Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Berger bullets for elk?

I'll bet it wasn't the bullet's fault.



My first post did make it sound like you should just buy a rifle and ammo and do nothing else. Didn't mean that. Getting in shape and practicing shooting are critical. Bullet brand/type/weight, within reason, a little down on the list.

If finding load data is an issue, you must not load much....

And of course that happens even when they leave a wound channel 13-15", losing 85% of their mass enroute, even if vitals are much further away.

Unfortunately not every shot lands as intended and broadside shots where the vitals are only 2-3" away are not always the case.

Can't really decipher the above but if you shoot them at extreme angles with solids and that's your game, wow.

Any bullet I shoot at an animal will be sent with easy penetration to the vitals in mind. If you shoot a Berger into an animal broadside behind the shoulder, it folds. Quickly

While I can't speak for others, I have no problem developing a load for elk and using it for mulies and even antelope. The bullets I've used over the years (Speer Grand Slam, North Fork SS and FP, Barnes MRS and TTSX and Nosler AccuBond) seem to work fine for all. Given I've shot more elk than deer I see no reason to develop a different deer load. My hunting buddies are pretty much in the same boat.


What you call " a knee-jerk reaction" is often the result of well-considered arguments pro and con. Put me in the column that prefers a bullet that works just fine without blowing up in the animal and knows from experience that there are multiples to choose from.


I guess I missed the posts where someone claimed "100% weight retention kills quicker". All of them.

If 100% weight retention was the solution, I'd be shooting spire point solids.

What I have seen is people, like myself, that don't trust Bergers to penetrate to the vitals from bad angles, be it from a poor angle initially or because an animal moved or whatever. I've had 40g varmint bullets blow fist-sized holes on the far side of coyotes, ribs and all, and have no doubt they would have taken a mulie or elk down pretty quickly with a behind the leg shot. Not so much if they had to penetrate a mulie from ham to sternum or penetrate a mulie from front to back with an exit, yet I've had North Fork SS do the former and Barnes MRX/TTSX do the latter, both resulting in the animal on the ground before I recovered from the recoil. A Berger VLD might have killed quicker but any difference would be so vanishingly small as to be immeasurable and in the ham-to-sternum case I doubt a Berger VLD would have made the distance.

Guess I just prefer bullets that provide reliable but controlled expansion with a higher probability of deep penetration than bullets that penetrate less with marginally quicker kills on good angles and what I consider a higher probability of wounding on bad angles.


No whining and moaning here, just a stating of personal opinion based on my results with various bullets, the stated results of others that have used Bergers and were unhappy with the results and the stated performance claims of the manufacturer.

Most years I go big game hunting exactly twice - once on a weekend hunt for antelope and once for a week-long hunt for elk and deer. No one gives me free equipment or compensation of any kind so my hunts are entirely on my own time and dime. I spend a lot of time preparing for the hunts and choose bullets I believe give me the best chance of success under as wide a range of circumstances as possible. Bullets the manufacturer claims will lose up to 85% of their weight need not apply. Use Bergers if you want but attempting to denigrate those with different opinions of them not only makes you look small it leads me to believe you can't argue your position based on the facts.

Not sure what you don't understand, but I don't shoot solids unless you consider hardcast in my .45-70. They don't expand worth a damn but they sure knock the stuffing out of things and they penetrate like there is no tomorrow. My preferred hunting bullet for the.45-70, though, is a 350g North Fork FP. Very accurate and very deadly. A broadside 6x6 bull at 213 lasered yards never took a step and a quartering away mulie buck at just under 200 was leaking so badly from both sides it looked like someone had sloshed blood from a bucket. Needless to say the buck didn't go far - a tail-chase 360 turn and a few steps uphill you could count on one hand with a finger or two missing.

What I look for in a bullet is reliable but controlled and limited expansion over as wide a range of velocities as possible with high weight retention for deep penetration, plus good accuracy. You can't get that combination with solids or thin-skinned cup-and-core bullets.

Like you I try for the easy angles and am willing to wait for them or pass. The one buck I shot in the ham was an easy quartering away shot until the buck stepped forward and turned away as the trigger broke. Thankfully I was using a bullet that held together and reached the sternum instead of blowing up in the ham. Bangthud.

A$$ shots aren't in my repetior

Nor mine but $hit happens.

Yep. It's amazing how fast an animal can spin 90 degrees, even when calm.

A 140 grain bullet at 2800 takes .36 seconds from the time it leaves the muzzle till it impacts a 300 yard target.

What I can't figure out is why so many match/LR shooters have this aversion to shooting animals with bullets designed specifically for that purpose?

Puzzling.

Sounds about right. The 7mm 140g North Fork I used on the buck was going a mite faster, a nominal 3214fps at the muzzle and would have arrived the 150 yards downrange to the buck in about .148 seconds. Moving at 10mph the buck would have gone over 2 feet in that time. Even from a standing start he was able to turn an 'easy' quartering-away/behind the ribs shot into a ham shot and only had to move about a foot to do so. It was a once-in-31-years Murphy event.

The photo below shows one reason I like North Fork bullets - reliable but controlled and limited expansion over a wide range of velocities. The first was recovered at the range, the second from the far side of an elk after breaking a leg and ribs, the third from the aforementioned buck after penetrating from ham to sternum.

30-06, 165 grain @ 2800fps MV, ~1887fps @ impact
Recovered from dirt
500 yards, 145.0 grains retained weight (87.9%)


.30-06, 165 grain @ 2800fps, ~2749fps @ impact
Recovered from cow elk
~25 yards, 133.2 grains retained weight (80.7%)


7mm 140 grain @ 3214fps, ~2855fps @ impact
Recovered from buck mule deer
~150 yards, 131.2 grains retained weight (93.7%)

I don't think they do. I don't.

I simply like the way a softer bullet performs on big game. I prefer to shoot big game with a rifle the same way I shoot big game with a bow; behind the shoulder, broadside. When you do it this way, you don't need a stupid Barnes X solid copper bullet. Soft points, Ballistic Tips, etc result in animals that drop right there most of the time.

If you load heavily constructed bullets in preparation that you will take any shot regardless if the animal is going away and showing his A$$, there's some problems that probably should be addressed in the "When Hunting Becomes "Shooting"" thread.

A-Frames, Barnes, and other bullets constructed similarly I have no use for unless I go to Africa or plan to hunt something that can kill me.

Slightly off topic but i was wondering if anyone has used the berger tactical bullets on game? I ran out of the 338 250 gr hunting bullets and all i could find is the tactical. One gentleman told me they are heavier jacketed so should penetrate better or farther before turning into shrapnel.
What say you?

Fred

You shootin' a Lapua? I don't think if matters. A friend blew a bobcat in half with a 250gr SMK, and obliterated all edible meat on both front shoulders with the same bullet on a whitetail.

No Lapua just a win mag.

Nothing like a good ol' terminal ballistics discussion to get the CampFire crackling...

rc I was not directing my comment to you; just making a general inquiry. Sorry if you got the wrong impression. But as long as you answered, thanks for the viewpoint.

The reason for my asking is that bullets intended for target shooting seem to have been designed with a singular purpose in mind, which is great accuracy and for punching paper, along with high BC profiles. You know all the stuff...

Jackets and cores are not designed and tempered and drawn for fully reliable expansion and penetration; they are frequently hard, and brittle due to the materials used for jackets and cores, tend to shatter and fragment,instead of expanding to good frontal areas and still have the construction to retain enough weight to penetrate well. (Retained weight in a bullet may not be what kills animals; but it's inherent in their design to ensure penetration in game to withstand the stresses associated with traveling through animal flesh and bones after they have expanded)....the same way that target bullets are "designed" for extreme accuracy...basically different functions, so different designs.

Sometimes, we see these bullets do a good job, and sometimes they most assuredly ....don't. We see examples of it all the time.

Given all this, and notwithstanding their other sterling qualities, when these bullets do a good job on BG animals, I really can't regard it as anything other than a fortuitous accident....simply because the makers themselves did not intend them for that purpose. Not that they can't be useful for some purposes, like shooting at extreme ranges, but as general purpose hunting bullets, I think they are lacking.

Your elk kill might be an example....from what I can see of the wound channel through the lungs I have to admit it is about what I would expect of a Berger at 700-800 yards based on what I have been told to expect of them; not at 270 yards where velocity was still relatively high from a 264 Win Mag. I thought the wound channel was rather small, indicating to me that the bullet had little frontal area, and that advertised fragmenting did not create all that much of a wound damage. I have seen far larger wounds in elk chest cavities from bullets designed for hunting, at similar distances, that don't "fragment" at all, lose virtually no weight, but expand to broad frontal areas. There was nothing left that you cold call lungs....just pureed soup.

There are persistent "myths" in the world of BG terminal ballistics...one is that bullets must "fragment" in order to kill effectively on broadside lung shots...this leads to guys running around trying this bullet and that, expecting the bullet to behave exactly the same at 2000 fps as it does at,say,3000 fps, in the hopes that all lung shots will result in DRT's. IMHO this sometimes works and sometimes does not...at least based on what I have seen, which includes bullets that came completely unglued in the lungs, never making it to the offside, and the animal skipping merrily away to collapse some distance off.

So, I never thought too highly of the whole fragmenting theory, and still don't....Anyone who has killed any number of BG animals knows that lung hits with fragmenting bullets do not always give these results...and a bullet soft enough to possibly get it may work OK in the open country of the SW where broadside shots are relatively common and the shooting relatively easy(yes have hunted that area quite a few times)......but may be a dismal failure in the elk jungles of Idaho or Colorado or Montana at 70 yards with an animal slightly quartering away. (I don't know why you continually refer to a$$ shots and set them forth as the only reason for bullets of tougher construction; I have taken exactly one in 40+ years of BG hunting and it was on a previously wounded animal. It was with a Nosler Partition and yes it did prevent a wounded animal from escaping, doing exactly what I hoped it would do, since its construction and "design" was up to that task).

Even a quartering shot on a big bull elk,(no a$$ shots, remember! where it may be desirable to dump him where he stands, might be required to penetrate heavy leg or shoulder bones coming or going in order to reach vitals...in such cases, having BTDT myself a few times, I will bet my hunt success and money on one of those "stupid" designs like a Nosler Partition, Barnes, Aframe, etc before I reach for a target bullet that might make it. In any event, I am not going to pay much money to find out if it will or not....I like sure things


Anther persistent "myth" is that the bullet could not have "failed" because the animal was "dead"...this is intellectual dishonesty of the first order, and mostly nonsense.

Aboriginal, third world people have stuck ball bearings and other metal objects into muzzle loaders to kill BG animals...... proving?..... maybe?...that they are equally effective as a Barnes or Berger because the animal was "dead"? ...utter nonsense of course, as is the notion that all bullets that kill behaved in a predictable and reliable manner, making them suitable for BG hunting..

On the subject of Barnes bullets and similar monos, that stupid design (proven world wide by hunters of substantial experience) just may be the next and best technological advance in hunting bullets, particularly when driven at high velocity...the damage may well exceed what guys are using the softer bullets to try to accomplish; and with much more reliable penetration to boot. A pal who posts here is emailing results from Africa daily, all very favorable, but lets wait for him tell us about it.

BTW what is it about Africa that would cause you to switch bullets to something tougher? Does it mean you have some reservations about the bullets you are using here? Personally, I'd just use pretty much the same stuff I use over here.

rcamuglia �

There are clearly some folks who think �soft� bullets or those that are designed to fragment are the best way to go, just as there are those like myself that have an aversion to such bullets, especially at high impact velocities. For some reason many of those who espouse the use of soft bullets seem to feel threatened by the choice of others, as you seem to be. Use whatever bullet you are comfortable with and I will do the same with no reflection on you or your choices.

In 31 years I�ve taken exactly one big game animal with a bolt rifle and standard cup-and-core bullets, a Hornady 162g BTSP that retained less than 48% of its original weight even though the challenge to its integrity was minimal. For the next 20+ years I used 160g Speer Grand Slams to good effect with elk, deer and antelope consistently going down at the shot or within a few steps. The one memorable exception was a cow that made it about 40 yards and struggled for every step. It wasn�t until the last year that I recovered a Grand Slam as they had a habit of making two holes in the hide. The recovered Grand Slam had destroyed both shoulder joints of a 5x5 bull, a far greater challenge to its integrity that that experienced by the Hornady BTSP, but still retained over 70% of its original weight. The lesson learned in those 20+ years is that a well-designed hunting bullet can put animals on the ground very quickly and very reliably while retaining a high percentage of its weight for deep penetration if needed.

Which bring us to �A$$� shooting. First, my hunting buddies and myself do not �take any shot� that is offered � we try for broadsides and often wait for them, sometimes losing opportunities as a result. Quartering shots are also very acceptable and I�ll take one if that is all I can get. There is a very different mentality, one you don�t seem to understand, involved in preparing for the worst and working for the best.

What would you do if an animal, rather than going down at the shot, turns tail and heads for the next county? Would you let a possibly wounded animal run off to die horrible death or would you take the shot offered, confident that your choice of bullet was up to the task? The Grand Slams exited with such regularity that I never worried about such situations. The same is true with Barnes TTSX and MRX, neither of which my hunting buddies or myself have ever recovered, even with frontal shots on mulies. In the one case where the buck moved and a quartering away shot became a ham shot, the North Fork I was using was more than up to the task where a �softer� or fragmenting bullet might have failed to reach the vitals.

That said, why is it that people tend to think frontal/broadside/quartering shots are more ethical, even if a tail-end shot has the exact same results? The buck I unintentionally shot in the A$$ wouldn�t have gone down or died any quicker regardless of what angle or bullet was used. Answering my own question, I think there are two main reasons, those being a) people rightly have an aversion to dressing animals with the contents of the digestive track exposed and contaminating the meat and, more importantly, b) many �A$$� (or extreme quartering away) shots have resulted on long tracking jobs or lost animals. Addressing �b� further, those cases can be broken down into two classes � those where a different bullet would have made no difference in the outcome and those where it would. This is why in �preparing for the worst and working for the best� I choose bullets I believe can make a difference in such situations, as I believe the North Fork did on that buck.

As to �stupid� Barnes bullets, I�ve found the Barnes TSX and TTSX (and Swift A-Frames and North Fork SS) to be extremely accurate in my rifles � more so than many �soft� cup-and-core bullets � yet very effective on game. If/when Murphy comes knocking, I�d much rather have one of these in the chamber than any cup-and-core bullet.

Swift A-Frames are the bullet of choice when my .257 Roberts goes on an elk/deer hunt. The same rifle gets Nosler AccuBonds or Barnes TTSX when antelope hunting � no need to have a bullet blow up and destroy more meat than necessary as antelope don�t have much to begin with. North Forks SS and Barnes TTSX/MRX are the choice for my 7mm RM and various .30�s and Nosler AccuBonds get used in ,my .338. They have all proven themselves as reliable game droppers and if Murphy knocks I�m comfortable I�ll be as prepared as I can be.

Bob,

I'll just note that there have been a bunch of bullets "designed" for hunting that work much less than perfectly for the purpose. In fact some have been the biggest POS's ever devised, because they were designed by people who apparently haven't hunted much.

I have also seen some of today's most highly-touted "hunting" bullets fail as well, including some deemed to be the sort of magic bullet that penetrates the vitals from any angle.

Bullets in these categories have created far more rodeos than I've ever seen with Berger Hunting VLD's. In fact so far I've yet to see a "failure" from a Hunting VLD on several dozen amimals, because they've worked the same way every time. No, they won't penetrate an animal from the ass-end, but I would bet a sugar cookie (as long-gone gun writer used to say) that they'd kill the animal dead if they did, because they do SO much damage.

No, Berger VLD's weren't designed for hunting. Instead some hunters who used them discovered they worked quite well. This was reported to Berger, and the people there (including Walt) decided to study the subject. They thoroughly tested them, first in various kinds of media, and then in game. In fact they did far more studying of how the bullets worked than most makers of "purpose designed" hunting bullets do, and only when they'd proved, over and over again, that their VLD's perform consistently did they market them as hunting bullets.

I've personally used them on game up to elk size, and will again, because I like the way they work for certain applications. Do they do everything, including cleaning windows? No, but then no other bullet does either. That's one of the unfortunate limitations of hunting bullets, despite all the hunters and Campfire members who claim to use the only perfect all-around hunting bullet ever made. (Apparently there at least a dozen different bullets that are absolutely perfect in every way, yet somehow very few people agree on exactly which one it is.)

Do I use Bergers for all my hunting? No, partly because I have to stay diverse, due to my job, so I keep testing different bullets, sometimes ones I've used lots before. But I also don't believe Bergers are the best bullet for certain purposes, just as I don't believe some of the other bullets I use are the best bullet for certain purposes.

The other comment I'll make, partly because I just did it myself, is that this thread contains all the same stuff that's repeated every time the subject of Berger Hunting VLD's comes up on the Campfire, and often from the same people--MOST of whom have never used them in the field, or ever SEEN them used in the field.

I am one who has never used a Berger bullet. Fact is I think I only used a so called premium bullet( partition) maybe on one or two hunts in 50 years. I could probably count on one hand all the times I have used any thing but Sierra bullets for big game.

One of those now is the Nosler AB. Not because of it's sterling terminal performance, but because the 130 gr in a 65. caliber, matches the twist rate in my old 6.5 Swede perfectly and is extremely accurate in the 300-400 yard range for pronghorn.

In all those years, I have seen the latest wonder bullet and all the hype for about two years after they hit the shelves, maybe five and have never succumbed to the notion that just had to use them as the elk were getting tougher and tougher.
I also don't subscribe to the theory that we have to prepare for the worse to happen.

I must be extremely lucky, because in 40+ elk and too many deer /pronghorn to count I have never had the worse happen.
I have lost one elk and one deer in all those years. The deer from a poorly chosen placed shot in my younger years and the elk doubling back in a herd and obliterating any blood trail while I thought it followed the herd.

Then there is a scenario of having to butt shoot a wounded animal because it was running off when the first shot didn't put it on the ground. Funny, that had never happened to me either.