Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Shooting through brush with a .358 - a test

I've assumed in my 10-year hunting career that it was OK to shhot through light brush as long as the brush was very close to the deer (and not close to me). The physics seem simple to me; a bullet can't deflect much in a few yards. Acting on this assumption, I've shot a few deer under such circumstances and, in fact, hit them right where I expected to.

Some discussions lately made me wonder if I was being to casual in this assumption, so I shot a test the other day. Results are below.

I was shooting from 20-40 yards away. Brush was no further than about 8 feet from the target. I moved it three times. I changed my shooting position each shot to insure that each shot hit brush, and each shot DID hit plenty of brush, some quite a bit of the stuff.

The first two setups are a shot I'd take on game. Though nothing bad happened on the third setup, I probably wouldn't take that shot.

Rifle: Model 7 in .358, 20" barrel

Load: Sierra 225-gn Game King, 2500 fps MV

Setup one:



The result of setup one:



Setup two, below:



Result of setup two:



Setup three, below:



Result of setup three. This is the aggregate group from the three tests:



This was as I expected. It was nice to see it work out like I'd expected, though. It may be that if I'd fired more shots I'd have seen something different.

That is quite interesting, Jeff.
First time I have seen someone actually put that 'theory' to the test.

I thought it was interesting, Tim. But I'm gonna get reamed for it, mark my words!

Ahhh, so what.
You are used to that,JO!


And btw, I didn't notice the other thread on the same subject till after I posted...

Interesting!

Jeff try that with a bush 15-20 yards away from the target.

interesting 2.

Your set ups look rather conservative there Jeff, just few light pine boughs in front of the aiming point.

Try that with some real brush and you'll see a different story......

Just a week a I shot a buck at 17 yards with my 8mm Model 98. Where I hunt, brush is always a factor. I never saw the 1" sapling that was 8 yards from me. The 170 grain went through the sapling into to neck and was found just under the hide. The buck dropped in it's tracks. Had a little bit of luck on this one. Web

Nuff folks have problems hitting [bleep] when firing the bullet through air, I'd not want them slinging lead through the trees.

Course when one is worried about eating tag soup it's best to just sling away, hell I'd not even be worried about target recognition.

Thread is about right

Did a similar test a few years ago but our brush isn't fir fronds.



That's what it was - about 75 yards from rifle: 30-30 w/ 170 RN SP, just a few feet from brushy obstacles- basically 1/2" and smaller- to target.



This, following another test with the 45-70 where I couldn't even find the bullet impacts on a pristine snowy surface, kind of dampened my enthusiasm for "brush bucking" cartridges or bullets. (But I do like to send heavy revolver bullets through 3" "brush" to bust bunnies beyond; the effect is similar to shotgunning. )

Jeff_O: Interesting. Looks like it would have been a dead critter in every instance if one was going for the boiler on a deer sized target. From discussions here, I will probably be beating a dead horse, but I'd like to try something similar with a bit more control over the dimensions of twigs, twig/target distance, and perhaps 3 cartridges like 22-250 with 50 grain slugs, a 30-06 with 180's, and maybe a 45-70 running 405's.

I'd just like to see what kind of deflection angles one gets. I don't live near a facility where I can dig up all the historic articles that folks keep mentioning, so if I want to see numbers, I'll have to generate them myself.

Obviously in a perfect world we all want unimpeded flight for our bullets. Reality though, is far from perfection.

Thanks Klik! Looks like about an 8" group? How far from the target would you say that the furthest brush was... uh... from the target? From the photo it looks like you could be hitting brush as far as 20-30 yards from the target?

To ME, the absolute essential element is that the brush is close to the target. That's key. Otherwise I'd expect to see lots of deflection.

I'll probably shoot the same test with other cartridges over the next few months when I'm at that spot. My .358 is my close-in gun so I ran that first.

I hear you.

My photos don't do my test justice. My shooting position was not the same as the photo position (close though). I was careful to make sure I wasn't just shooting through fronds. There were plenty of branches getting hit.

But also, I wasn't trying to prove that it's OK to shoot through brush. I was interested in seeing what happened under circumstances that I'd actually take a shot in- which is to say, fairly light brush, close to the target.

Move the target farther away and I'd expect to see exactly what we'd all expect- bullets hitting all over the place.

Those of you old enough to remember the hype surrounding the introduction of the .444 Marlin : "goes through brush like a hot knife through butter." It turned out to be nonsense like most other gun makers' claims. Provided the bullet doesn't fly to pieces on intervening brush, the closer your target is to brush, the better your chances of hitting it. Even the massive African big game cartridges as well as the.50 cal MG can be deflected. If the bullet hits a twig dead center, it may get through it without deflection. More than likely, it will be a glancing blow and more likely to knock the bullet off course.

I applaud your efforts to ascertain what your bullets can do as it shows you're a responsible hunter. However, I recommend using a low power scope to try to thread your shot through intervening brush rather than attempting to bulldoze through it.

Federali,

I agree. I use a 1.8-5.5 scope on that rifle, partly for just that reason.

My test was in the neighborhood of three yards or so from obstacles to the target. The target, as you can see, includes several pre-expanded mushrooms, a couple even flying sideways; just a wee bit disconcerting even though they hit close enough to make the target.

I still remember launching 25 grain hollow points at close to Mach IV over 20 years ago at rabbits which just shook their heads and hopped a hop or two. I don't know if it was the noise or the bullet dust they were feeling, but whatever it was wasn't lethal. The same bullets were also comically ineffective against birds which were just 3-4 feet beyond a screen of dry grass. Stuff can happen to bullets really quick.

Just an entertaining aside that I've not tried. A friend describes placing rifles like 22 LR's and 30-30's just below seed head height in stands of wheat and lighting them off. As the severed stalks fall, one can visually track the bullet path. He reports they can cut some rather convoluted trails.

Some rather convoluted neighborly relations, too, I'm sure.

I have actually been quite surprised how predictably tracers will bounce and arc off the ice of the frozen Bering Sea in winter. (Right hand spin arcs to the right; no surprise. )

Jeff,

A lot of people have conducted similar tests, including me.

In one my tests I tried a .358 Win. and a .243 Win., the .358 loaded with 250-grain Hornady roundnoses at about 2300 fps, the .243 with 105 Speer spitzers at 2900 or so. The brush was chokecherry, since I lived in NE Montana at the time and a lot of shooting was done at deer in chokecherry thickets in the draws. In that test the .243 did better than the .358, and I guessed this was because the slimmer spitzers got between the bigger twigs more often.

Have written up the next example (from actual hunting) before, but will repeat myself anyway. Ten years ago I shot at a big bull eland at about 200 yards, the load a 250-grain Nosler Partition started at 2700 or so from a .338 Winchester Magnum. The only brush in the way was one thornbush twig that might have been as thick as my little finger, certainly no more than 1/2" anywhere along its length. But it was right in front of that angle in the shoulder where I aimed. Since I figured I couldn't hit the darn twig with a box of ammo if I tried, I went ahead and shot.

Dust flew from the bull's hide right where I'd aimed, and the eland trotted off behind a thornbush patch. The PH turned and shook my hand, he was so sure the eland was dead. We waited a minute and followed up--and came around the brush patch to find the eland standing up, with his head a little low, about 100 yards away. I shot again and the bull dropped.

The first shot, of course, had hit the thorn twig, which had turned the bullet sideways in a very short distance. Partitions don;t expand or penetrate worth a hoot when they go in sideways. In the eland's side was the perfect cut-out silhouette of a 250 Partition, surrounded by little swirls in the hide where the thorn branch had actually whipped against the hair.

I have a lot more examples of bullets deflected by brush right in front of the animal while hunting, but that is my favorite.
So I am skeptical of the results of your test actually proving anything one way or the other.