A rubbery tip covering a hollow point makes the difference in your distinction between bullet types? Is the Remington ammo I pictured above with the plastic cap over the hollow point also excluded by your definitions?
Makes sense now.
Hollow Point Hunting???
- Thread starter shanemacbigsac
- Start date
Makes sense now.
I would be willing to bet that 90% of his problem was not the effectiveness of the Norma Mag vs the 303, but the fact that he did not handle the substantial recoil and that caused him to fail to place his shots as precisely, resulting in slower kills.
Dave.
- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
For the most part I agree with you about attaining " full expansion" but here's an interesting example.
A friend borrowed my 300WSM with 130gr TTSX @3500fps to shoot a big black bear, well over 6 ft. The bear was uphill, and standing looking at us. Normally I'm not a big fan of this shot but the range was close and it appeared the bear was going to check us out and hurriedly depart.
The shot hit the chest just under the neck, knocked the bear down. A follow up broadside shot finished it.
Upon dissection and skinning it was found that the first bullet hit the top of the chest/ breastplate area, travelled through and hit the spine where it traveled up the neck, and finally got stuck against a jaw bone.
The bullet was just a tiny shank and smooth expanded front, almost pancake flat. So while most times you see fully expanded Barnes that look like the ads, or maybe the shank without petals, in this case high velocity (and hitting lots of heavy bone at a funny angle) DID cause greater expansion.
According to my measurements, the 130 gr TTSX has a shank about .446", so I think what you observed was the petals broken off leaving a flat mushroom with no indication of either the petals or pleating from inside the hollow-point. A .30 caliber bullet with an expanded nose and a shank less than half an inch long would appear to be pretty short, but is an indication of the forces at work on a bullet from extremely high impact velocities.
If you want to drop animals where they stand the heart/lung shot is least effective in my experience. I have opened the chest cavity on many animals only to have the heart pour out as liquid, yet even animals like a small whitetail ran over 100 yards with a bowl of soup for a heart, the bigger the animal it seems the farther they can go even with no heart
- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
No, the fact that Hornady describes the bullet as having the same design features as their Interlock rifle bullets makes me think the FTX is a rifle bullet.
Northman999
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Southern Yukon
Dave, completely possible. I never got any more details about load, etc either. I just found it interesting.
His writing is heavily weighted toward extreme long range hunting with frangible bullets. You can't expect him to put that disclaimer into every sentence he writes in a book called "Long range hunting cartridges". Animal size at conventional distances with more conventional bullets is mentioned in passing, and is likely more in line with what you're thinking.
On his website, the cartridge info pages discuss the performance of the various bullets at various ranges and velocities (and different sizes of game). He specializes in long range ballistics/hunting, but much of his research is derived from short and medium range as well (during guiding and cull work). Time and time again he discusses bullet performance at short (100-200m) ranges. It's all there for anyone who wants to read it.
Putting the heart in the same category as the lungs doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The fact that they are in close proximity is irrelevant. Lung shots are far, far more effective at killing game quickly than heart shots.
Well, it's not really a thread until Chuck Hawks get's brought up, right?
I've seen pictures of RECOVERED Barnes bullets that didn't expand. They seem to be divided equally among different size animals. Usually this seems to be because of the HP getting plugged or bent closed, or the bullet hit at a weird angle or tumbling. But since it seems to have happened just as often with moose as deer, I'm more inclined to chalk it up to some sort of bullet failure, rather than because it was a light animal
I've also heard plenty of times about how a Barnes didn't expand as the exit hole was small. But the animal died and if it was cut open the vital organs are all torn up. I'vre found that Partitions and TSX bullets and even a few other types of bullets can make small exit wounds, but it's what's inside that count.
I've never hunted WT deer, but shot and seen shot many BT and mule deer as well as black bears of all sizes (lighter game) with X, TSX and TTSX bullets, from .224 caliber to .375 caliber. All worked very well.
Here is an entrance wound on a BT deer from a .375 Ruger using a 270gr TSX, reccomended by Barnes for Buffalo:
It was a behind the shoulder shot and no heavy bone was struck, possibly a bit of rib, but that is not anything like a moose shoulder. Here is the exit:
Not a huge hole blown out, but deifnitly not the same as the entrance wound. Deer ran downhill about 30 yards and piled up.
Lungs were a dripping mess.
Here is the exit from a broadside hit using a 130gr TTSX. Deer bang flopped.
I think if a guy wants to hedge is bets for bang flops on deer size animals and doesn't want to go for a CNS shot, he should probably pick a fairly fast moving, fairly frangible bullet and aim for the lungs. If he is liek many of us and doesn't want to swap loads through the season for hunting different species, he can pick a monometal and do just fine. If he also wants bang flops, aim for bone with these bullets. Lots of different ways to get from A to B.
I hope to find the bullet or a pic of it. I just dug around my recovered bullet collection and it's not there, but it's not a .446" shank. It's got a tiny base/shank about the thickness of 2 twoonies, and the mushroom is smooshed out making it about the diameter of a pinky fingernail.
I can't believe I wouldn't have taken a pic of it because it was so unique, but I can't seem to find it or the pic right now.
The middle bullet is an expanded 130gr TTSX
You can see the bottom groove on the bullet. That's about where the front of the expanded bullet was. No rings were left visible.
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Lung shots allow an animal to live longer, For example an family member took a 184 6/8" record book mule deer one year, first shot was into the lung on one side, the deer turned and stood for a second shot in the other lung and then still went over 100 yards before dropping. This was with a 7mm mag and both bullets were recovered.
Another year I had a cow moose tag, first and second shots both went in the chest taking out lungs and heart, shot it a third time because it was going for a really bad swamp so I had to drop it and did exactly that with a neck/hump shot.
I could keep going, but the basic thing is, a chest shot in lungs or heart is not an instant kill by any means
I have shot moose,elk, deer, and coyotes with the 140gr TTSX launched at 3500 fps out of my 7mmstw rifles. In all cases the bullets expanded enough to do a great deal of internal damage, and that includes coyotes which only weighed 30-40 lbs.
I have had many deer drop at the shot, when struck in the heart/ lung area with a 140gr Ballistic Tip, launched out of my 7mmstw at 3500fps. So far, not one deer out of a few dozen shot with this combination, has made it 50 yards after being hit.
Oh my! I forgot about coyotes. I have shot yotes with 180gr TSX bullets and literally ripped them open. Like gutted them. There was no "pencilling though"
Exactly, so if they expand on a coyote, why would they not expand on a deer?
up to 2200 FPS on Hornadys website
Also a 225gr FTX in their handgun section under 45 Colt that says :
http://www.hornady.com/store/45-Cal-.452-225-gr-FTX/
You do know that death is caused by lack of blood supply to the brain. A heart shot interrupts that supply much quicker than a lung shot.
No I do not because I don't handload and if I did they still wouldn't be loaded/used by me for big game. That is MY opinion and you are entitled to YOUR opinion as well.
Your uninformed opinion.
