Many say use heavy for caliber, slow moving bullet when shooting through thick stuff (briars), small twigs, etc. Many say you have to use a “tough bullet” vs something like ballistic tips or BERGERS. My question is, are there any objective studies on this topic that shows a significant difference in altered flight path or bullet integrity when thin brush is shot through? Lots of theories out there, but really want some authoritative information.

I’ve never taken a shot with the expectation that the bullet had to clear a path to the target. I never will. YMMY

Unless someone is trying to kill me...

I was hunting over a scrape one day. Hot scrape. Although there was no muzzleloading season in Georgia at that time, I was using the TC .50 Hawken.
I like doing things "the old time way."
There stepped a nice big 4 pointer onto the scrape. Beautiful October day, warm sunshine, 30 yards away. I took the neck shot.
The buck dropped in his tracks.

I sat there in my tree stand, looking through the blue cloud of black powder smoke, looking at the dead deer. I thought I was the baddest bad ass since Jeremiah Johnson.
But then, the deer flicked his ears. Just a dying nervous response, I figured.
Then, the deer moved his front legs. He wasn't supposed to do that. Then, he moved his rear legs.
I got out the powder and poured it down the barrel.

The damn deer stood up! I put the patch and the ball onto the muzzle, and rammed it home. I grabbed the cap.
And the deer stood up and ran away while I was putting on the cap. I found out why they are called "white tail," last thing I saw was a waving white tail.

I got down from the tree and went to the scrape. Ten feet before the scrape was a one-inch grape vine, cut in two. The .490 round ball had hit the grape vine!
I figured, it had cast the ball high and it must have hit in the flesh on the top of the neck. Stunned the deer for 30 seconds. Had the ball hit low on the neck, it would have cut the jugular and, dead deer.

I looked for that deer until it got dark. Came back the next two days and searched for a half mile in the direction the deer had run. No buzzards, no sign of the deer.
I believe that deer survived.

Had I been using the Mauser in 30-06 with the scope, I would have adjusted to miss the vine. Had I made a bad shot with the Mauser, I would have jacked another round and killed the deer where he lay. Had I gone for the lung shot with the Hawken, 3 inch high deflection = perfect lung shot. Forty yard run with massive blood trail, dead deer.

I guess that is why muzzleloaders are called "primitive weapons."

If one only uses a bit of logic to look at the question a few points are obvious.

A long, fast spinning projectile is more stable than a short, slow spinning projectile.

A blunt soft point on a bullet (round nose lead) will significantly deform upon impact with any obstruction.

The only bullet shape which MIGHT cut through an intervening branch without deflection would be a steel jacketed (FMJ) wadcutter. That might be a bit tough on rifle barrels?

The most dependable brush rifle is the one which is accurate enough and shoots flat enough to place bullets through the open spaces between the branches.

One of the popular gun rags published an article a few decades ago wherein the author attempted to lend evidence to his theories by shooting through a bank of hardwood dowels. But the noise in his data overwhelmed any statistical evidence.

Yup and yup.

No such thing as a brush buster.

A wise man once said, "walls are more predictably shot through than brush piles."

As a buddy of mine put it:

“If I’m shooting through brush, I want it to be farther away from me than closer.”

The closer the brush, the greater the deflection.

A few years ago i took a shot at a deer that was about 300 yards away with my 35 Whelen.

I had a good rest on a fence post and let it rip.

When we got to the deer it looked like it's throat was cut,no blood in him at all.
Walked the line and found a small branch that had been cut by that 200 grain bullet.

It happens in your favor sometimes.

Before my time, but I've been told that 12ga buckshot was used in Vietnam as a "brush gun". I guess the accuracy problems related to the deflection of multiple"rounds" at close range makes less difference.

No doubt that there was a YT channel that did a test on this before. It's a common concern.

Oh for fugk sake.

I wonder if that is the one I remember, which had the author deciding that a moderate velocity range was most important. Too fast and too slow were bad, and bullet shape and construction didn't matter much.

Bruce

I’ve had 2 bullets deflected, one on a briar the other on a small branch. The briar pushed a 300gr .45 cal Barnes to a clean miss at a broadside doe. The branch pushed a 200gr RN from my 35 Rem high into the neck at 25-30yds sideways. I put a finisher into the buck and recovered the bullet during skinning.


Shooting through brush is very effective until you actually hit brush, then all bets are off.

I think that on a 30 yard shot on a whitetail in brush, double aught buck would be the cat's meow.
Two slugs get deflected, but the other 9 hit the lungs. Time to cut some straps into steaks and marinade in soy sauce.

The purpose of the question is that there are many hunting scenarios when a deer is clearly visible but small branches or briar limbs are not. Especially when hunting cut overs or thickly wooded property. Not every hunting shot has the luxury of a completely clear flight path for a bullet.

Then you don't take the shot. There's more to hunting than shooting the animal.

Here you go.

Andrew McKean
https://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/hunting/2014/05/how-much-does-brush-deflect-rifle-bullet/

In your favor? Yes sometimes.

About ten years ago elk hunting, I was laying across a big boulder watching a canyon and apposing ridge in front of me. I had a Ruger #1 in 7mm STW loaded with 162 gr Hornady btsp at 3200 fps mv. I had been there about an hour and had lasered dozens of landmarks before I saw a nice bull approaching up a trail in the bottom of the canyon.

I knew the trail passed through a clearing directly in front of me at 400 yds. And I could see the bull calmly walking with a pause about every twenty yards to look over his shoulder. I watched him come for about 300 yds.

When he got to the clearing, he paused just as I expected him to and I touched the trigger with the crosshairs about six inches above the center of his heart.

The bull took two jumps toward the steep part of the mountain, then decided that was more than he could manage. He turned around and took about a dozen steps downhill, then stopped just behind a screen of willows directly alongside of the trail.

Through the screen, I could vaguely see him standing with his front legs apart and his nose in the dirt. He probably would have stood there until he tipped over, but again elk are amazing tough animals. If he had taken off down the trail he had come up, it would have added many hours to our retrieval.

So, I approximated where the aim point was and pulled the trigger again.

When I skinned the bull, I found the first entry point right over the heart on the left side. On the right side there appeared to be an exit hole just a little higher than the entry on the other side. I was shooting at a sharp downward angle, I would guess about 25 degrees. The hole on the right side was about big enough for me to stuff a fist into, and was filled with hair. I could only deduce the bullet had impacted a branch and become massively deformed. But fortunately the bullet only had to fly about ten more feet to hit the elk.

As I remember the article I read, which was likely thirty years ago. The author suggested high SD and high RPM. But his targets were far too randomized to offer proof.

I don't ever "shoot through brush" but I have in fact missed a buck because I nicked a tiny branch close to me.

If the deer is clearly visible, but small branches or briar limbs are not, you need a better scope/higher magnification on your rifle.

Your reading comprehension seemed impaired. If the obstruction is not visible, how would you decide not to shoot? Save your self righteous attitude for someone else’s post. I’m looking for objective information on bullet type, size, velocity, or construction and it’s effect on deflection or lack of deflection. If you don’t have info on that, keep your inflated sense of ethics to yourself. 😉

Didn't Newton cover this with his first and second laws of motion? If the round hits something, it will affect the trajectory.

The first law states that an object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by a net external force.
The second law states that the rate of change of momentum of a body over time is directly proportional to the force applied, and occurs in the same direction as the applied force.

At any rate, I suck at billiards when I'm trying to deflect moving objects in a predictable manner. No reason for me to chance it on purpose if avoidable.

Very good read, thank you.

One with high reading comprehension would have gleaned from this thread that there is no such thing as a "brush busting" bullet, or cartridge. And that there has never been any relevant statistical data to show that any bullet form is reliably deflected to a lesser degree than any other.

Shooting through brush? Just don't do it!

My recollection is a bit different (IF I'm referring to the same article). I THINK (am far from sure) that the article was in Guns And Ammo. Anyway, my memory of the test was that it concluded that there really is no such thing as a brush buster. Long, heavy for caliber bullets deflected least but were still likely to badly miss the point of aim. Back in the day we were indoctrinated with the idea that 45/70's, 35 Remingtons, 444 Marlins,and the like would bore through brush, branches, and young Redwoods on their unwavering path to the target. I do my best to be cognizant of any obstruction - even tall grass stems.

Where we hunt, with hounds and running deer, if you don’t shoot through brush, you don’t shoot.

His brother shot at a running deer with a 338WM. The shot went through an 8” tree and killed the deer on the other side.

Bob Hagel did it. Even the .458 deflected.

Did you buy a new scope?

Interesting, but meaningless. The sample size is far too small to have any statistical significance.

And there is no way to determine how each bullet impacted intervening twigs. Which bullets barely glanced off a tiny twig? Which bullets impacted twigs squarely and cut the twig in half? Which bullets went through the brush unscathed?

Not to mention the author invalidated his test from the very start by shooting through a target before his bullets even got to the brush patch.

His conclusion is valid though, wherein he stated "the only ethical answer is to wait for a clear shot."

Ross Seyfried. Not just a good gun writher IMO, but a myth buster as well. He didn't talk chit, he did it, proved or disproved it. Then wrote about it.

Bought an arm load of different size wooden dowels. Drove them into the ground in front of his intended target. Tried a lot of different cartridges from high speed stuff to fat bullet stuff that had been called brush busters for decades. He replaced dowels as needed.

His conclusion was that there was no true brush buster cartridge or bullet. Of course some fared better than others, but many bullets thought to be worthy deflected enough to completely miss the vitals of life sized critter silhouettes.

Guns & Ammo sometime in the 80's or 90's.

Probably true, but here's an example of why that might not make much difference:

In Namibia I shot at at big eland bull around 100 yards yards away. The bull stood absolutely broadside in a clearing surrounded by thick thornbush--except for a single, very thin thin thorn-branch about as thick as my little finger, right in front of the "pocket" behind the big shoulder joint. My rifle was a .338 Winchester Magnum, shooting 250-grain Nosler Partitions at around 2700 fps, and I figured I couldn't hit the skinny branch with a box of ammo, so held right behind the shoulder and pulled the trigger A small dust-cloud erupted right where I aimed, and though the eland ran into the nearby brush the PH turned around and shook my hand.

We waited a minute or two, then started trailing. There wasn't any blood, but in 100 yards or so found the eland standing, head down, in another clearing. I shot again, dropping the bull.

We found the first bullet had hit the skinny thorn-branch and turned sideways, leaving an "entrance hole" that was a perfect silhouette of a 250-grain Partition--surrounded by whirls in the short hair where the thorn-branch had actually whipped against the hide. Obviously the branch was VERY close to the bull, yet the bullet had turned 90 degrees.

I did not need to buy a new scope. I was using a 4-12X42 Burris FF II at 12X. I could plainly see there was no clear shot through the brush. But as the brush was very close to the target, and the worst result possible was that a deflected bullet might damage some meat on a critically injured animal. I considered and took the shot.

I NEVER have, nor will I take such a shot on a healthy game animal.

If there was a "Topic of the week" for this forum, I think yours merits it.

In my neck of the woods, there's lots of underbrush. It's far more likely to see bucks in dense wooded movement than in fields come rifle season. Any honest whitetail hunter will face this dilemma as to whether or not to take the shot and why (why not.)

Forget the critics. That's their personality disorders kicking in.

There really should be more testing available.
It's probably just a matter of finding it.
I vaguely remember someone with a gun channel doing a deflection test like the write up posted, but can't remember who for the life of me.

Most people don’t take into consideration the RPM’s a bullet is spinning at when they hit something like a branch, some really crazy stuff can happen.

That sounds like the same article I referenced.

And John Wooters and John Sundra and Jack O'Connor and probably a few more I can't think of right off hand. I still have several of those old articles around.

Did any identify that "magic bullet"?

Got you it was the second shot. I use leupold vx2’s and there are always sticks, stems, and twigs i can’t see. Lots of times more magnification actually makes the problem worse rather than better. But we are talking eastern hardwoods and not field hunting. 75 yards is a long shot with most being 50 and under.

And i have shot deer that hit something i did not see. I shot a buck standing about 75 yards uphill from me with a 338 win mag and a 225gr hornady sst bullet. Scope was a burris ff2 3-9x40, should have been plenty enough optic. Still couldnt see the twig. The bullet hit that and broke in half went about halfway in the deer and tumbled all the way 90 degrees and lodged in the close side ham. That piece weighed 130 some grains, the other piece totally missed the deer as there was no other hole. The deer stood there probably 5 seconds and then took a dead run straight down the hill at me and fell over.

If you are going to kill mature deer here you have to go where they are and it generally is not in a field or clearing unless it is night time.

I saw a test done about 35 years ago where different calibers were shot through a screen of dowel rods at a target. The take home message was that it didn't make any difference what weight or velocity the bullet was it was deflected significantly. It was surprising the big slow bullets moved about as much as the light fast ones.

When shooting in such conditions, how does one assure the backstop is clear of other hunters? Just hope and luck?

They are supposed to have on blaze orange.

Seen enough of my in-laws do it to see shooting through brush is a lost cause...

I will not hunt with them anymore...

And if they are screened by brush, what good does that do?

It becomes obvious how hunters are killed in the woods each year and why they are usually killed by family. This has previously been a huge mystery to me.

This is the best I can come up with right now to show you what it looks like where I hunt. This is what would be an open area, not even in the woods.

Im not talking about shooting through a bush at something you cant see. I can definitely tell you have never stepped one toe in an eastern hardwoods forest.

They all came to the conclusion there ain't one.

When hunting heavy bush with hounds everyone is put on a stand and spaced well apart. Everyone knows where the others are, where your safe shooting angles are and you don’t leave that stand. Anybody who goes “Dora the Explorer” generally doesn’t get invited back.

And you’re not shooting at something you can’t see, but at something that isn’t standing still. Watch some of the driven boar hunts on YouTube, it’s very similar.

I love the campfire.
Guys with experience in one type of hunting or location,
critiquing things they have no idea of.

Are they in Human Resources at work?


As others have stated if you hunt here and think
You can avoid brush, you better do your hunting with a light.

And it's not just here. Texas has a little bit of brush,
Seen just a little bit of screen hunting Georgia.
Most of my experience in Colorado wasn't too brush,
partly due to elevation, I think. But, it sure wasn't always
open field. Never been to Alaska or Africa, but have heard stories...

Then, there is the "What the hell".
Trying to get a doe, in the woods. She came by at about
50 yards, walking at a decent pace. Nice and open there, I
was following and went for the shot. Instead of dropping, she spun and ran.
I shot again, she did another 180 and ran. Just as she was getting
into deep brush, i shot, again. She went down.

Backtracking to figure out what happened, I found an 8 inch locust
tree with a new hole. Somehow, I missed seeing a tree as I was
lining up a shot at a moving deer. A whole dam tree!

But that's how I roll.
Then there was a buck...3 or 4 shots...WTF...How did you miss...
every round matched a shot off twig on a branch I didn't see in the tree
next to me.

Amazing how you can't see them up close.

no such thing as a tough ballistic tip. it a damn hollow point with a tip. garbage bullet to me

evidently the answer to the OP's question is.....no

Sometime in the late '80's my dad borrowed a VHS tape from a friend. It was a "myth buster" type video.

"Brush-Busting" was one of the things they wanted to test. They had something set up like bookends and filled the gap loosely full of brush/sticks then shot various projectiles into the brush. They all showed fairly significant deflection on a target fairly close to the "simulated brush pile" IIRC they ran a reasonable gamut from 223 up through round-nose FMJ/Solid either .375 or .458. I can no longer recall most of the cartridges nor projectiles save one. They shot a .50BMG through the loose twigs and sticks and that showed a fair amount of deflection as well.

There were some "tests" showing different handgun rounds being shot into new at the time Kevlar vests.

"Police Academy" was fairly recent and Tackelberry had his famous line about his Python in .357 cracking the engine block of a truck, so, they shot an engine block, I sort of recall they had some kind of AP projectile with maybe a green coating, and it just left a bullet mark/stain on the block, no cracks, no holes.

Lee Trevino said a tree was 90% air. We all would like a perfectly broadside, standing still shot but that's not always going to be the case under hunting conditions.

Didn't JeffO do this test once upon a time...?

Has anyone posted this yet? This is one of the better videos I’ve ever seen on the subject. The privet hedge is EXACTLY the sort of thicket I hunt in, though he appears to be shooting through more brush than I ever would.

It’s a seventeen minute video. The Cliffs are that yes, higher velocity stuff appears to deflect and tumble while the slower and bigger stuff appears to just bore right through. The .444 and the 45-70 both went through 3/4 inch pieces of privet hedge and kept going straight.

https://youtu.be/P5dve7vAY9I

zero way of knowing what will happen from one to the next. Period. Thats as exact an answer as you can get.

It is if you make it that way. Only YOU take risky shots.

I walked away from a bunch of iffy shots a week or so ago. Try again some day. Or not.

When you force the issue that you HAVE to shoot, then is when ugly things can happen much quicker.

Lord knows wide open standing still shots have been messed up. Why ad anything else in. Its not fair to the animal IMHO

Only obviously! But I am not talking about shooting through brush at what you can not see. I am talking about shooting AT what you CAN see and hitting what you can not see behind the brush.

How do you clear your backstop? Or is this a foreign concept?

My point, exactly. I wonder if we have convinced the OP yet?

It’s not out west. So what if I can see behind that thicket at 50 yards? I can’t see behind that one at 75, or a 100, or 150. You generally know safe and unsafe directions. You don’t shoot towards a house or something like that. But you mostly can never see beyond 150 yards and mostly a lot less than that.

Hunting where we are is a foreign concept to you and there is nothing I can do to explain it to you further.

Gun safety is paramount to me.

I absolutely can NOT pull a trigger unless I have a clear backstop. So I guess I simply could not/ would not hunt in conditions you describe.

The best shot I never took was at a huge bull caribou ( possibly the best I've ever seen out of tens of thousands) at 162 yards, on a small bald knob surrounded by heavy cover within yards, just below the knob, as it was about half dark. Along with a less solid rest than I wanted, there was a light screen of grass tops between us, about half way, and that was probably the deciding factor, tho the others certainly contributed. It was the last day of the opening, and we had filled only one of 3 tags, earlier that day.

Any bullet, hitting any object before it's intended target, has deflection potential - more likely than not, from what I can gather.

I know from empirical testing that an egg sized rock 15 yards in front of one, just below the scope's line of sight from a prone position, will make a fine cloud of dust, preventing a 2 caribou on one shot at 30 yards..... I did get one on a running "pass-shot" moments later after I leapt to my feet as the herd bolted past me. Just swing through from behind like with a shotgun.

I don't believe that first shot deflected at all, so rocks are OK to try to shoot through - just avoid trying to shoot though brush or grass. That may result in a wounded and not recovered animal.

It’s all very subjective.

I have seen projectiles go "almost strait" through a 4-5" tree.
But you have to hit them dead center otherwise they will go wild.
And your only chance of reasonably strait is if the are no knuckles or aborted branches in the grain of the wood.

Even then I wouldn't trust the energy or direction on the far side for a clean kill...

I suppose a guy COULD take up archery?

I ain't never seen a Q ball glance off of another ball, and then continue in a straight line.

Would you shoot the deer in the first pic I posted? Lets say it was an elk and the largest bull you ever saw.

Two bull moose were locked up in tall, tight willows at less than 20 yards. I got close enough to see well but the brush was so tall i held for a very high shoulder shot.. 30-06 with 168gr TTSX. At the shot the bull stood straight up on his hind legs and flipped over onto his back. All CNS, so a second shot went through ribs.

The bullet showed three entrance wounds about four inches wide. All three pieces went all the way through and the biggest hole profile looked like a sideways bullet.

Doe, fawn, Royal bull elk, makes no difference. Either it is an ethical and safe shot, or it is not.

As to your photo. There appears to be, from the elevation of the photographer, plenty of open ground behind the deer for a back stop, before you get to the brush in the background. Depending on whether there is more intervening brush between my shooting position and the deer other than the two twigs shown. I could easily place a shot into the vitals between those branches.

If a quality 12 X scope shows I do not have a clear line to target, I would let it go.

The one with the forked branch across the vitals?

If you really know your range and ballistics you might pull off a high shoulder shot like Sitka Deer describes..
If you don't get it right, it's amazing has fast a deer becomes invisible in that level of cover...
Even if you know the trails.

😂😂😂 I guess some on here would say that entire area should be closed to hunting😂

I see a schitload of openings in there.

Sounds like a project for the off season. I am going to run some tests and see what I come up with. I just get a kick out of guys at the camp saying to hunt w a 44 mag rifle or 4570 or 35 Remington in the “woods” as the woods are so choked w briars and small limbs that the likelihood of knicking an obsticle en route to the deer seems significant. I am reluctant to give up my 308, ‘06 or even my 6.5 SAUM (in longer shot conditions) just because some yahoo says “use a bullet/cartridge that’s more of a ‘brush buster’ “. My real interest is in small obstructions that lie close in proximity to the target, so I will run my tests with stuff 5-10 yards and 20-30 yards in front of the target and see what happens with different cartridges and bullet weights. Thin dowels seem to be a good medium so I may go that route.

Video record it for the library.

Iraqi 8888888 did a good test, even though it wasn't very scientific. Only three shots each caliber, but showed a tendency towards the heavy blunts over the lighter high velocity rounds.
Something along these lines, with other calibers, would be interesting.