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I was flowing a slowly running buck in a swamp in nirthern Pennsylvania. He was only 20 yards away and I had the scopeat 1.5x glued to his chest. The doe were also running with him through the strippings (What we call small trees less than 2 inches in diameter.)I had the set trigger set and waited until he was in a small opening - kept swinging - touched the trigger just as the muzzle was EXACTLY SQUARE with a 2 inch sumac tree. The buck hit the ground as if he had been electrocuted - the 165 grain HPBT Sierra was fully expanded when it hit him - twelve feet from my boot tracks. We found the bullet, amazingly in one piece, in the off-side lung. The heart was shredded.

Only proves that you never know - that's why I learned to track a LONG time ago.


Terry

I keep thinking of those gyroscopes we had as kids. Give it a tickle and it rights itself. Give it a little more of a tap and it starts making circles. SO... no first hand experience with twigs.

Nice pictures John!

It is strange that I remember the year, but in the summer of 2004 me and my nephew were hunting rockchucks and taking turns shooting and spotting. It was my turn to shoot my trusty 220 Swift loaded with 55gr V-Max, the only way I could get the shot I wanted was to lay prone with my bipod. I took the 300 yard shot and at about 275 yards the bullet struck a blade of grass and blew up. my nephew witnessed the same thing through the spotter as I saw through my rifle scope.

Sometimes it does not take much, dont ever shoot through twigs or even grass.

300 =- yards,solid rest,shooting my 35Whelen.
Heard the wack but the buck jumped and ran.
Looked like a slaughterhouse floor by all of the blood.

Found him in a thick stand of johnson grass and found out his throat looked like it was cut with a sharp knife.

I was shooting a 200 grain Barnes X bullet.
The next day went looking for what moved the bullet and found a small twig about the size of a pencil,that couldn't be seen in the scope.

About 10 or so yards in front of him.

Hearing a .50 roundball rattle off tree after tree will make the hair stand up on your back. especially when your putting on drives with a couple dozen guys

Oh yeah! In upstate NY, closer to Finger Lakes region actually, I learned to sit with my back against a big tree after listening to slugs bounce around the treetops. Those crazy Italians further up the mountain...

Dillonbuck,

Which is why it's very interesting that the Montana game department requires either shotgun slugs, muzzleloaders or handguns chambered for "traditional" rounds in some areas close to towns. I guess they figure bigger, slower projectiles will hit other hunters, rather than travel all the way into town.

UncleSoapy;
Top of the morning to you sir, I trust this first day of November finds you well.

Since you've already been given the straight goods on your query, I'll only add a few examples we've seen over the years.

A missed bull moose at maybe 200 yds - the 165gr Hornady BT hitting a Russian Thistle head about 3/4 of the way to the bull.

At least two coyotes that I can recall that were behind what turned out to be very small vegetation - in one case a weed stem and in another some Antelope Brush branches. The rifle/projectiles were a .25-06 and 75gr HP Hornady and a .22-250AI with 55gr V Max.

Speaking of Antelope Brush - a second rack mulie buck that was behind a branch so small I didn't see it when I fired a 130TTSX from a .270 at it. I hit the buck, but nowhere near where I'd been aiming and it required a follow up shot to end it.

Finally there were a couple whitetail bucks and small lodgepole pine trees - one that we hit and recovered with a 6.5x55 shooting 120gr Nosler Solid Base bullets and one with an '06 and either 165gr or 180gr Hornady that I don't believe was hit.

Anyway sir, a few more examples for you from southern BC this morning of shots gone awry when contacting small vegetation.

All the best to you this fall and good luck on your remaining hunts this fall.

Dwayne

Terry,

Eileen had the same basis experience on the big bushbuck she killed in South Africa a few years ago. She was shooting a .308 with 150-grain Nosler E-Tips, and that part of South Africa is full of Spanish prickly pear, imported many years ago because it remains green even in severe droughts, so can serve as cattle feed.

Anyway, she and her PH found this bushbuck in a thicket 150 yards away, and they sat there for over an hour waiting for it to move for a clearer shot. When they thought it was clear Eileen shot, but the bullet clipped the edge of a prickly pear and expanded before it hit the bushbuck. The buck was almost directly facing them, and the bullet was found under the hide at the rear of the ribcage, perfectly expanded.

Life was so much simpler back when we were younger and had all of those "brush-busting" rounds that abounded in articles and advertising at that time. It is sad that they all devolved into what we have today.

Or, then again, maybe the problem is that the flora read all of the information about the tenacity of African game as opposed to animals in the rest of the world and held some sort of convention where it was decided to make a quick advance in evolution and become tough enough to deflect bullets instead of being so wimpy that they could not influence the flight thereof.

thats like using 22LR around buildings. I havent seen much that ricochets worse and also over penetrates. Its noisy but a fast 22CF with right bullet always seemed better to me

I was shooting around 75 yards at a box I set up in the alders, a screen of which was 2-3 yards in front of my target.

The 'range' looked like this:



The target got this:



None of my shots missed though a high percentage did something in those last few feet. The bullets were 170 Core-lokts out of a 30-30.

My experience is similar to others here. I was hunting mule deer with a Marlin 45-70 and took a 60-70 broadside shot at a buck that was an easy chip shot. My partner said I missed it clean as we watched it walk away. Trying to sort out what happened, we noticed small branches not previously seen in the shooting lane and wrote it off to that.

Another time, I watched a friend miss an easy shot at a nice black bear with a 300 Win Mag. We did find a perfect 30 cal hole in a 1" sapling...

I shot a nice muley the other day with a 45-70, blackpowder and a cast bullet at about 150 yds. I felt like a retard scooting on my butt up and down the hill, and side to side trying to find a window through the trees free of branches. At least I learned from the past - full retard or not

Klik,

I did a similar test many years ago with a .243 Winchester, .30-06 and .358 Winchester. In my test the .243 did best, and I guessed the reason was the smaller-diameter bullets were less likely to hit anything!

The 'test' I pictured was an easy one based on the fact that I had done a much less controlled exercise a few days before that - simply trying to see if I could see where bullets hit the fresh skiff of snow on the lake beyond. I never did find the impact divot of the 385 grain 45-70 'brush buster' I launched through the clutter. More recently I was shooting monolithics (GMX) in a 375 H&H across a frozen lake at distant targets. There was a similar screen of alders on the near side so I decided to see what would happen with them. Intentionally shooting through the 2-3" vertical 'trunks' 15-20 yards from the muzzle (with additional random branches beyond), I still had poor luck finding the impacts on the ice at 50 yards beyond the gun.

I was doing a 10 shot group with a .308 rifle for the position of 'rifleman' for a major deployed police service in Canada back a lot of years ago. I was shooting prone, and the first shot was low left. I had confirmed the zero on the rifle before hand, and it was bang on. I looked out front of the muzzle and saw the smallest blueberry stalk that had been cut enough to cause it to fall to the side. The next 9 shots were centred and tightly grouped. The range officer wouldn't give me another shot.

Point is, I didn't realize how such a small twig would impact the shot. It was 150 grain Power Points.

Jack O'Conner had the same thing happen with a 220gr. Slug from a .300 Wby., I believe.

My favorite example involves a 12ga Foster slug (once regarded as the Grand Poobah of brush busters) my brother launched at a buck at about 30 yards. The buck trotted off unharmed. When we checked for sign of a hit, we found a half-inch sapling cut off about 20 feet in front of where the buck was standing. A few feet behind where the buck stood was a sizeable oak tree. About 5 feet off the ground was a quarter-sized hole in the bark, exposing the wood underneath. On the ground just in front of the tree lay the slug, nicely expanded.

From time to time, I've managed to recover a few bullets from deer carcasses, but this is the only one I've recovered from a miss.

I remember an article in one of the popular magazines some 15-20 years or so ago where the author tested various 'brush-busting' shells against brush.
I don't remember what calibers he tried but the results seem to bear out in the stories folks are reporting here - the closer the brush is to the game, the less the 'upset' of the bullet.

My personal addition to the list of tales was a 30-06 165gr SGK through what I thought was one pad of prickly pear cactus at about 125 yards. The shot actually ended up going through 5 different pads. You could see the different amounts of expansion of the bullet as it passed through each of the pads.
The bullet hit the deer about 2" behind where I'd been aiming and the entry wound was about .5". The exit wound was closer to .75". Deer ran about 30 yards before piling up, leaving a blood trail a blind man could have followed.

JB: Ive seen a couple similar tests published ( don't remember who wrote them..) but they came up with similar conclusions. In one the .243 did best, in another the .30-06 with 150 grainers moving fast did best. The traditional 'brush-busters' invariably did the worst...


I love it when that happens....