Hollow Point Hunting???

ironsighter said:
All blood passes through the heart and lungs.
Click to expand...
You have a right heart and a left heart. The right heart supplies the lungs with blood, the left the rest of the body. The left heart receives blood from the lungs, the right heart from the rest of the body. The heart muscle has its own circulation.

You can recover from being shot in a lung, well documented in the American Civil War.
 
Yeah I shot my buck last year directly in the heart. He simply dropped stone dead where he stood and never even flinched. The heart had basically exploded.
 
The amount animals that run with absolutely fatal hits; balanced against those that absolutely get flattened but are far from dead have lead me to believe that falling and dieing are two separate things. I prefer those that fall down and die to those that fall over when they die.
 
Like LawrenceN and Bigbubba(no Ruger .44's on Bullwinkle though) say, it depends on the HP. And where you are. Ontario says, any centre fire.
Match grade HPBT's are not made for hunting large game. However, all HP's rely on velocity for reliable expansion.
 
I have shot a lot of whitetail through the years with with my 25-06 and hollow points.... namely Hornady 120 gr. HP flat base. Rather inexpensive bullet but shot very good groups out of my old Sako. Bang flops were common, always sitting and posting on fields or in the hills. Always back of the front leg through the ribs heart\lung shots. Whitetail are thin skinned and delicate when compare to larger ungulates...HP's always shot right through. Have switched to Barnes 100 gr. TSX... all I shoot these days on deer and caribou...and these are considered HP's as well. With this said I would never used HP ammo on anything larger than deer, antelope and such.
 
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I've never seen a 300 grain SMK bounce off, fail to expand or fail to exit yet. Drag the lungs out the other side? That I've seen. The little nuances of bullet construction tend to fade and blur when you start with lots of bullet, and hang onto the velocity.
 
For what my opinion is worth, I hunt deer exclusively with .44 Mag Hornady handloads and they absolutely destroy deer up to about 100 yards. Haven't tried my luck at anything >100yards.

I've recovered 2 bullets over the years and they were expanded to nearly 1.75x in size. The rest were complete passthroughs and left what looked like 5 gallons of blood next to the deer that pretty much all died where they were hit.
 
Well, it took me 4 days to read this thread. Camping didn't leave much internet access. I haven't shot hundreds of animals, but I have always been interested in bullet performance and wound tracks. I have recovered exactly 3 bullets, the rest have been through and throughs, even a couple smashing through a moose's shoulder as they have exited on a quartering shot.
I have never used the "big" bullets.180gr, SP RN bullets in a .303 caused many WT to swiftly fall down. I have had to track them, but didn't lose many. Lots of damage, but not many bang-flops.
I switched to an '06 a few years later. I have never used "hollow points" until then. I needed to make a 5-600 yd shot one year because of land-owner restrictions. I contacted Sierra Bullets' Paul Box and discussed my situation. We came up with using a 150gr Nosler Partition and throw it as close to 3000fps as I could. Only time I used them. Worked great, the WT buck got hit directly in the boiler room. He went 75 yds, heading for the woodline but piled up before he reached it. No heart left.
I have consistently used Interlocks, Game Kings, and bulk Remington soft points. Animals have always been collected after a small tracking job and several DRTs on moose, deer, and black bear.
That being said, I have no faith in CoreLokt bullets, having seen poor performance on a large WT buck and a large cow moose. Simply no expansion at all and I tracked the buck for 4 hours, only to find it still alive. The cow went clean out of the county, not even a spot of blood.
Getting a little long in the tooth, I have of late, taken to head and neck shots if circumstances permit since recovery is easier and quicker.
My daily bullet is a bulk SP, a Game King (or Pro-Hunter), or an Interlock. When I go elk hunting, I use Nosler Silvertips because I only have a week to hunt and I may need to take a less-than-perfect shot.
I still don't buy into needing "premium" bullets for anything I hunt so no Barnes or accu bonds here.
 
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