Best Ammo for Brush

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I guess when you work night shift, your mind can play tricks on you and logic/reasoning get distorted....especially when your co-worker and you have a discussion concerning ammunition at 3:00 in the morning.

Well....the question on best ammo to use in brush...ie tag alder, came to light.

I am under the impression that a relatively slow heavy bullet ammo, like 45/70 or 444 marlin is better than a fast lighter bullet like the 7mm WSM or 270 WSM which my coworker is siding with.

My coworker's argument is that the speed of the bullet should allow the bullet to cut thru the brush and maintain its trajectory.

I feel the mass of the heavier punching bullet will prevail...albeit slower.

Anybody have proof....before this turns into a heated argument? This argument might get taken outside to the bush if it doesn't get resolved here.

Thanks in advance
 
From what I've read you can't count on anything "going through" brush(for the purposes of taking game), but I'm no expert.

I can say I passed on a few shots at big moose this yr because I didn't have a clear hole I was comfortable with.

I do personally think that a larger, heavier, slower bullet will be deflected less in a glancing situation if that helps. And, I know for a fact you can cut down small trees with a 450 marlin loaded with 50gr 3031 and a 400gr hawk.:D
 
I have seen a few tests in various magazines,and the results were all similar,that being that there wasn't much if any difference in the ability of various bullets to strike obstacles and still maintain their line of flight.
 
Any bullet that hits brush is going to deflect somewhat.

I shot through heavy brush with my .375 Ruger using 270gr TSX to kill a nice blacktail buck yesterday. So much brush in the way, it was almost impossible to thread the needle, but it was very close and I pulled it off.

So a .375 caliber 270gr bullet @ 2700fps is ideal.:p
 
^^


Good shootin House,


For the OP, I would say mass wins.... but..... you ever clean out a gut shot deer??
 
It's pretty clear that it's a proven fact all bullets deflect. That's where most tests end however.
What they don't consider is what happens if game is hit with a deflected bullet.
Here I think the heavy slow bullets have the advantage. They retain enough momentum to do the job.
 
This "bush buster bullet" topic seems to crop up every once in awhile. I can remember one of the gun magazines (Shooting Times or Guns & Ammo) doing testing back in the 70's. They setup a wood dowel 'forest' and placed a sheet of plywood with a deer outline painted on it. I really don't remember how far the plywood was placed behind the 'forest' but it was surprising close. They fire various fast and slow deer cartridges such as the .243/.270 Win, 35 Rem and 45/70 Government through the 'forest' replacing the dowels after each shot. None of the rounds made it though the dowels to the vitals of the target, they all defected.

The conclusion was, if you didn't have a clear hole to shoot though then don't shoot. Regardless of what cartridge you were using. Makes sense to me.
 
Well, I was shooting some old glass junk with the 45-70 (Hornady LE) and had a target set up about 6 inches behind it. The bullets were actually VERY deflective, even for that distance.

There is no such thing as a brush bullet.
 
The testing I've seen only proved that all bullets deflect and that there is no advantage to either fast and light or heavy and slow.
 
As most people have said it is better to wait for a clear shot rather than try to sneak a bullet through scrub. This is my opinion as well. No set of antlers is big enough to lose an animal by taking a chance. You owe it to that animal to make its demise as quick and clean as possible. Any variable that controls the outcome of the shot, should be considered and dealt with.

I remember a time in Zimbabwe with my dad where he took a shot at a big mature eland bull. Off the shooting sticks at 120yds, all the time in the world, shooting a .375 H&H and a clear miss. I know everyone pulls a bonehead move and misses once in a while, but honestly it was just unreal. A big eland bull has a vital killing zone larger than a big bull moose, so there is a margin for error to still make a killing shot. After over an hour with us, the trackers, and the guide doing grid patterns we found no blood.

Fortunately enough at that specific time we had Osprey Filming videotaping our hunt. The camera guy, Zig, had the idea to rewind the footage and watch as the shot went off. Sure enough the Eland jumps at the shot, but moreso a spook rather than a wound action. After replaying the footage a few times my guide noticed a small glint of movement on the screen right infront of the eland. Long story short we found this "glint" to be a twig from a mopane tree that the eland was standing beside. Walked up to the tree, found the twig ( probably an inch in diameter ) that had been hit, and it was a clear miss. This tree was about 10feet infront of the eland and did not appear to be an issue, but it was. Just a personal experience to elaborate on this thread.

IMHO a bigger bullet travelling slower will be more effective than a smaller bullet travelling faster. I agree that no bullet will stay on its intended course if it hits something but I do believe that there are cartridges that can make the effects less dramatic. If an animal is already hit and its a followup shot, my main concern is to put that animal down, so sending a bullet through scrub is not as big of a concern.

Chances are if someone is shooting a fast and flat shooting rifle like any WSM or the like, its probably loaded with a fast and flat shooting bullet, like a Swift Scirocco, Berger VLD, Ballistic Tip, or the like. Bullets like this are designed to enter an animal, expand to 2x or more in diameter to do their damage internally. Usually these bullets will exit but to say the very least they will dissipate most of their energy inside the animal. So hitting anything with a smaller bullet at a fast velocity will cause that bullet to open up. When a bullets BC ( ballistic coefficient ) is changed its performance characteristics and trajectory change. Hitting a twig or anyting will deform this bullet and send it off course.

On the other side slower moving bullets out of higher calibers are generally used for penetration on larger sized game. Larger bullets with solid construction such as Swift A-Frames and Nosler partitions are designed to have their front end open up and "mushroom" to a 2x + diameter. So when these bullets hit the animals soft muscle tissue, they expand doing damage, but that rear core stays intact and carries that force and momentum with the bullets intended path. These bullets are designed to carry all that force and momentum through big shoulder bones and thich masses of muscle to get to the vitals. So what I think is that the heavier bullets at a lower velocity will not necessarily be unaffected by brush but its more likely to power through it with less of a deviation in bullet travel.

Another way to look at this arguement is to look at all the PH's in Africa that have to go into the bush after wounded buffalo, lions, and leopards. They are not shooting 270's or 300's at 3000FPS, they are shooting 416, 458, and 500's, with big solids.
 
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I read a very long and detailed article a few years ago in Guns and Ammo where they tested a bunch of cartridges from .22lr to .50 BMG for deflection, by shooting them through a myriad of small dowels sticking out of plywood. Their conclusion was that velocity was the biggest factor in deflection. They found that higher velocity means more deflection, and there seemed to be MUCH more above 2700 fps. They found that even a 750 gr .50 BMG round deflects just as bad as smaller bullets at 2700 fps. They got the least deflection from slower cartridges like the 45-70, not because it's big, because it's slow.
 
one article I read awhile back, reporting on a series of tests, concluded that while all projectiles, no matter what caliber, would deflect if they hit something, the smaller calibers had a better chance of getting through without hitting something that would cause it to deflect.
 
My personal experience leads me to believe that the only way to shoot "through" twigs and brush is to find a hole in the brush and put the bullet through the hole. 25 Years ago I was hunting moose late in the season [LEH] with a 308 Norma Mag and the 200 Partition. The weather was about -35ºC outside, and the shot was (+-) 100 yards, seemingly wide open, but some light willows scattered here and there. I held for the heart/lung area, and touched one off.

At the shot, the moose dropped like a stone, so fast, in fact, that I was a bit surprised, since seldom do moose drop like that with a heart/lung shot. As I approached the moose, I noted that it was stone dead, eyes wide open, with no reaction when I touched the eyeball with my rifle barrel. I cut the throat, and the moose bled freely, another mystery with a lung shot animal. When I opened the cavity to clean the moose, I found no evidence of any shot through the lung area, so started to look more closely at this moose.

I found the point of bullet impact in the neck, just about 3" below the skull, and it appeared that the bullet had hit on a slight angle. It had penetrated to the spinal column, sheared off a vertebrae, and exited out the far side of the neck, leaving a relatively small exit. No wonder the instant death!! I backtracked to my shooting position, marked it and then went to where the moose was standing when I shot. I found the culprit in one willow branch about ¾" in diameter, about 25 yards from the moose. It had been clipped off by that Partition. not noticed by me as I looked through the scope. The frozen wood was undoubtedly quite hard, and the deflection of that bullet was obvious.

I was lucky, the moose was harvested without incident. But I often reflected on what might have happened if the bullet had deflected in the opposite direction......a gut shot, perhaps? If it had been over 4 inches, it would have missed the moose entirely, or 4" in the opposite direction, a shot in a non-lethal area of the head [Jawbone, possibly]

I refuse to shoot through brush unless there is a hole free of branches through the brush that I can thread a bullet through to a vital spot on the animal. Even then, there is obviously some risk entailed. Regards, Eagleye.
 
Buy a phaser. It can shoot through anything.

The "stun" setting is reserved for those who think they can shoot through brush with bullets.

laser-weapon-1.jpg
 
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have a look at my experience... not sure how to link but this is the thread: CanadianGunNutz.com > Shooting Sports and Firearms Related Activities > Hunting!! why shooting through brush isn't such a good idea - with pictures
 
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