Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Bullet Failure

The talk about bullets made me realize I have only seen one true bullet failure.
That was a 308 Winchester 150 gr XP3 bullet.
I have "recovered" some bullets from dead game that did not "look" like what I thought tgey should. I have asked allot of some bullets at times to get to a vital from a difficult presentation. Some of these I did not like the "look of the recovered" bullet. Now if I am doing serious hunting ($) I move up in power of cartridge and bullet weight as I may need to take my only shot from a difficult but "doable" angle. If my hunting allows time then I general go down in power of cartridge and am more picky with my shots.
I wonder in most cases is it the bullet or are we asking too much of it or I ability to make the shot? The client before me on my last hunt used 4 boxes of ammo. I wonder how much he complained about those 300 Weatherby bullets?

Photos of recovered bullets?

Recovered bullets = dead critters...

DF

I'm waiting for some evidence of the 150gr XP3 failure you experienced.

The shot in question was at 80 yards. All other distances with this bullet was from 200-400 yards and the performance was as it should have been.
My son shot the blesbuck with the shot penatration angling into the front chest cavity from the front. We chased after it in the Karoo for two hours untill we were able to get in front of it and he made another shot broadside as it passed at 325 yards dropping it. Untill we recovered it we had no idea what had happened as we could tell he hit it in a good spot we thought. The bullet never penatrated the chest cavity. There was no bullet fragments. It looked more like an exit wound than an entrance wound. It looked like the bullet "bounced" out for look of a better way to explain what happened. It looked like it entered and exited at the same point. The problem was it never penatrated the chest cavity which should have been no problem
Even when a bullet doesn't "look" like it worked if you recovered it then it must have. I figure if I find the bullet inside and the animal is found in a resonable time frame with an appropriate shot from me then it wasn't a total failure. In the above case the shot was good and if we would not have been lucky that this wide open area didn't allow me to keep the animal in sight to follow we would have never known. This was the first time I didn't think I would recover a wounded animal.

I guess that is why it's called "hunting" and not just "shooting" The variables. There are NO guarantees even in so called perfectly placed shots. Dead is dead and if recovered it's meat on the table. That equals good bullet performance.

Yep
I have shot allot of game like most of you and this is the only time I can find that I could actually blame it on the bullet on a properly placed shot

I've recovered darned few bullets from game. Most seem to pass through. Then again, I haven't hunted Africa, yet.

These discussions of various hunting bullets can be interesting.

When I head for Africa next year, plains game, I'm taking one of two rifles:

.30-06 with 180 gr Nosler Partitions (I know, boring, but I'll bet it works)

.375 with 260 gr Nosler Accubonds (This was Mule Deer's old rifle, and it's telling me it wants to go back. I'm listening)

One or the other. I don't expect any bullet problems.

Regards, Guy

Worst - and only - bullet failure was a 300 grain RWS Cone Point. I was told that I had to shoot a jackel by a PH and at the shot the rear half of the jackel exploded. I had no idea until that moment that this bullet was for varmints. The incident did, however, save me from using the bullets as I intended - on plains game.

Terry

I've experienced bullet failures on animals that died. I had a 190 grain Berger VLD out of a .300 Win blow up on the ribs of a little whitetail at 440 yards.Didn't make it inside. My kid killed it with his .257 Weatherby(100 grain NBT) at powderburn range and his bullet exited.

I shot another deer to ragdolls when the 160 grain Speer bullets blew up on contact. That was during one of the earlier component shortages, the shelves were bare and it was that or nothing. Turns out that they don't like STW velocity. 7 shots later it laid down.

I put 6 shots into a water buffalo with a .450 Nitro Express with Hornady DGX factory ammo. They blew up too,and although the bull was recovered I'll never accept that a buffalo bullet that penetrates inches instead of feet is anything but a failure.

I think bullet failures happen more often then people would like to admit. People who weren't even there will blame it on a shooter they don't even know, and since the animal ran off with the evidence...................................they can believe what they want or is convenient.Until it happens to them.

I too can attest to bullets being placed well but not doing their job. I'm not top of the line marksman, but most all of my deer have been shot on the run so not all "perfect" shots.

One of the few deer I killed with my 7mag took 5 shots, all through & through all in the vitals last and I believe the last one was in the head.

Bullet failure is part of why I'm going to start handloading and trying to learn as much as I can about bullet composition, velocities, performance, and reliability.

M70 Guy. I would not call your experiences failures. Rather they are what I would expect given the bullets you picked.
Berger bullets will not reliably hold together, period. Pick a premium hunting bullet...there are many. Speer bullets are not premium hunting bullets just as Sierra's are not.
The Hornady "dangerous game" softs are a fundamentally poor design. Their solids are good.
I don't think the bullets performed in an unusual manner...they were just poor choices.

Nope those bullets are sold as hunting bullets and they failed miserably case closed

I had a failure with Nosler Solid Bases when they first came out back in the early '80's. Complete jacket - core separation on pronghorn...

I agree that the Hornady DG softs are less than optimal. For one thing, they are not bonded. Their DG solids are not bonded either. My concern is if they "fishtail", the core will squeeze out of the base, like toothpaste from a tube.

In my experience, the worst DG solids are the Federal Trophy Bonded Sledgehammers. Based again on personal experiences, the Barnes monolithic solids and the TSX perform quite well. For 2014, I'm bringing Northfork solids in .416 Rigby and .470 and Northfork softs in .416 Rigby. Trophy bull elephant, hippo, croc and cape buff are on the menu....

The Hornady are called Dangerous Game Expanding, the caliber (.450 NE) is only used at close range, the rifle was regulated for them and they even put a picture of a buffalo on the box. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they thought someone might shoot a buffalo with one. Its like they thought it was a good idea. I won't be using them again.

The Bergers? They called them hunting bullets, I never. No mention was made of coyotes or prairiedogs, and the range was exactly a quarter mile. I reckon I used it exactly the way they promoted it. Never noticed a "do not use inside 1/2 mile" disclaimer either.

M70. Enjoyed your comments re Berger. "you can convince some people of really stupid ideas" quoting me.

Not necessarily, if you can follow sign. (The left hand bullet was recovered after skipping several times beyond evidence of a solid hit on the quarry which escaped.)

and on the other hand, me that doesnt' care for the way bergers perform, have been shooting them exclusively from a 308 for some years as an experiment. Out to almost 700 yards and as close as 50ish yards, I've yet to see a single failure. Too much meat damage at times yes, but never a failure.


OTOH nothing is ever guaranteed. Though my very best all around luck used in every concievable situation has been Barnes and I'll stick by them until I see otherwise.

I love threads like this! I have yet to see a Berger not exit on a broadside shot in the ribs. But I am a cup&core, std cartridge, rib-shooting kind of guy, and therefore I believe it happens even as I watch it happening. It absolutely fascinates me that some guys use varmint calibers and bullets on elk, with no rodeo, while others extoll the necessity of dangerous game cartridges and bullets for the same elk. I guess that is part of what makes America great. We can all have differing opinions, and we can ridicule the opinions of others at will.

HuntnShoot-

your comment makes me think of my previous bullet problems.... I think I just had the wrong caliber for the job. 7mag was going too fast at 30yards with the bullet I was using.

which is yet another reason for reloading, selling the 7mag, and paying a lot of attention to bullet choice (currently leaning heavy on Nosler & Barnes, Nosler will show you a picture of their performance at 3000fps, 2800fps, 2000fps and I feel that should help a new reloader choose which rifle & bullet for the job and to what distances the bullet will potentially preform the best)