. Able to shoot less than 1/4 MOA out to 960 yards in my Ruger Deerstalker carbine.

8 Are available for the 29 caliber wildcat that Mule Deer designed


10 And are sold in packages of 10 or less at a cost of not more that 3.5 cents each.

Any additional information you could provide me would be greatly appreciated

Royce