Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Bullet construction or...... destruction.

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I have been doing some penetration comparisons shooting water filled gallon jugs. I lined up the jugs on a board and shot them with varied calibers. Here is one result of interest. A 30-30 shooting hard cast bullets will penetrate about 18 jugs of water when fired at a velocity of 1700 to 1800 fps.

The jug setup.....



That's cool, I wonder what a 300 Win Mag at 3100 fps will do. I can't shoot cast bullet any faster out of the 300 WM than I can out of the 30-30 so I tried jacketed bullets

Results were surprising....



The high velocity bullet just vaporized the first jug and then shredded the second jug but just punched a small hole in the third jug and stopped. It also vaporized the 180 grain bullet, a cup and core bullet from a major manufacture.



The jacket and core now weighs only 63 grains. What would that do to a game animal? The importance of using the correct bullet cannot be overstated.

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Probably yank his lungs out and dump him quick...... (grin)

Of course, that assumes you aren't trying to angle one in from the "rear shoulders", as you'd likely be right on the importance of better bullet selection. Cool photos.......

Try a TSX and see how many water jugs you can kill.

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It will have to wait.....no more jugs or bullets.

Most cup and core bullets are pretty unreliable past 2900fps in my experience.

You'd still have a dead critter though.

My buddy Big Al smacked this huge bodied buck last year for a distance of a whopping 40 yards with his 7STW and 140 gr Accubond with a MV of 3445fps.

[URL=http://s156.photobucket.com/user/JGrimes_2007/media/BigAL.jpg.html][/url]


I can't imagine better bullet performance that this.....the 140 AB that retained more than 60% of it's weight, at very high speed.

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It is irrelevant what you think. What matters is the TRUTH.

3445FPS. Them's "Layne Simpson" speeds! (grin)

Looks like the AB did the job. Any idea what kind of load he's running?

JPro, I must retract a bit.......3345 fps (went back a dug through our notes/targets), and they were the Nosler Custom loads, 15 shot string through my chrono while sighting in. Sorry about that, but the bullet did a phenomenal job.

I consider anything under 90% retention bullet failure. But, I also only throw lead lined cups at varmints and paper targets.

Surprized it didn't zip right through at 40yds.I have yet to recover a 150gr Partition from my 7.Moose and deer as samples.

As much fun as the water-jug tests are, Bambi Isn't made of 100% water so there is no direct comparison.
It sure is fun to make a big splash though!

Exactly.

Water-filled jugs are one of the least useful tests of expanding bullets, aside from shooting railroad ties.

The Ballistic Tip I killed my last buck with probably failed then, but I don't know for sure since it went all the way through.

Maybe so, but it entered the rear hind quarter, quartered through the midstream stuff, found under skin on off shoulder. Penetrated probably 4 feet or more. Quite frankly I"m surprised it held together that well.....but, I guess according to Ken it failed.

Your telling me that a bullet that will not hold together in a water jug will hold together in game? Sorry, I never intended to bore you guys with useless test. I'll not do it again.

Nobody said it's perfect, but it's cheap, consistent, repeatable, and does provide a point of comparison.

If you have something equally cheap and simple for the home user that's better, please share it with us.

Bambi also isn't 18 water jugs thick. It's easy to make a bullet that fully penetrates and retains over 90% of its weight, they're called FMJ's. Getting the ratio of penetration to energy transfer correct is the tricky part. It would seem to me that the 300 mag bullet that penetrated 3 milk jugs got it about right, that's about twice the width of a deer's rib cage. If that had been a deer it'd have likely have dumped him in his tracks. The hard cast 30-30 load would have likely have made for a long tracking job.

A lot of guys seem to think that penetration and retained weight are all there is to bullet performance. It isn't. Some of the worst tracking jobs I've ever had the displeasure of being involved with were from monolithic bullets with a reputation for 100% weight retention.

Shoot bambi with that 30-30 cast load and then shoot another bambi with the cup and core. $10 says the cast load deer runs a bunch and the cup and core is dead right there.

I know of someone who can attest from experience (in our young and idiotic days) that a short piece of railroad rail is either a good test or a poor one for armor piercing bullets, depending on how one views the outcome.