Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Penetration vs. Frag

Coyote,

So let me get this straight, you've never shot a deer with a cup and core bullet. Yet you feel the super premiums are superior to CC's for deer.

Allrighty then....

Bill

Shot placement trumps everything if you are wanting DRT....

Beyond that nothing is ever guaranteed. And I even thought that a 180 Partition out of a 300 mag should EASILY give an exit on a lengthwise shot on a 130ish pound deer, but they didn't... They did kill every time though. But it bothered me and I've not really been bothered since switching to the X type of bullets... Have yet to recover one in game. That way I'm prepared for any shot offered period. With some bullets other than monos I have to be picky.

Of course the other side of the coin is an older friend... 220 swift, some light HP and shoots every deer in the flank broadside and DRT is the result every time.

I must be one lucky son of a gun. In 50+ years of hunting, and putting more than a few animals on the ground I have had the " when things go wrong " scenario happen to me once. That was because of my youthful stupidity. I have heard the old saw about the animal taking a step just as a shot was let off,etc. Again, never happened to me to the extent that the shot placement was bad. I pick and wait for my shots,my freezer has been filled with elk and deer for many many years every year,and the only premium bullet,if you can call it that, I ever used was a few years I shot a 7 mag with partitions. Maybe three hunting seasons in all. Mostly I shot Sierra GK through it and except for a 45-70, 44 mag and a muzzle loader, all my loads are with Sierra C&C in a .308, .06 and 6.5. Back in 69 or so,I did shoot an elk with .308 remington bronze point.

Last year, one of the biggest bulls I have shot and one that took me twenty years to get the tag,I still waited for the shot and put a 30-06, 180 gr GK at the base of the neck. DRT.

Pick the bullet design to do the job for the animal you are hunting, use it at the impact velcities it was designed for and put it where it should go and you will have a dead animal on the ground every time.

Pick a high frag bullet driven at +3000fps and shoulder hit and animal,or even rib shoot it and you will probably have cripple to track.Pick a solid mono bullets and zip straight through an animal too far back in the lungs,gut shoot it or too high to just nick the lungs or spine and you will have the same tracking scenario.
Too many guys and some gals have never grown up where they had to make a box of twenty centerfire rounds last many seasons, and were let go hunting with only 6 rounds for the shot gun and had darn well better come home with at least 5 kills.
You need adequate penetration to get to the boiler room,but also adequate fragmentation to cause sufficientt tissue damage. Bullets on both end of the spectrum will not work in all circumstances,but a middle of the road selection most generally will work in a large majority of the time as long as it is put where it is suppose to go.

Coyote_Hunter,

I was wrong. You're not a hard-headed horse's ass, just a self-important twit who really likes to pontificate on things he knows nothing about.

It's very interesting that you continually attempt to weasel out of things you've posted with longer and longer posts. Why don't you just fold it five ways and put it where the moon don't shine? It would save both you and and the rest of us a lot of trouble.

Dunno about both bullets not working... I've not lost an animal I fired an X at since I've used them. And they don't generally fragment at all. AND I"m not a bone shooter either.... ribcage is my choice unless its teh noggin. Unless my X is a middle of the road projectile which I kinda think of it as.. its not a mono solid forever penetration and its not a fragile HP.

As to folks not making a box of bullets last... I dunno, but the only times I've shot more than once in the last 15 or 20 years have been too long of a noggin shot attempt twice..(followed by a thump in the lungs at the same distance at some 350 ish yards, and last year when I borrowed my buddies rifle(dumb... but wanted to test his bullets for him... and I had shot it earlier in the year...) and find the rifle was off... missed one noggin shot.. connected a neck shot aiming at the noggin.

Of course you may have hit instant reply like I do, instead of directing the post at me..... I"m a one shot type of guy... I just go prepared enough that if I desire to take the only shot offered, and that shot takes a bit of umph... I want that reserve.

My post was not directed at you Rost495. My point was that if either end of the spectrum and the bullet is put in the wrong place, you will probably not have DRT and could result in a long tracking job or lost animals. Generally a middle of the road bullet will work in most cases if put in the right place more often than not compared to bullets on both ends.

If a lot of hunters would learn to become better hunters,instead of relying on higher and higher technolgy, these super premium bullets. and ultra powered rifles,they would probaly go home with less unfilled tags

That's some bullchit right there. Coyote hunter put forth some well thought out posts on this thread. Perhaps Mule Deer thinks he should be the only one allowed to post anymore? WTF?

Calvin,

It turns out in Coyote Hunter's vast experience he has never shot a deer with anything less than a super-bullet, because he KNOWS anything less might not penetrate the vitals of a deer. His posts on this thread have been long batches of armchair theory based on exactly zero experience with "deer" bullets.

We found this out after I asked him to describe the bullet failures that brought him to his conclusions. CH then suggested that maybe I don't care about wounding game animals because I hunt so much that losing one or two here and there wouldn't make any difference to me.

If those are "well thought out posts" then you and I have different standards.

Big time funky thought process if you ask me...

Dober

It's times like these when I really miss Dogzapper and his pics/reports of him killing deer, elk, bear, moose, African game with Ballistic Tips and Hornady Interlocks. I think he even mumbled something about shot placement, or some such thing (grin).

I myself have only killed deer as far as big game goes. The fanciest bullets used were BTs and SSTs. One thing I've found on the BTs (165/30-06/2700fps/handload) is that they really weren't explosive. I've killed six or seven deer with 139gr SSTs out of a 280 (3K fps mv/handload) and while there definitely was some damage, deer went down quick! Last deer I shot with the 280 load was about 80 yards on a large WT doe as it was walking left to right. I hit the tricep area (if that makes sense) and it went through the bone on the opposite shoulder (the front one in case certain folks wonder). Deer went 10-12 feet and dropped. Exit hole was rather small, and I guess that most of the bullet went all to [bleep] and what was left of the base exited. I've seen the exact same thing on deer shot with a 243/85gr Sierra HPBT. Everything between entry and exit was turned to blackberry jelly but the exit wound wasn't really that big, not a whole lot bigger than entry. I can only guess that a good deal of fragmentation took place as I wasn't inside the deer to watch the bullet do what it does. Long story somewhat shorter, deer shot with those combos went down really fast. Currently I run Hornady Interlocks and Remington Core-Lokts in 243, 280, 30-06, and 30-30 as the balance of cost, accuracy, performance just works for me....on deer.

No reason to mock his experience, as he already conceded that you have much more experience than him. But, he does have experience what what he uses, and he is satisfied with it.

Coyote Hunter did a good job of giving the reasons why he is more comfortable using more expensive bullets. If it gives him more confidence to use a premium bullet on deer, (he ain't the only one)then what is the big deal?

Surely you will concede that a NBT can zook on deer, and Coyote has a reason to want to use a premium bullet? I've seen it with my own eyes..

Unless some editing took place, I see no reason to bash Coyote Hunter.

I kinda miss bashing JeffO...

You should see the mess I've been making with that 7saum you sold me...(grin) After a few deer with the "frags" this last week, I'm going back to X's.

Hush bite your tongue....A town without a fool is a much better town

I can only imagine the carnage without them...
How's that Jewell trigger holding up to that Alaskan weather?

So far it's been great. I don't take it out on the boat though.

Calvin,

Let me say I have no problem with Coyote Hunter shooting premium bullets at everything, if thats the way he likes to roll, fine. I've killed a few deer with premiums as well, I've also killed about a hundred animals with cup and cores.

What I think is silly is for him to come on here and make matter-a-fact statements about a bullet design as he did above about which he has NO PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH!

If thats not arm-chair theorizing at it's best, I don't know what is.

I mean really, he's arguing about something he has NO experience with. Give me a break!

Bill

Mule Deer �

Once again you have it wrong. Grand Slam bullets aren�t exactly �super bullets� but I was loading them for elk before I took my first deer and I simply used the same loads. After that I never went back to standard cup-and-cores in my bolt guns, although I use them in the levers. For twenty years I was a one-bolt-gun hunter and saw no need for separate deer and elk loads � in fact I thought separate loads would be far more trouble than they were worth, a concept I still agree with today.

That said, my experience with �deer� bullets is hardly �zero� as you claim. In the last 28 years I�ve seen a lot of deer and elk taken, many and probably most with standard cup-and-core aka �deer� bullets. Last year alone I saw a nice bull, cow and buck deer, all taken with a .25-06 and 117g bullets by a 12-year-old young lady. I didn�t inquire as to the bullet type, but I�m not aware of anything but cup-and-core bullets in that caliber and weight. Contrary to your claim, what I �KNOW� is that cup-and-core bullets can � and usually do - work just fine.

I�ve also seen shallow wounds, blown up shoulders and animals lost when such bullets were used. Not often, but often enough. Admittedly, smaller calibers and high velocities were usually involved.

If that is �zero� experience with �deer� bullets then your definition of �zero� is much different than mine.

You wrongly claim I never recommend cup-and-core bullets when in fact I often have � although with the caveat that I also recommend heavier weights and lower velocities than with the bullets I use.

I did not suggest you don�t care about wounding animals, although you choose to take it that way. You are wrong, but I can�t help that. I apologized for a poor choice of wording but you apparently refuse to accept the apology. Well, OK, your choice.


You seem to take it as a person affront that I choose a different path than you. Bullet cost is NOT an issue I�m particularly concerned about, and I choose the bullets I use based on their performance. As a rule I don�t build separate �elk� and �deer� loads and see no need to do so. Instead, I build �elk� loads that so far have also worked VERY well for deer and antelope and, based on their performance, I have absolutely no problem recommending them to others for such use. People are free to accept my recommendation or not, as they choose. I fail to see a problem with that.

tx270 �

In grade school we learn to read, then we read to learn. In so doing we learn from the experience of others and greatly accelerate our learning without having to �personally experience� everything.

There is a significant difference between not having shot game with a bolt gun and cup-and-core bullets (something I�ve done with my lever guns, by the way) and having �NO experience� with such bullets. In the last 28 years I�ve seen quite a few animals that were successfully harvested using run of the mill cup-and core bullets. I know very well that they usually work just fine, I just choose not to use them. The bullets I do use work well on elk, which have always been priority 1, and I use those loads on everything. That keeps things simpler in the reloading room and has also proven to work out well in the field.

Heavy thread for a Sat night...well, not armchair engineering here, but experience based on what I have read and work with, one does need to match the projectile to the game. Found that antelope fall better to standard cup and core, deer usually will, but I do feel better with some type of bonded bullet and elk just really go down when hit with partitions and surprisingly with accubonds too.

Favor Hornady offerings but do get into Nosler... and I have never gotten a Barnes to work for me and when I tried, it took forever to get the copper out of barrel. YMMV

What is interesting is that even now with the extensive bonded lines out there, they have to be compared to partitions which are how old a design now?