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Shot a bear today as a follow up with the unusual 240 grain pentagon shaped HP bullets from my .44 mag Mtn Gun. 1250plus fps

Retained weight was 230 grains, expanded size over 3/4"

Results were spectacular. Once hit the bears forward progress was stopped. The bullet was lodged against the spine. I never really imagined that these bullets without a jacket could perform like this. I hoped that they could, but I just could not believe how astonishing perfect these bullets looked! They were like an advertisement!

Needless to say I'm sold on these. I bought 240 flat points and these 240 gr HP designs. Both shoot the to the same POI. I'll try and post up a photo today

When hard cast bullet are of the proper nose shape and alloy they work perfectly

And the pictures?

If it is the bullet I'm thinking of, it has a BHN of 10. That seems soooooo soft to me as I'm used to 18 and up. But the fact that it held together and mushroomed like crazy (and put the bear down) when launched at 1200+fps is proof enough.

It would be great if you could put a picture up of the recovered bullet.

I've posted a zillion photo's in my life now. However these seem to continue to give me an error I have no idea how to correct.

The web hosting service I use must be down, or have a glich in the system right now. They will not accept an upload and give an error code? I'll have to wait til this is fixed. I can email anyone the photos that want to see them.

10 to 12 BHN is fine at the velocity in the opening post

Distance?

about 15-20 feet, maybe less, that bear was almost on top of me for the first two shots. the third shot was about 25 feet, he rolled a little bit down into the bottom of the drainage

I could clearly drive these faster, probably to 1400fps ??

I like the comfortable easy nature of the 1250fps loads. Especially in my little S&W 629-4 mountain gun.

When I shoot the garrett loads, it feels like something is being greatly exceeded in application. Things like my wrist, tendons, probably the metallurgy, springs, wood grips, shear strength of screws.

Those heavy loads are probably okay for a few a year, but not a great diet in my opinion. Seeing how these 240 HP bullets, and the third which was a Flat point, caused the instant retreat and took the fight right out of this big guy. I like the way they disrupt the bears thought process to stop the fight. I never imagined a low cost lead cast bullet that could get me the same results at the Hornady XTP.

That bullet expanded to 3/4" and lost less then 10 grains in weight.

I dunno, that bullet opened up a lot - drive it faster and I'd imagine much less penetration. So I think you are close to the sweet spot with that bullet at 1250fps - maybe even a touch slower would be better.

JJ, don't know where you're getting your supply of them, but this listing on Midway USA shows the cost of these bullets to be MORE than what a Hornady XTP goes for.....

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/20...ter-240-grain-lead-pentagon-hollow-point

If you have a lower cost supplier, please feel free to PM the information to me!

Looks like they took the wind right out of that bear ....

Keith

I load their 158gr pentagon hollow points for my 38's.

I suppose the cost per bullet is not the key priority today.

Availability trumps cost. Add to that this addictive Dillion 650. That Dillion is always hungry and requires a massive food supply to satisfy

Having access to plenty of bullets is critical. It's really hard to find XTP bullets for the last year.

Boy that's the truth. The 240gr XTP is extremely popular and I haven't seen it in stock online all year. However, I do see the 300gr XTP from time to time, but expansion is iffy at 4" barrel velocities.

The 300 grain XTP penetrates rather well in my experience

I agree with you. My testing at 4" barrel velocities showed excellent penetration but the expansion was a little iffy. I think they would work better launched out of a longer tube. Just my gut feel, but I would think around 1200fps would be ideal. They shoot great out of the 7.5" SRH, but I never tested them with that revolver as I was more interested in 4" performance.

Using the 300xtp bullets I've shot bears with both, a 4" S&W mtn gun at 1200fps and the 7.5" redhawk which was as I recall around 1400fps

They did not expand well from either gun, the penetration was nearly as good as a Hard cast from the 4" barrel. From the 7.5" it had a staggering effect on bears that was more obvious. There was expansion to maybe 50 caliber. They still exited nearly every time on bears unless steeply quartering. Or as was the case for me many times on a follow up while tracking wounded bears texas heart shot style.

Still no handgun bullet I have ever shot a bear with had a more instantly effective performance then a very fast 240gr HP. They rarely exit, and if penetration is the goal for your piece of mind they are poor.

However, when a bear is hit with one of these into it's chest, they stop what they are doing and address a new priority, Instantly! Many of those I have shot with a non expanding solid bullet have spun, hunched and run a very long way. Much like shooting with an arrow. ( a very long way for me is 75-100 plus yards)

There is a definite impact and instant effect with those big fast hollow points. For hunting black bears either a flat nose hard cast or a HP will kill them. Truth be told, I am sure you could kill them with a 44 mag shooting a piece of wood loaded into the shell. It's the .44 mag and starting diameter that gets the job started on the right foot. From that point shot placement and impact velocity are important.

After which the velocity and bullet integrity need to be matched to allow effective penetration and not over expansion. This is the tough part or the science consideration for these decisions. When I had the Ruger Redhawk, My cylinders were numbered on the outside with big stamped numbers. Within the 6 cylinders I loaded, three of Randy Garretts and three of my handloaded XTP bullets. depending upon the situation I could rotate the cylinder to get the bullet I wanted.

When I had a bear in a snare, it was a HP every time. The Hard Cast bullets allowed the bears to fight the snare way to long. The HP bullets folded them on the spot most of the time. Tracking in thick impenetrable bush It was a Hollow point that would by experience crumple and stop point blank encounters.

While in more open areas and always with longer shots over 30 yards, the Hardcast bullets would be chosen for the additional penetration with the lower velocity at longer ranges. Hard cast in most cases allow much better blood flow to the ground, due to exits. The Hollow points probably exit only 50% of the time.

With hundreds shot, the HP bullet killed bears which traveled shorter distances on average. There is some overlap on this, that some might assume only having done this a few times could believe one way or the other. However when you have seen this hundreds of time, Many hundreds of times. It's clear (to me) that the high velocity HP bullets simply crumple a bear right where it stands more often then not. This crumple effect is not always permanent. Often the bear after 5-10 seconds realizes " Hey.... I'm a bear" and then decides to depart with all the life he has left. It's during this dwell time or temporary moment of confusion that additional bullets can be fired.

This is exactly how the events unfolded this past weekend. My first shot was a soild hit center of the back while the bear was turning to look at me. He folded, and was still moving and trying to get up or move his front legs. To be honest, being Velcro'ed into the blackberries, I was in no position to dwell on his intentions. I shot that second round at the same location. This caused him to lurch forward and begin to move down the hill. Either by gravity, or ??? At that point he stopped below me, I clicked off the third round which was all over. The Loud bellowing was all that was left. I had slid down the embankment to the bear as my feet touched his back that loud bellowing sound started.

I have been quite grateful for the performance of those bullets since then! Having slid down on top of this bear, It was nice that he was done fighting! What would have been different with a Hard cast bullet? The first to shots would have been into the dirt below him rather then inside him. Would he have finished turning around and come for me? Maybe not with a spine hit, or would he have bolted away after that fist shot? Again not with a spine shot. Who can know at that point in that sliver of time if you made a spine shot? At point blank a very large perforated bear that has been pushed to it's limits is nothing to fool with. It's at this time you wonder why they don't make 10 shot revolvers.

Jim,

For some reason I cannot get the pictures of the bear to load, either. And I was using a different camera of course. I cannot get them to load to e-mail OR photobucket! And I want so badly to post bear pics here as well as e-mail his pictures to some friends and family.

Jim, thanks so much for your help in finding and recovering, then PROPERLY skinning, my bear this last weekend. Yeah, those 240gr penta points did an amazing job on the finishers.

Because this post will likely create some inquiries and curiosity, here is a bit more of the story. On Friday Night I went up bear hunting by myself and spotted a very large brown phase black bear that I had seen twice before and wanted to kill very badly. This time he was closer than the last time I spotted him, about 350 yards away. He was walking away from me, a shallow quartering angle and I tried for a shot into his short ribs but pulled the shot left and smashed his pelvis and a couple of verterbrae. The shot sounded like a great hit, and the bear collapsed in a heap immediately upon being hit and rolled into a NASTY blackberry briar filled jungle at the base of where several hillsides came together so very steep and very deep. A couple of friends came up the hill to join me in looking for the bear Sat night but he was in too steep and too briar filled of an area to negotiate safely in the dark so the decision was made to go back in the early AM the next day. I called my good friend and bear expert Jim to help out and he was the one who actually came face to face with the bear to finish him up. Several of us had walked to within 50 feet of him without ever knowing he was there both the night before and that very morning. The bear was not very mobile and had not travelled far from where he rolled down the hill at all. My rifle was my much used custom in my wildcat caliber 340 Tyrannosaur (8mm RemMag necked up to 338) using 225gr TTSX Barnes bullets started at 3100fps. Another proof that a wounding shot with a big gun is still a wounding shot, but IMO a mush smaller rifle like a 25 caliber something might not have had the poop to break up the large pelvic bones after penetrating the hide and meat of this large of a bear at that distance. In fact I was in position to try such a shot with a 257WBY in my hands once, and I did not due to the light caliber of rifle I had. I am still very much a believer in larger rifles for this kind of game. The large bullet I hit Mr. Bear with left a good deal of blood on the trail for us and this was INVALUABLE in the recovery effort. Had there not been good blood, we may never have recovered the bear.

Here is the photo from my iphone, I did not have a camera with me. This is all I have Mark

Looks like you two made some memories! But I groan at the thought of getting that animal out of there