Berger Bullets for Hunting

.264 130gr VLDH from 6.5x47L performed great on 3 White tail bucks all 100-150 yards. Heart / lungs and exit. No experience personally on bigger game.
 
I used them for hunting Caribou. Was very impressed, 380yards, on shot 168g 7mm Mag.. no issues at all. I do shoot them at my personal 1000 yd range. I find them very accurate in 7mm Mag out to 700yds. I have not hunted or shot them in any other caliber yet. P.S. that's the Caribou in my account picture
 
Bullet blowup at 500 + 600 yards on 2 elk with 168gr out of a .300 RUM. Shrapnel throughout the rib cage.Lost a wt meat doe hit square in the shoulder with 130gr .270 180 yards .Surface wound I suspect threw the rest of the "Burgers "in the garbage can. Never again.
 
Taken quite a few moose and a few black bears with 300 win 210gr VLD Hunting bullets. Most of the time they worked well, my few exceptions were lack of expansion. I would find bullets had tumbled and flattened instead of expanded and plenty of times i did get pass throughs. The biggest hurdle today is finding what bullets are available. I switched to ELD-X in a 7mag(162s) have been satisfied. I wouldn’t use one at 3200fps and expect it to break big shoulders and get pass throughs. Pick nice broadside shots and put it where it counts and they wont get far with most any bullets. Knowing how your bullet performs best and matching it to your hunting style is the key. Cheers
 
I have used them without any issues with losing an animal. They kill everything I shoot with them.

I am not an engineer, but I have shot the 168 grain 7mm, and 168 grain VLD in 308 caliber. One day I experimented at 1000 yards.

I shot 5 each of the 168grain VLD hunting and Target versions at the same target and aim point. In both cases the resultant groups were completely inclusive of each other. I marked each bullet from each bullet type with a marker. Both groups clustered in the exact same location, making a decent 10 round group.

My take on this is if both bullet types group into the same aim point at 1000 yards, they simply cannot really/logically be any different in any real notable way. Especially with the fact these groups were at extended distances that should in theory expose “ANY” physical differences. I believe the only difference between those bullets I tested was the colour of the box they came in.

With all this said, I still use them on occasion for smaller sized big game.


The only bullet I believe (in my experience) that is good for every hunting senerio within logical ranges for each cartridge used is the nosler partition. I have NEVER recovered one from an animal, and they kill everything I have shot with them. They sometimes are difficult to get shooting in the MOA realm, but usually an adequate load can be found.

I have found that every custom barreled rifle I have used them with has been easy to get a sub MOA grouping with various powder combinations. YMMV
 
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At the risk of repeating myself, ad nauseum, I reassert that there are several excellent true "hunting" bullets to choose from.

Thus it makes absolutely no sense to use a frangible bullet like Bergers on big animals, since it is not a matter of "if", but a
matter of "when" there will be a failure. I appreciate that some have enjoyed good success using the Bergers and similar light
jacketed bullets, and on deer size game, they should work. Even on these, a failure can occur. [See post 23 and 14]

Since I am a meat hunter, I am not going to wait for a perfect presentation to take a shot on a legal animal. That means I
avoid like the plague bullets that may blow up on bigger bone.

Bergers are splendid bullets for paper punching, accurate and consistent. They are NOT my choice to hunt with. Dave.
 
Listen to eagle eye, or listen to me hahaha cause what he said is also what I say!! Keep those bullets for your long shots at coyote if you like that kind of things and use real hunting bullets for you big game hunting!
 
Nosler makes a 168gr Accu-Bond .308 long range hunting bullet I'd like to try if they could be found these days.
 
mbogo3 said:
Nosler makes a 168gr Accu-Bond .308 long range hunting bullet I'd like to try if they could be found these days.
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I use both the Accubond and long range variant in 7mm RM. The long range has more of a VLD profile and the regular Accubond has a more conventional profile. At equal COAL, the long range will have more jump than the regular Accubond. So if you can load long, the LR is great. If you're limited by mag length then the regular Accubond performs better. Well for me anyway. YMMV.
 
I was on the fence for a long time about this. In the end Dave and DGY are right, there are many bullets that are much better for taking big game. Loosing an animal over a bullet failure would be a nightmare.
 
RangerPark said:
I use both the Accubond and long range variant in 7mm RM. The long range has more of a VLD profile and the regular Accubond has a more conventional profile. At equal COAL, the long range will have more jump than the regular Accubond. So if you can load long, the LR is great. If you're limited by mag length then the regular Accubond performs better. Well for me anyway. YMMV.
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With regular Accu-Bonds 160gr 7 Rem mag I get 40" of moose and about 70% retention weight.
 
I have used berger hunting bullets in the following
243
25-06
308
270 Weatherby
338 RUM
Everything has died that was shot with them
Bang flops being common
Had a pass threw with a 338rum on a mule buck. But he died anyway
I have not had anything not die. And have not had any failure that caused a animal to run away. I have had game wounded in the past with other bullets(bad shots on my part)
Barnes being the most notable of failure to expand and running back up shots required and tracking
220gr speer out of a 8mm mag blew a white tail doe like throwing a hand grenade inside her.
So I use these terrible Berger bullets the way they are intended to be used. Shot animal it dies.
Don’t shoot animal in butt expecting it to travel to vitals(not a shot I would take even on a 200” deer)
Worst bullet ever had on deer?
Swift sirrocco ii oit of a 257 Weatherby
Zipped in and out on 5 deer. All were long tracking jobs
2 were lost.
From 75 yards to 500 yard shots
Went back to 115 Berger bullets
Back to dead deer very close to where they were shot. Very little if any tracking.
Would I shoot a buffalo with one? No, there are bullets intended for that.
Just my 2cents
Bang flops
 
South Pender said:
Does anyone have experience using Berger bullets (the ones designated for hunting, not target shooting) for hunting? Berger made their name making target and BR bullets, and I wonder whether the ones they sell for hunting applications have seen success in the hunting fields. Can anyone report on their performance on game?
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A buddy shot a moose from 300 yards with 185 jugs from a 308. Moose ran 3 feet straight down.

I've been using SMKs for deer for 40 years... Works great.

I do believe a fast twist rate helps terminal performance though.
 
Bullet performance can be reduced to what makes the biggest hole, and what makes the deepest hole. Everything else is somewhere in between, or a compromise. Nothing is perfect, but after several thousand animals I've had to conclude that the big hole has solved more problems than the deep one.
 
It depends on your purpose. If it’s body counts then who gives a crap. But if you are actually hunting and have spent days, weeks, and dozens upon dozens of boot miles looking for an animal I want a bullet that won’t fail. By that I mean, fail to penetrate to the clockwork of an animal.
 
I’ve only tested 140gn and 168gn Bergers on whitetail. I can confirm Berger bullets are very effective at killing. In fact they are the hardest hitting bullets I’ve tested so far. The only downside is that they tend to make a mess. Last years buck was hit in the top of the heart, fragments of bullet came through the steak meat above the front shoulder. They hit like Mike Tyson but create substantial meat damage.

I could see lighter bullets not being ideal for very large game. You might not get the penetration to be effective. In that case you could simply use a heavier bullet. A 200+gn Berger would smack the crap out of anything in this country.
 
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