Copper bullet for bear ?

We trap bears as well as hunting and are dispatching them steady. Head-shots are a bloody mess to skin, so all shots are body hits. Shot placement is whatever I want it to be, placement after that decision is perfect because the range is so short. Short of donning a lab coat it would be hard to get a more controlled enviroment.

I could save a lot of typing by just saying "Why Not?" is right.:)

Bears aren't tough. They aren't hard. They aren't hard to kill, but holy hell they can be hard to find if they run in thick stuff.

What takes a bear out fast is a big bloody football sized wound cavity that is far ahead in the chest cavity. You want that cavity right between the shoulders; whether you have to go through the shoulders or angle past them depends on the bears position. Frontal chest shots are impressive, head down frontals using bull fighter sticking placement are incredible.

I have never seen anything kill faster than Bergers and similar bullets. You can't make a bigger hole than a fragmenting bullet, especially if you can bring a pile of bone chips along for the ride. Ballistic tips are great, typical cup and cores are great, practically any cheap standard on-sale factory ammo is good too. Those ammo companies aren't as dumb as they get accused of being.

If you want slow killing, use a mono. If you want something to die somewhere else use a mono. The reason they penetrate so far is they make a smaller hole the whole way.
 
zherock said:
This year i really want to try federal trophy copper meat eater for my bear hunt. I find the 180 gr (i know i should lower to 160 but its what i find and probably shoot to 30 to 50 yards only.)

My question : its this bullet will be too hard for a bear and only do a pass thrue like a FMJ ? Some one tell me that and now , im affraid to shoot with this ammo

Last year, ive shot federal trophy bounded 3006 180 gr with good result but i really want to give a try to copper
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Stay away from monolithic copper bullets, not unless you wish to track a bear with little sign of blood............you've been advised.
 
I always thought this was a nice monometal bear blood picture. Had to track that bear like .....25 yards after being shot with a monometal. Not really much of a tracking job, just looking at the blood were it gushed out.

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I've never seen a deer bleed so much as when I shot it with a 150gr TTSX from my 300 WSM. It did run quite a ways (75 yards) as I had shot it on an extreme angle and only hit one lung. Tracking was easy as it looked like someone had been walking with a bucket of red paint that had a hole in it! :)

To the OP, you are shooting a bear at 50 yards with a 30-06, and just about any bullet will do the job. 180gr mono metal may be a bit heavy for a 30-06 if we get nit picky and look at what's optimum but it's not going to really matter. Contrary to what the unknowing may say- when you use a mono metal you go for minimum bullet weight, you don't go up in weight! A 30-06 using all copper bullets is great with the 130-165gr bullets. But I would have no problem shooting your 180 gr at a bear at 50 yards. Or 200 yards.
 
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track said:
Stay away from monolithic copper bullets, not unless you wish to track a bear with little sign of blood............you've been advised.
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I must be doing something wrong then, my last several bears have all been shot with lighter weight (higher velocity) TTSX bullets and both fell over within sight and never made it more than 20 yards tops. My buddies first bear a couple years ago was also shot with a mono TSX and died in sight. I've also had deer succumb to monos where the blood trail was straight out of a horror movie. Chest height spray over every tree, plant, and shrub. A blind man could have followed it.

I also have had buddies use old cup and core and "burger" bullets as we call them that left no blood trail what so ever, even when taking out heart and lungs. Hard to have a blood trail when there is no exit hole and only a calibre sized entry hole.
 
regulate34 said:
I shoot 235g tsx in my 375.
I retained one bullet from a bear brodside at 200yrds.
Hit one shoulder and the spine. Found on the far side hide.
Picture perfect expansion and retained 234.9g.

I am planning to switch all my guns over to Barnes tsx/ttsx.

Not that I have had a issues with interlocks/partitions or seirra game kings.
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what you lost 0.1 grains and you re considerent very good bullet ...

more seriously surprised you find the bullet. last bear shot with a plain jane cup and core in the spine we never reco vered the bullet but it was a little 270 caliber with 150 grains ...
 
Rayleigh_Scattering said:
Question:

Copper has half the density of lead.

Diameter is fixed by the cartridge, and they are all pointy-ish cylinders, so mass reduces to a function of length.

If I change from all-lead to all-copper I can have a bullet which is the same length and half the weight, or one that is twice the length and the same weight (or somewhere in-between).

But the rifling twist rate can only stabilize up to a certain length.

Are commercial rifles made with a higher-than-needed twist rate?

Or do people shooting copper bullets buy special high-twist barrels?

Or do they just accept that they're shooting 100gr instead of 180gr and keep the ranges short?
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copper and lead half where did you got those numbers?

here are some info for you:

copper 8.92 g/cm3
lead 11.3 g/cm3

water 1g/cm3

h t t p ://web.fscj.edu/Milczanowski/psc/lect/Ch4/slide6.htm
 
Why not? said:
My experience is contrary to the conventional wisdom that bears are tough and take a lot of power to put them down. Maybe I have been lucky, but my first bear was down after a very short dash through a hay field, a single shot with a 130 gr cup and core from a 270 Win at 200 yards. Since that seemed to work so well, I just kept using it.

Fifty years of hunting and guiding and many bears later, using everything from 243 Win to 30-30 to 375 Chatfield Taylor, it is my opinion they are no harder to kill than deer. There is no question that lots of velocity and expansion results in quick death on bears, both blacks and grizzly.

Having said that, It has also been my experience that if you want monometal bullets to really work, try to break a lot of bone.

I'm sure you will enjoy the best on your bear hunt. Just put whatever bullet you use in the right place.

View attachment 493634

Many are hit too far back.
Ted
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Best advice you'll get, right here.

Also this from Dogleg:

I have never seen anything kill faster than Bergers and similar bullets. You can't make a bigger hole than a fragmenting bullet, especially if you can bring a pile of bone chips along for the ride. Ballistic tips are great, typical cup and cores are great, practically any cheap standard on-sale factory ammo is good too. Those ammo companies aren't as dumb as they get accused of being.

Last bear I shot was with a Winchester PowerMax Bonded from a .30-30 (basically a hollowpoint). Results were impressive, and I'd use those all the time if I could still buy them here.
 
On bears, I prefer standard Cup & Core bullets over bonded or mono's... having been involved with over 300 bear kills and witnessing first hand the effects of various types of bullets, I am convinced of the benefits of rapidly expanding bullets that retain a large percentage of their weight. This is not hard to do with most C&C bullets on a broadside lung shot... they perform well over a broad range of speeds and distances and result in quick, clean kills. Some C&C bullets that have performed well on bears are Hornady Interlock SP, Speer Hot-Cor SP and Sierra Game King SBT's.
 
Most of my experience with monometal bullets has been with the 375 H&H (the rest with .270 and 7mm).
Initially, I wanted to go "heavy" and went with the 350 grain TSX. Its performance on giraffe (big, heavy, lots of meat) was that the 350 grain TSX experienced minimal expansion. In the words of my PH it performed "more like a solid" (non-expanding bullet).

By contrast, the 300 grain Swift A-Frame's I used expanded very predictably. Also, the 380 grain "Rhino" bullets (South African, bonded partition like the A-Frames) also expanded predictably and killed extremely well.

Bottom line: monometal bullets need speed to expand properly. We are used to going on the heavy side but go at least one weight lighter and you will probably see proper expansion.

I would even consider 150 grain TSX or GMX, having seen failure to expand in 165 grain TSXs (shot from a 30-06) taken from a male lion. The lion was very dead, but the bullets had not expanded. Their tips bent, (like an fmj shot into ice)

If 180's had been used, I can't see how they would have expanded when the 165s failed to expand.

Using 130 grain TSXs in the .270 Win produced perfect expansion, excellent penetration and quick death in a variety of medium to large (cow elk-sized) antelope species. Anyway, that's my two cents worth.

I would go with 150 grain monometals in the 30-06. Drive them fast, get the expansion. They will kill just fine.

Edit: As for black bears, I've used 139 grain Hornady Spire Points (cup and core) in 7x57, as well as 140 grain Nosler Partitions. Chest hits and no complaints.20210520_135947.jpg
Left to right: recovered 130gr .270 TSX, recovered 350gr .375 TSX, same, unfired. Recovered 380gr "Rhino", same, unfired, recovered 300gr A-Frame. 375 H&H


Came across some pictures of the recovered 165 grain TSX bullets described earlier. Did they fail? No. The lion was killed. Would you consider this optimal performance? You could probably do better.
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Shot a bear this weekend at about 90 yards with a 150 ttsx out of a 300 wsm going around 3100 fps. The bear was hit from the front and the bullet broke the humorus and travelled down the chest cavity where it stopped by it's hip under the hide.IMG_20210606_171435531.jpg
 

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Wondering if the bullet hit the big tubercle on the top of the humerus, or further down the leg before entering the chest? That would certainly have initiated good expansion if it did so.

Looks like a good picture to send to Barnes. :)

Ted
 
A-zone said:
Did they fail? No. The lion was killed. Would you consider this optimal performance? You could probably do better.
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Absolutely, whether the animal died or not they did indeed fail, That's like saying a poorly placed shot was a good shot because it killed the animal, common man..
I've recovered 2 failed barnes, that's 2 too many, velocity was well within what's required to open up, they didn't.
 
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Both monos and cup and cores will kill a bear cleanly when placed in the vitals. The bonded bullets also work well.
My preference is for the cup and core bullets on bears as I want more expansion and tissue damage. Some of the fastest kills have been with Power Points in the 30-30 and 375 Win, and Speer Hot Cors in the 358 Win.
I also try to ensure that my bullet will impact the shoulder on the far side, whenever possible. I also prefer a double lung hit to a heart shot, as they will travel less after the shot.
 
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