Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa 168gr Berger VLD

I use a VLD neck reamer. IIRC I just bought a Lyman. It works.

Ditto here.
I am using the RCBS VLD tool.

[/quote]I might be wrong BUT I think the 35 mm film camera was long obsolete and replaced by digital before Berger started marketing hunting VLD's




So why do you continue to hang here? Curious....[/quote].........Since you inquired in a respectful way, I`ll answer you......Both my 35mm Canon and a 35mm Nikon have been with me for quite awhile. One of them happened to be my late father`s who died in `02. Both are outdated for sure, but they work perfectly fine for me. I am also an album type of guy, where many pics are of different sizes including 8x10 blow-ups. For me, it is like sitting down and turning the pages of a good book without getting on a computer or throwing in a disc. All albums are kept on and in the coffee table in my den. Not apologizing for being obsolete.

So why do I continue to hang here?...After much thought during my nearly 3 month absence from this site and back in mid October stating never to return, I decided not to continue to voluntarily and permanently restrict myself because of the actions by two others. I simply changed my mind. I guess many here don`t understand, that people do change their minds regardless of how much their minds were made up beforehand which were stated in a post. Some here enjoy reminding me of my past quotes and insist I follow through. Oh well.

I will also point out that I have received a few PMs of
support from others here on this forum and still do while the majority of the "guilty before innocence" crowd seek their posting revenge. So when they post their garbage, I am becoming more inclined just to post a few icons,,, or ...In fact, their posts are becoming more fun to read.

Sure! I am not getting any like around here. But so what. As said before, I`m not here to make friends with those whom I`ll never meet. I have quite a few off-line shooting/hunting friends whom I`ve known for alot of years that can at times keep me very busy.

Nobody needs a gun/hunting forum. But it`s fun and one can legitimately learn a few things, pick up a few pointers and pick up some new ideas here and there.

So when the more dislike and hateful sabre rattling postings go on back and forth regarding me or regarding anything else, it really accomplishes nothing, and changes nothing for either side. Even before this fiasco, I have in the past found myself really getting pissed off here and there. Gonna try and not go there anymore. It will be interesting to see if some follow suit.

Some will post what they want. I`ll either totally ignore them or just use these,,,, ....

That `ol saying of,,,"sticks and stones",,,applies here too.

Bigsqueeze,

I dont know you, but have seen some of the school yard bullying you have suffered. No doubt some of it you brought on yourself.

I think the above post of yours is a good mindset to have.

There is a saying or quote that goes; "There comes a point in your life when you realize who matters, who never did, who won�t anymore, and who always will."

The grizzly is in this video. I should not have shot him when I did with the first shot but you can see how well the VLD worked even at that extreme angle. The second shot was going straight away and it is hard to complain about bullet perfomance.

Although I have just enough experience to be dangerous (one Africa plains game trip and two large bull elk shot with Berger .284 168 gr VLDs), here I go...

Much of African hunting is short range shooting (the Karoo and parts of Namibia as notable exceptions.) There is also the possibility of a REALLY short range encounter. I believe that the Bergers offer superior long range performance (for years I thought shoot large game with them was an irresponsible stunt; I no longer do.) I would prefer a bullet with a different engineering concept for Africa. Partitions, A-Frames, TSX, etc. are designed for the most consistent terminal performance and that is what I would choose.

How does a Berger VLD differ, in construction, from a Sierra Match King? My impression is that both use a J4 jacket with soft unbonded lead inside. the VLD has a slightly better ballistic coefficient. The Match King has a slightly better shape for accuracy, and you don't have to seat it as far toward the lands.

If all that's true, I don't understand why anyone would hunt with one (or a Match King). It would be a reprise of Roy Weatherby's arguments from 1960. Explosive bullets may be fine for sticking between a deer's ribs but when you have to crunch bone, what good are they?

Never considered hunting with VLDs but I am ready to be enlightened, if there's anything to it.

Then I would suggest you start a thread (yet another one, I might add) out of the Africa forum where it will get the appropriate visibility. Five years ago I was EXACTLY 100% aligned with the logic in your post. Several things changed my mind:

--John Barsness's testing in the Bullet Tube and on animals,
--My elk guide's strong recommendation--insistence almost--that I use them, and
--Their performance on the two bull elk I got to examine first hand (168 gr 7mm).

They do appear to go in a couple of inches and then create a wicked (deep and wide) wound channel. I do not know the technical details of the construction of Berger hunting v. target bullets, or how they compare to SMKs. Not all cup and core bullets are the same. Jacket thicknesses and tapers can vary, as can core alloys. I would not be surprised to learn that their game performance was a serendipitous outcome of Berger's efforts to design efficient LR bullets, rather than an intentional effort to engineer a hunting bullet.

But back to Africa...it is also a very different thing to snipe a grizzly bear at 700 yards than to stop a lion at 10. I have done neither, but I have walked the lands where both are a possibility, and know what bullets I would depend on in either case. They would differ.