Bullets changing direction after hitting bone

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dand883

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I had always heard stories and people talk about bullets seemingly going off in a complete different direction after hitting a rib, or bone, etc, but i had never encountered it myself. Typically if a bullet is going in a certain direction it might be deflected off a few degrees after hitting something, but generally keeps going in the same direction without hitting something hard like a rock, steel, etc.

Well this year i got a doe and the bullet made a quick right hand turn and went somewhere it really had no right going. The doe i got it had been facing directly towards me so i had to watch it for a bit waiting for it to turn sideways. It turned for almost a perfect broadside shot, maybe slightly quartered to me, but not by much.
I aimed for the double lung shot, pulled the trigger and it jumped up and ran a ways off before stopping in some spruce trees. As i was walking to where i last saw her and where she was when i shot there was no blood at all to be seen, which from the way she reacted after the shot i knew she was hit.

When i found her and got to field dressing i noticed that the bullet went in right where i had intended it to, but then hit one of the ribs, made a right hand turn and went almost straight down along her stomach and out near the groin so that all the blood was trapped in the abdominal cavity.

Now i've hit shoulders, leg bones, ribs, you name it and the bullet has always continued on in the same direction. It seems crazy that something as small as a deer rib bone can alter it's direction by that much.

What the strangest change in direction you guys have seen, and how often do you think it really happens?
 
I shot a running whitetail once with a 264 Mag, that was on a bench down below me, broadside for the most part. Bullet hit the shoulder blade rib, and instead of punching straight through the rib cage turned and ran down the length of his leg. Found the bullet balled up where the hide meets the hoof.

Shoot enough bullets into animals and eventually you will see something weird occur.

As to how often, in my experience, much less than 1% of the time.
 
A friend shot a mulie buck at about 60 yards in the base of the neck just in front of the shoulders [instant kill] with a factory 130gr Rem bronze pt . The point ejected and key holed up the entire neck vertebrae eventually found lodged in the eyelid!
 
I shot a perfectly broad side buffalo at 21 yards. There was absolutely nothing to hit inbetween . The .416” 400 grain TSX hit square in the meaty part of the shoulder, never hit bone and still turned 90 degrees and ended up in a hind quarter. Made for an interesting follow up, but it ended well.
 
I nod when I see these threads...like, yeah...I believe it.
Dad got into a Goat roping hunting coyote's with a 22 lr. Seated in an old Ford pickup with the bench seat, the bullet went through his upper leg; side to side and (Quoting the Doctor here) " The thread pattern on his new Blue Jeans caused to bullet to deflect up into his stomach " It was stupid that it happened; almost got him the 'long dirt nap'...but still bizarre how little to takes to seriously deflect a bullet.
No-one believes the Kennedy story in it's totality...but bullets do crazy things when they strike stuff...not 'Magic' but still pretty bizarre oftentimes.
 
I have experienced this phenomenon a couple of times over the years.
There is no logical explanation for it, but I suspect the rotational spin
plays a role in the deflection.

Bullets occasionally do strange things. I had a .270 - 140 Hornady BTSP
completely explode on the rib of a Whitetail deer. Created a large "bloom"
type surface wound, but did not penetrate the chest cavity. A second
shot was required to put him down. Why???? Big mystery. Dave.
 
I had the same thing happen on a broadside cow moose at 180 yards with a 286gr Hornady from a 9.3x62 . Surface wound requiring two additional chest shots and one in the head. Sent bullets to Hornady and of course the test came back they were flawless...........NOT .......pulled them all and replaced with Partitions same weight.Problem solved.
 
Took a shot on a black bear years back, 200 yards or so, quartering shot, aimed for the lungs, bullet deflected off the left rib and ended up in the right hind leg. No visible internal damage to the lungs, heart, and liver. Bear ran 25 yards or so and died, no follow up required. That one confused me abit:confused:, you'd think a follow up should have taken place. The bullets used were 180gr 8mm ballistic tips.
 
mbogo3 said:
I had the same thing happen on a broadside cow moose at 180 yards with a 286gr Hornady from a 9.3x62 . Surface wound requiring two additional chest shots and one in the head. Sent bullets to Hornady and of course the test came back they were flawless...........NOT .......pulled them all and replaced with Partitions same weight.Problem solved.
Click to expand...

Yes Sir! Don’t know any of us up here who load that use that bullet on big game. Tried often enough to discover they are accurate, but perform like grenades rather than bullets once they hit something.

I’ll bet the two additional shots weren’t any better either.

Ted
 
I had one a few years back that left me scratching my head.
Quartering to at 135 yards, 145 grain Speer out of a 280 Remington case.
Hit perfectly, bullet skidded along between the hide and the meat and exited the body breaking the back leg!
Left it overnight and went in the next morning, finally killing it after a 4 hour tracking a d chase .
Both my partner and I were amazed when skinning it out.
The bullet actually broke in half, part of it ended up under the opposite shoulder.
This same bullet and rifle had accounted for numerous one shot kills of moose and deer over the years.
Cat
 
KodiakHntr said:
I shot a running whitetail once with a 264 Mag, that was on a bench down below me, broadside for the most part. Bullet hit the shoulder blade rib, and instead of punching straight through the rib cage turned and ran down the length of his leg. Found the bullet balled up where the hide meets the hoof.

Shoot enough bullets into animals and eventually you will see something weird occur.

As to how often, in my experience, much less than 1% of the time.
Click to expand...

Seen the same thing twice, broadside shots with bullet ending down the leg. One with 140gr PowerPoint from a 6.5x55 and the other with a 180gr TSX from a .30-06 of all things. Both small mulies.
 
Some bullets are more prone to this than others. Partitions and TSX generally stay on a straight path more often than not.

The original Swift Scirocco was in my experience the king of the U-turn! The noses would often deform drastically off to one side creating a "bent-nail" appearance on recovery. The new Scirocco II seem to have remedied that however.
 
Why not? said:
Yes Sir! Don’t know any of us up here who load that use that bullet on big game. Tried often enough to discover they are accurate, but perform like grenades rather than bullets once they hit something.

I’ll bet the two additional shots weren’t any better either.

Ted
Click to expand...

You would be correct........Hornady was gracious enough to have Korth send me free 2 boxes of 250gr GMX and two more boxes of the one's that failed the 286gr SP. They work fine on deer bigger stuff not so much.
 
Not that unusual in my experience. The problem is the strange bullet behaviour may result in a running, wounded animal that escapes. Inexperienced hunters may assume they "missed". Of the ones that I have recovered:

I've had a .375 H&H 260 gr. Nosler Partition deflect off the humerus/scapula joint of a bull elk that was quartering towards me at under 100 M, bullet changed direction 45° and shattered the scapula but never made it into the chest cavity. A second shot did the trick.

Had a CIL "KlingKor" SPRN .308 deflect off the "elbow" joint at the bottom of the humerus on a whitetail buck at 20M, bullet went up at at least a 45° angle and broke the backbone.

Had a couple of bullets deflect off ribs on standing, facing, deer - bullets hit just to one side of the point of the chest, ran around the outside of the rib cage under the shoulder muscles and hide but never got inside where it counts. One was a .257 Roberts 120 gr. Nosler Partition at about 120M, the other was a .250 Savage 100 gr. Win Silvertip. at about 250M. Both required second shots.

I've seen several 150 gr. .308 cup and core soft nose bullets stop entirely in the humerus/scapula joint of elk and moose. Never got to the chest cavity. Animals didn't fall or break stride. Just started limping. An inch to either side, and those animals would have been killed very neatly even with those light for caliber/relatively fragile bullets. Second shots finished the job.

That's why I don't "admire my shot" - If they're still standing, I shoot again! And I strongly prefer bullets that don't break up on bone.
 
Aerodynamics, hydrodynamics.... Nothing is 100% the same, ever, once the bullet starts to change shape all things change. A large flat or mushroomed surface can cause the bullet to skip of into a easy direction to travel. A change in the resistance of the medium traveled through, seen lots of ballistic gel video but never any where the density changes drastically. Example hide, meat, internal organs, ribs and bone would tuff to mimic. On a good beach of skipping stones most will skip fairly straight forward, some take a dive some shoot up in the air or make sharp turn. Seen nails in a nail gun make u-turns for no apparent reason.
 
The only bad experience I ever had was me screwing up and loading a .458cal 405gr Speer way above it's (.45-70) design muzzle velocity. Had them doing 1900fps mv, likely intended for max 1400fps mv.

I shot a big black bear at point blank range. Two shots. Killed the bear, but those slugs literally vaporized. In a straight line mind you.

Operator error to load those bullets to that muzzle velocity.

But I've never had a bullet deviate, when hitting game.
 
Now that the thread has morphed into bullet failure I can add more. Heres just one of them, a buffalo shot with a borrowed 450 Nitro express double with factory loads. I shot that luckless animal 6 times with 480 grain factory loads that literally had a picture of a buffalo on the box. Bullet was a DGX before they were bonded: they penetrated 6 inches before coming completely apart. It all happened fast, and although it all happened fast the bull just kept coming my way and laying down fire was easy. About the time I was at the last shell that I had in my fingers I just poked it behind the ear. It wasn’t a charge situation; just a disoriented animal.

Funniest part was watching paid for internet posters denying the possibility of bad bullets, but Hornady discontinued it shortly after that.
 
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