150 gr. .30-06 Underperformance?

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I took my last years mule buck at only 168 yards. Clean shot just below the shoulder. Couldn’t find an exit wound on the shot. While skinning, the round fell out and onto the floor. It was sandwiched just between the meat and the hide. I have used those 150 grains on many whitetail and muley and have never seen that before. Nice older buck. I would post a picture of the lead but can’t figure out how haha.

The 150 shook my faith a bit. Should I go for a heavier grain this season? Typical range shots in my area are 2-300 yards + for game.
 
Was the failure to exit what is bothering you?

If you want two holes, you can use a 150 with more controlled expansion, I don't know what kind of bullet that was, but the wider it opens (and more weight it loses) then theres going to be less penetration. Heavier will help with that, all things considered. But I've stopped 180gr round nose on deer spine shots too.

Think if you just do it enough, you're gonna see hide catch bullets that are wider, larger and spent.


If you like lead, a Partition will punch deeper, cause it aint that wide after the front end blows off. Monos will punch deeper, because they don't lose much weight, but you trade a bit of violence internally. Still work fine here, especially at those ranges and use an LRX for insurance if you like.

If you upload the picture to postimages.org it can be posted here, between image tags
 
I have used those 150 grains on many whitetail and muley and have never seen that before.
It worked this time and in the past, just a bit differently this go around, all is well.

I once hit a jack with a 52gr HP out of a .220 Swift, high velocity at about 110yds, no exit. A jack shaped bag of soup says the bullet worked, it was just different that time.
 
Was the failure to exit what is bothering you?

If you want two holes, you can use a 150 with more controlled expansion, I don't know what kind of bullet that was, but the wider it opens (and more weight it loses) then theres going to be less penetration. Heavier will help with that, all things considered. But I've stopped 180gr round nose on deer spine shots too.

Think if you just do it enough, you're gonna see hide catch bullets that are wider, larger and spent.


If you like lead, a Partition will punch deeper, cause it aint that wide after the front end blows off. Monos will punch deeper, because they don't lose much weight, but you trade a bit of violence internally. Still work fine here, especially at those ranges and use an LRX for insurance if you like.

If you upload the picture to postimages.org it can be posted here, between image tags
Yes, it concerned me after the fact that if it had been a longer shot, it may not have been effective enough.
Great advice. Thank you.
 
It worked this time and in the past, just a bit differently this go around, all is well.

I once hit a jack with a 52gr HP out of a .220 Swift, high velocity at about 110yds, no exit. A jack shaped bag of soup says the bullet worked, it was just different that time.
Thank you.
 
I have witnessed a 200gr Eldx stop under the hide of a MD doe at 300yds full broadside shot through ribs only. Recovered bullet weighed 156gr and was a perfect mushroom. The rifle was a 300wm and the bullet left the muzzle at 2900fps... deer was dead in two hops.. based on that I should use a bigger gun......
Once in a while c&cs just cant make it through the offside...if the deer is DRT id say the bullet performed well...if you want 99% passthroughs go to a mono metal....but then you'll probably find slower kills.... A 150gr c&c will reliably kill deer at 3006 velocities most will pass through...once in a while one will not.. I wouldnt sweat it.
 
you could go with a harder or bonded bullet but you might get slower kills depending on shot placement. The weight of the projectile doesn’t make as much of a difference as the hardness.

For instance I shoot 130 grain Barnes 30 cal at 30-06 speeds. These bullets go through bear shoulders like nothing. Even hit the knuckle of the scapula on the off side and obliterated it. On the down side I find they don’t wound as well as lead core bullets. So there is a trade off between expansion/fragmentation and penetration.

Also it’s hard to get your head around but actually the further you shoot and the slower that 150 grain bullet is going the MORE it will penetrate. Assuming your shooting lead of coarse. The bullet will deform less and therefore penetrate more. Again the trade off. You can find all sorts of tests showing this online.
 
Yes, it concerned me after the fact that if it had been a longer shot, it may not have been effective enough.
Great advice. Thank you.
whilst not the case, often the mushroom effect slows them down--- 150gr in the 06 is sweet for little deers an such!

the hide can stretch out like 5 inch or more, an the bullet not cut that hide so it bounces back ,...essentially trappin the projectile
 
whilst not the case, often the mushroom effect slows them down--- 150gr in the 06 is sweet for little deers an such!

the hide can stretch out like 5 inch or more, an the bullet not cut that hide so it bounces back ,...essentially trappin the projectile
Learn something new everyday. Thank you for the information.
 
whilst not the case, often the mushroom effect slows them down--- 150gr in the 06 is sweet for little deers an such!

the hide can stretch out like 5 inch or more, an the bullet not cut that hide so it bounces back ,...essentially trappin the projectile
Well said. More frontal area plowing through a medium means more resistance and consumes more energy. And lighter weight loses momentum.

Introduce that to elasticky hide, and there ya go haha
 
It happens occasionally. There is no perfect bullet.
As long as the buck died quickly from a shot that hit where you aimed, it's all good.
Go back and look at all the deer you have shot with the same bullet.....
Cat
 
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The only bullet I can recall ever recovering from a white tailed deer was fired from my 7mm Rem Mag with the deer being broadside somewhere around 60 yards away IIRC. 150 grain pill weighed something like 70 grains when recovered, mushroom shaped albeit seriously flattened... Like WhelanLad said, the hide can really stretch out on the far side...

My only complaint in cases like this is, no exit wound for blood trailing IF required...
 
you could go with a harder or bonded bullet but you might get slower kills depending on shot placement. The weight of the projectile doesn’t make as much of a difference as the hardness.

For instance I shoot 130 grain Barnes 30 cal at 30-06 speeds. These bullets go through bear shoulders like nothing. Even hit the knuckle of the scapula on the off side and obliterated it. On the down side I find they don’t wound as well as lead core bullets. So there is a trade off between expansion/fragmentation and penetration.

Also it’s hard to get your head around but actually the further you shoot and the slower that 150 grain bullet is going the MORE it will penetrate. Assuming your shooting lead of coarse. The bullet will deform less and therefore penetrate more. Again the trade off. You can find all sorts of tests showing this online.


Bingo. In a general sort of way, penetration and bullet impact/damage work against each other. Everything is a compromise.

A compromise analogy can be made with of all things; snowmobile suspensions. Its best to set them up so they lightly bottom out on about 10% of your hits for riding style and conditions. Some are so horrified by bottoming out that they set them up harder; but that means they now hit 90% of their bumps harder then they had to.
 
So having never hunted, I don't have the same perspective as people that have, but I'm wondering... So you got full penetration, the bullet ended up on the far side and dumped ALL of its energy into the animal, and that's bad? Isn't that ideal? A pass through is wasted energy, no? What's the advantage to a bullet making it all the way through an animal, is it a higher likelihood of a blood trail that's easier to track?

I guess you could argue that the same bullet might have not performed as well on a much bigger/tougher animal, but for what you're doing, it seems just right?
 
Because in all the things I've ever shot I've never noticed a difference in internal wounding or rapidity of death with the same category of bullet whether it exited or not. Its not like you can shoot deer with the same bullet/cartridge and say "yep, that one definitely stayed in, no pass-through there, it took all the energy".

There CAN be a difference in how much blood ends up on the ground if it doesn't drop right there, and they generally don't unless you specifically aim for that. If its not spine or brain you really can't count on the "DRT" performance
 
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I took my last years mule buck at only 168 yards. Clean shot just below the shoulder. Couldn’t find an exit wound on the shot. While skinning, the round fell out and onto the floor. It was sandwiched just between the meat and the hide. I have used those 150 grains on many whitetail and muley and have never seen that before. Nice older buck. I would post a picture of the lead but can’t figure out how haha.

The 150 shook my faith a bit. Should I go for a heavier grain this season? Typical range shots in my area are 2-300 yards + for game.

You didn't say what bullet or caliber (although it probably doesn't matter much), but my father hunted and shot everything from bighorns, moose, elk, deer and speed goats with Speer's 165 grain Hot-Cor bullets in his short barreled BSA Featherweight from the early 1960s onwards for almost 50 years. It was a moderate load with IMR 4320, picked out of one of the early Speer reloading handbooks.

While my younger brothers and I spent parts of our paycheques on Speer Grand Slams, Nosler Partitions, Barnes, etc, Dad just kept filling his tags using those 165 grain Hot-Cor bullets. Wouldn't even move up to a 180 grain bullet years later when we took him up north on a dedicated hunting trip for big moose. The Hot-Cor bullets worked for us as well when we were also hunting with our 30/06s - we just believed if we spent enough money on more expensive boutique bullets, we would find The Magic Bullet that would instantly kill everything in it's tracks like a lightening bolt from God himself. We didn't have long searches for critters he shot that ran away after being shot, all of them were pretty much DRT within a few hundred yards at most, while we followed the blood trail to find them.

With that in mind, if you have a 150 grain bullet (or other) in a similar caliber that has been performing exactly as you wanted and expected it to, you might want to ask why you would suddenly lose confidence in the bullet because it did not exit this time?

Very few of us actually have enough experience in bullet performance from having witnessed dozens of big game animals shot and being able to see the results first hand. Guys who have been big game guides for years perhaps, others involved in culling operations. So we go with our limited personal experience. We have a friend who has shot more big game than I will ever dream of; for decades he did a self-guided trip to northern BC each year where he parked his truck and walked back into the mountains hunting prize big game like bighorn sheep, goats, caribou, etc. He has sworn by the Hornady Interlock in his 30/06 since the 1970's and still hunts with it to this day. I shot exactly one elk with a Hornady Interlock sometime around 1978 while trying different bullets. At about 100 yards, the recovered bullets looked like long pencil erasers; have never reloaded a Hornady hunting bullet since then no matter how clearly they work well for him.

There is also the real world reality that once in a while a defective bullet is going to get through the QC/QA process no matter who the manufacturer is. Maybe those Hornady Interlocks I was using that day were one of those escaped defects.

Whatever bullet in whatever caliber you're using, if you've been using them successfully for a long time and the only difference here is this one didn't exit, if I were you I would be using the very same bullet again this year.
 
You didn't say what bullet or caliber (although it probably doesn't matter much), but my father hunted and shot everything from bighorns, moose, elk, deer and speed goats with Speer's 165 grain Hot-Cor bullets in his short barreled BSA Featherweight from the early 1960s onwards for almost 50 years. It was a moderate load with IMR 4320, picked out of one of the early Speer reloading handbooks.

While my younger brothers and I spent parts of our paycheques on Speer Grand Slams, Nosler Partitions, Barnes, etc, Dad just kept filling his tags using those 165 grain Hot-Cor bullets. Wouldn't even move up to a 180 grain bullet years later when we took him up north on a dedicated hunting trip for big moose. The Hot-Cor bullets worked for us as well when we were also hunting with our 30/06s - we just believed if we spent enough money on more expensive boutique bullets, we would find The Magic Bullet that would instantly kill everything in it's tracks like a lightening bolt from God himself. We didn't have long searches for critters he shot that ran away after being shot, all of them were pretty much DRT within a few hundred yards at most, while we followed the blood trail to find them.

With that in mind, if you have a 150 grain bullet (or other) in a similar caliber that has been performing exactly as you wanted and expected it to, you might want to ask why you would suddenly lose confidence in the bullet because it did not exit this time?

Very few of us actually have enough experience in bullet performance from having witnessed dozens of big game animals shot and being able to see the results first hand. Guys who have been big game guides for years perhaps, others involved in culling operations. So we go with our limited personal experience. We have a friend who has shot more big game than I will ever dream of; for decades he did a self-guided trip to northern BC each year where he parked his truck and walked back into the mountains hunting prize big game like bighorn sheep, goats, caribou, etc. He has sworn by the Hornady Interlock in his 30/06 since the 1970's and still hunts with it to this day. I shot exactly one elk with a Hornady Interlock sometime around 1978 while trying different bullets. At about 100 yards, the recovered bullets looked like long pencil erasers; have never reloaded a Hornady hunting bullet since then no matter how clearly they work well for him.

There is also the real world reality that once in a while a defective bullet is going to get through the QC/QA process no matter who the manufacturer is. Maybe those Hornady Interlocks I was using that day were one of those escaped defects.

Whatever bullet in whatever caliber you're using, if you've been using them successfully for a long time and the only difference here is this one didn't exit, if I were you I would be using the very same bullet again this year.
This is probably the best thing I have ever read. Thank you for taking the time to post and for the information. Sorry, it was my 30-06, and they were Remington Core Lokt.
Thank you again.
 
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This is probably the best thing I have ever read. Thank you for taking the time to post and for the information. Sorry, it was my 30-06, and they were Remington Core Lokt.
Thank you again.
There's a reason that Remington bullet design is still around and selling well enough for Remington to continue making them and selling them 50+ years since they were introduced.
 
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