Bullet Success/Failures..

I learned that when I shot a pretty nice cinnamon bear a few years ago with hopped up 400gr Speers from my .45-70. Those bullets were avg 1900fps MV and I hit the bear at close range. Those Speers grenaded!

OK I can't help myself :rolleyes:

What happened with you & the bear when that bullet grenaded??
Did it actually die or eat you & burp :runaway:
 
OK I can't help myself

What happened with you & the bear when that bullet grenaded??
Did it actually die or eat you & burp :runaway:


The first shot was only about 15 yards and I hit him right in the spine and dropped the bear, so it began trying to move and I nailed it again. That bullet also hit the spine.
I walked up to the bear, which was basically immobilized and shot it behind the head in the neck.

After skinning I did an autopsy to try to examine the bullets but they were blown into tiny fragments. The wound channels went right to the spine but were empty. The biggest piece I found was half of a jacket and it was turned inside out.

I explored all 3 bullet holes and could find anything of those bullets.

I'm trying to think of something to compare for the size of the shards or fragments of lead, maybe something the size of a flake of oatmeal. The same thing with the jacket material, just tiny shards.
It would be hard to believe unless you saw it.
 
Demonical just read your sig line from Phil Shoemaker and have to comment.

What he states is exactly what this thread is about...

"Placed correctly" are the key words when they aren't place correctly then the problems start cropping up with bullets not doing the job that is needed from them...
 
Camp Cook, amen.

Bullets have design limitations. Like Gate said, kept within their intended velocity range and target animal, they are all good, and many, many times even bullets poorly designed can work if the shot is perfectly placed, as Bella Twin would tell you.
 
Never had a problem with the Hot Core they load in the Federal Powershok stuff, 3 deer on it's tab now.

Other than that I've used Remmy Core Lokt, Winchester Ballistic Silvertip, Winchester Partition Gold (45/70) Nosler Accubond and Norma Alaskan bullets and they all worked just fine.

I've only ever seen one bullet failure so far and it was not the bullet's fault. It was a small buck shot at very close range with a 300 WM, Nosler Accubond. .30 cal passthrough, but a bonded bullet going that fast on a small deer, I suppose thats to be expected. It bang-flopped the other 3 deer it's taken out so far and given very good results on moose.

The Partition Gold was a bang-flopper too on a young 4 point buck out of the 45/70 at about 60 yards or a little less.

Never had an instant stop with the 30-06, 308 or 8mm Mauser yet but the animals sure did die.

Here's an Accubond I recovered from a moose. It's the only round I ever did recover in anything yet.

Accubond.jpg




Speaking of Bang-Floppers with a .308...was using winchester supreme ballistic silvertip 168 gr....the thing is like thor's hammer...i shot 3 deer last year and everyone of them dropped stone dead immediately...they are just a vicious round though alot of meat damage so i dunno if i'm going to keep using them but they sure dropped deer stone dead and they are quite accurate and flat shooting.
 
the winchester silver tips had a CXP3 rateing and i notice the new ones are a CXP2 rateing . I recently watched one of the newer silvertips shed its jacket and all in all did not do much damage to a bear out of a 30-06 . Considering it was hit well(took a while to expire) a few times I was left wanting. I would say that this is what i consider bullet failure. it did get the job done but was a bit sloppy.
 
I had a Fail Safe fail on an elk out of a 7MM STW at 300 yds hit the front shoulder and it appeared that the petal fell off. Found the core in the other shoulder, but it just poked a hole in the shoulder blade and didn't break anything up. Second shot performed perfect, good expansion and 90% weight retention and made a mess of both lungs. Trophy Bonded Bear Claws are great but cost a small fortune
 
i would definitely say that the ballistic silvertips/silvertips have rapid expansion bording on fragmentation just judging by the bloodshot meat i have seen...all of mine have been close range too which probably contributes to that....on deer it probably isn't an issue as you still get sufficient penetration and the explosive expansion probably leads to the instantaneous deaths i've seen..but i don't know if i'd wanna fire at elk or moose with this i don't think i'd trust it...i would think barnes would be hard to beat for them.
 
I will be using Remington Premier Scirocco Bonded 180gr for moose this year out of my Benelli R1 .30-06. The reason I went with this bullet is because a friend used them last year with the same gun. He hit a bull moose in the right sholder angled towards the left hind quarter and the bullet busted the sholder took out the lungs and came to rest on the last rib on the left side retaining about 90% of its weight and the bull dropped on the spot.

I think these would be a bit much on white tail so I will stick with my trusty Remington core-lokt 150gr's or Federal vitalshock 165gr sierra gameking's they should do the trick.

I also hunt a WMU thats shotgun only for whitetail and I will be using Winchester Supreme 385gr Partition gold 3'' sabot slugs out of my mossberg slug gun. I put 3 of these though the same hole at 100yds using tru-glow sights could have put a few more though it but my sholder could not take the abuse.
 
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