Accubonds: On game performance

H

huntingfish

CGN frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
9   0   0
Location
Quebec City
Just came back from the woods...I shot a moose with a 300 win mag with accubonds 180gr. Shot was at 75 yards or so on a broadside 2'ish year old male. Shot placement was perfect: square in the chest and was a complete pass through. Liquified both lungs. He fell right where he stood, which happened to be in the trail too: An added bonus!

Sure, at that range, you might be tempted to say any bullet would perform correctly. But I can confirm that the accubonds did a good job this time around.

David
 
Good to hear they worked well for you! Accubonds have a pretty good reputation, but reading your story gives me that extra little bit of confidence the Accubonds I'll be launching will get the job done!
 
They also work at 250 yards. I called in a nice bull last year, broadside shot with my 7mm RM, 160 gr accubond to the lungs, a bit far back. After the shot the bull ran towards me and stopped at 100 facing me, he wasn't looking so great. He turned and started quartering away at a walk. One more to the lungs put him down.
 
john-brennan said:
Accubonds is all I use in all my rifles for hunting, accurate and proven dependability for me.
Click to expand...

Its funny you mention, I've been doing a bunch of load development for 4 different rifles and 3 different calibres, Accubonds have produced the tightest groups easily. Although I did have some luck getting some 150 gr Barnes TTSX to group decent out of my 308 Ruger Scout.

Accubonds are quickly becoming my "go-to" when I want a hunting rifle to shoot well.
 
I've only shot the one deer with accubonds, but it was a mixed reaction. Hit a decent sized 6 pointer, double lung shot, about 200+- yards out of a .308.

The deer hunched up and only ran 30 or 40 yards before it fell, which is good. The bad was that there was almost no blood, nothing where he was hit, nothing i noticed on his trail and very very little where he fell. The exit hole was quite small and if he had ran much farther it would have been tough finding him.

So i'm not 100% sold on the accubonds yet for hunting, but damn they shoot a nice group.
 
huntingfish said:
Just came back from the woods...I shot a moose with a 300 win mag with accubonds 180gr. Shot was at 75 yards or so on a broadside 2'ish year old male. Shot placement was perfect: square in the chest and was a complete pass through. Liquified both lungs. He fell right where he stood, which happened to be in the trail too: An added bonus!

Sure, at that range, you might be tempted to say any bullet would perform correctly. But I can confirm that the accubonds did a good job this time around.

David
Click to expand...

Nosler Accubonds always performed with excellence for me. In 2018 I killed this 375 lbs. mule buck at 60 yards. The rifle was a 240 Wby., shooting a 90 grain Accubond at 3,510 fps at the muzzle. I located the bullet on the opposite shoulder and later weighed it at 36.4 grains. I think that is quite impressive, considering the velocity and short distance to impact. Last year I killed a 6 point bull elk with a 130 grain Accubond out of my 270 Winchester. Needless to say, they are most accurate!
https://imgur.com/a/LKxVHCB
 
Prior to discovering Accubonds I used Ballistic Tips. My 30-06 I eventually nicknamed it snake eyes because first two shots from cold bore rifle invariably landed two inches high and about two inches apart at 100.

Same handload formula same weight of Accubond most often three bullets in nice tight 3/4 inch group.

done
 
Anything I have shot with Accubonds so far has died quickly. Retained weight is definitely acceptable.
Another bullet in the running is the Swift Scirocco II. Very good performance on game and they
retain a bit more weight than the Accubond. Of course, the Nosler Partition continues to do the job
with boring reliability. [Wish Nosler would streamline them a bit more, perhaps with a plastic tip] Dave.
 
I’m a big accubond fan. I’ve taken deer and moose with the 165gr bullets in my 308 and last year I took a bull elk and whitetail buck with the 180gr bullet from my 300win. I was very impressed with the bullets performance on the elk. My handload is running 3150fps and the bull was no more then 50 yards. Hit the elk broadside, clean entry and broke a rib on the way out and took the lungs with it. I was worried about the impact speed but I got a full pass through.
 
WhelanLad said:
sounds lucky to me that u had an accubond an not something lesser.

one of the best hunting projectiles in my opinion the AB
Click to expand...

Because of the close distance? Probably right!

I also had bought some berger hunters and core-lokt this year to try out in the new rifle, those stayed at home. I brought along the accubonds and the fusions just in case I ran out of accubonds ;-)

David
 
I been very impressed with the Accubond performance on moose and deer over the last decade I have been using then in my 300WM and have been switching over to Accubonds for all my hunting rifles.

so far I have good loads for my 300WM with a 200grn and for my 25-05 with 110grn

next on my list is the 325WSM with a 200grn Accubond and the 338WM with a 225grn Accubond

and then the 7mm RM needs load development.

and perhaps after that I'll look at the 243, its using a 100grn Hornady now.

the 22-250 I am using a Nosler Ballistic tip and those seem to work just fine.
 
243win said:
Thats awesome! Actually at that range that would test some bullets, some may blow apart coming from the 300win mag.
Click to expand...

Bullets don't disappear when they "blow up". This fear of bullet weight loss as it passes through the animal sells more crappy bullets that get used for the wrong thing.

I know this thread started about moose which is large enough animal that deep penetration is generally a good thing, but not always. This thread is really an ideal situation for bonded core... short range and large animal... good shot placement.

The flip side of that is that fragmentation is rarely a bad thing... Multiple would channels helps the animal die quickly. What remains of the bullet continues to cause damage until it exits the body... if it does.

Most importantly, that any energy left in the bullet once it exits the animal was 100 percent wasted. It's important for guys to understand that.

So bonded core ammo would be best on an animal that is so large that you get no exit wound, but using that same bonded core ammo on a deer may actually simply wound the animal and you are likely to get better terminal performance with a softer or more frangible bullet.

I would much rather have a frangible bullet and no exit wound than a bonded core bullet with an exit wound.
 
Maple57 said:
Bullets don't disappear when they "blow up". This fear of bullet weight loss as it passes through the animal sells more crappy bullets that get used for the wrong thing.

I know this thread started about moose which is large enough animal that deep penetration is generally a good thing, but not always. This thread is really an ideal situation for bonded core... short range and large animal... good shot placement.

The flip side of that is that fragmentation is rarely a bad thing... Multiple would channels helps the animal die quickly. What remains of the bullet continues to cause damage until it exits the body... if it does.

Most importantly, that any energy left in the bullet once it exits the animal was 100 percent wasted. It's important for guys to understand that.

So bonded core ammo would be best on an animal that is so large that you get no exit wound, but using that same bonded core ammo on a deer may actually simply wound the animal and you are likely to get better terminal performance with a softer or more frangible bullet.

I would much rather have a frangible bullet and no exit wound than a bonded core bullet with an exit wound.
Click to expand...

That's a little simplistic. "Energy" doesn't kill things, trauma to the nervous and vascular systems kill things. While a lightly constructed bullet combined with high velocity will result in spectacular wound channels, the smaller pieces of the projectile lack enough mass and momentum to create individual wound channels. The same bullet driven at lower velocities (or better explained, that impact at a lower velocity) will result in less violence of expansion and deeper penetration. The incredibly tough monometal bullets handle high impact velocities much better but as velocity drops off so does their terminal performance. They'll penetrate to hell and back, but they don't result in as much tissue disruption though they do almost always exit.

The idea that a bullet that completely penetratesan animal is somehow inferior is a fallacy. When the end goal in to cause the animal to bleed to death you need to penetrate, at a minimum, through the heart or other major blood vessels. The aorta being the largest and by far easiest to locate when choosing your shot location. Once you sever major blood vesssels that should be the end of the matter, but it isn't. The importance of locating the animal after the shot is paramount. To that end, causing as much blood as possible to exit the body provides a much easier to follow blood trail and allows you to analyze the nature and amount of blood present. Is it spraying? Is it dark? Pink and bubbly? green vegetation present in it? All these things will help tell you how the animal is hit and will help you plan your next steps. A second bullet hole also allows more air to enter the chest cavity which causes what our EMT friends would call "tension pneumothorax". Air goes in but it can't come out. The lungs collapse and, along ewith the internal hemhorraging, oxygen is deprived to the brain and muscles. Then, death. Frequently with a single point of entry, that wound can be closed off by the movement of the hide or a shoulder blade resulting in very little blood and air not getting inside the chest cavity. When that happens, the tracking job becomes longer and the likelihood of losing the animal increases dramatically.

Short of a CNS hit, DRTs are few and far between. Yes, I know, everyone on the internet gets DRTs all the time. Even if that's true, we're not Joe the average hunter so it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. Race car drivers walk away from 100 MPH crashes all the time but college kids get smeared across the highway at 50. This, as they say, ain't that.
 
huntingfish said:
Liquified both lungs. He fell right where he stood, which happened to be in the trail too: An added bonus!

Sure, at that range, you might be tempted to say any bullet would perform correctly. But I can confirm that the accubonds did a good job this time around.

David
Click to expand...

Good job, and thanks for the info !

Maple57 said:
Most importantly, that any energy left in the bullet once it exits the animal was 100 percent wasted. It's important for guys to understand that.

So bonded core ammo would be best on an animal that is so large that you get no exit wound, but using that same bonded core ammo on a deer may actually simply wound the animal and you are likely to get better terminal performance with a softer or more frangible bullet.

I would much rather have a frangible bullet and no exit wound than a bonded core bullet with an exit wound.
Click to expand...

Ahhh the frag guru here to teach us heathen who didn't get the drift in this thread
https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php/2066286-30-Carbine-For-Deer and the entertainment continues ! Laugh2

I'd rather have an exit wound and everything soup in between, and not track more than 100 yards.

BigUglyMan said:
Short of a CNS hit, DRTs are few and far between. Yes, I know, everyone on the internet gets DRTs all the time. Even if that's true, we're not Joe the average hunter so it all has to be taken with a grain of salt. Race car drivers walk away from 100 MPH crashes all the time but college kids get smeared across the highway at 50. This, as they say, ain't that.
Click to expand...

I have had 6 drt with the 300wm boiler room shots ( out to 400 yards ) and 1 with 270 ( neck shot ) of over 50 deer shot. Shot 3 bucks one year with 270 150's at 2800fps and all 3 ran 40 - 70 yards with lungs destroyed and hearts penetrated. It is not an exact science, but drt's are not so rare, and I believe the op. Nice not to have to cross fence lines in my situation so I want as close to drt as I can get.
Not making any scientific claims , just my observation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom