What bullet have you had the most failure with?Manufacturers

What bullet has failed you the most times?


  • Total voters
    89

Kelly Timoffee

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As, I see more and more threads talking about less than desired bullet performance I figured it was time for something a bit easier to read.

Make it a poll so that others can see the actual numbers.

Details and photos in your posts if you like.

I do understand there is others out there not listed , I am going for the most common ones.

I guess I should define what a failure is in accordance to this thread...

1)Bullet doesn't perform as advertised(on appropriate game). Varmageddon on elk is not what this is about.
2)Bullets had mechanical failure.(Jacket/core separation , no expansion)
3)Bullet created excess damage.(bullet too fragile, created great amounts of shrapnel and meat loss)

Accuracy is NOT part of the poll as we are discussing on game performance.
 
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so far none. but I learnt very early in my hunting career what bullet to use when. By shooting a huge bear with rapidly expanding deer bullets. 2 chest hits no exits. bullets did exactly what they were designed to do. I now use bullets that will exit for better blood trail. I also do a lot of my own testing. its rather eye opening at times.
 
Nosler Accubond.

While I am the #1 Nosler fanboy the A-bombs have disappointed me. I have shot them in .25, .270, .308, & .338 calibres and all have shown over-expansion at ranges from 75 yards to the far side of 400. Way too soft and at times cause massive softball sized entry wounds. The 165 grain .30 calibres especially have seldom exited on broadside shots. As I have mentioned before I find them much more frangible due to their soft lead core than the much maligned Ballistic Tip.

With all that said everything I have shot with them - 20+ deer, cougar, and black bears - have all died quickly so I wouldn't call them "failures".
 
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I havent had a bullet "fail", they have all done the job. Hornady, Sierra and Berger...
The manufacturer I voted for fail was due to SST not performing as well as other bullets in their line. A 6mm 87gr HP dropped a deer on the spot, while .227 140gr let a deer run like hell after being shot. Sierra was my favorite bullet for a long time, but I realized there was more meat damage than needed. I now shoot Berger, and its a whole new ball game. For now.. I love them.
 
Not a hunting bullet but a match bullet. 155gr, .308 Barnes Match Burners. Would group less than 1 MOA at 100 yards but opened up to about 3 MOA at 300m and beyond.
 
I voted Berger. I don't use them personally but hunt with someone that does. Saw one grenade and 2 pencil through doing minimal damage. Not sure on the exact kind of bullet but thinking maybe vld hunting?
 
Not sure what you are defining as a failure? I mainly shoot for accuracy now. The three best bullets in my 6BR Savage are:

1. Berger 68 grain Target
2. Bart's Ultra 68 grain Target
3. Berger 69 grain High BC Varmint

They all will shoot to 0.3 MOA with the Berger 68 getting down into the .1's with some groups.

The least accurate bullet in this gun is the Berger 62 grain target. It shoots 2-3 MOA. I suspect it is a problem with a long throat in my gun, not a problem with the bullet. So I am not sure I can designate any bullets I have shot as failures.
 
Not sure what you are defining as a failure? I mainly shoot for accuracy now. The three best bullets in my 6BR Savage are:

1. Berger 68 grain Target
2. Bart's Ultra 68 grain Target
3. Berger 69 grain High BC Varmint

They all will shoot to 0.3 MOA with the Berger 68 getting down into the .1's with some groups.

The least accurate bullet in this gun is the Berger 62 grain target. It shoots 2-3 MOA. I suspect it is a problem with a long throat in my gun, not a problem with the bullet. So I am not sure I can designate any bullets I have shot as failures.

The discussion is about hunting bullets.
 
The thread is about failures , in hunting bullets.Please make a selection.

Trying to find a number(percentage) that is easy to see and read for everyone that posts on bullet failure threads on game.

I guess I should define what a failure is in accordance to this thread...

1)Bullet doesn't perform as advertised(on appropriate game). Varmageddon on elk is not what this is about.
2)Bullets had mechanical failure.(Jacket/core separation , no expansion)
3)Bullet created excess damage.(bullet too fragile, created great amounts of shrapnel and meat loss)

Accuracy is NOT part of the poll as we are discussing on game performance.

NO FAILURE BULLET, HAVE USED THESE FOR MANY YEARS NOW; NOSLER PARTITION. Buck this year with the 7WSM, did exactly what it should, very little meat damage.
 
The thread is about failures , in hunting bullets.Please make a selection.

Trying to find a number(percentage) that is easy to see and read for everyone that posts on bullet failure threads on game.

I guess I should define what a failure is in accordance to this thread...

1)Bullet doesn't perform as advertised(on appropriate game). Varmageddon on elk is not what this is about.
2)Bullets had mechanical failure.(Jacket/core separation , no expansion)
3)Bullet created excess damage.(bullet too fragile, created great amounts of shrapnel and meat loss)

Accuracy is NOT part of the poll as we are discussing on game performance.

Nosler Partitions have brought down every moose that I have fired at. No failures to report...
 
Bullets are designed for different purposes and to work at certain velocities. Sometimes the bullet/manufacturer gets blamed unfairly.
That being said, I find Sierra GameKing unpredictable . ie . About 15 years ago my brother shot a nice whitetail buck at approx 375 yards with my 280. It made a pin hole. I shot a big buck broad side the same day/same bullet/load at 200 yards and didn't exit. I know the bullet slowed down at 375 but still.
Anyway, that happened a couple of times with that bullet and I have not used it since.
 
30-30 160 gr Hornady flex tip, only bullet I've ever had blow up and not penetrate deep enough probably would be fine on lung shots but it hit the shoulder and came apart explosivly.
 
I've only recovered one bullet that I regard as a failure, and even that might not be fair because the circumstances were likely outside the bullets performance parameters; on other words, I picked the wrong bullet for the job. The bullet in question was a Hornady 117 gr. Interlock boat-tail, out of a .250 Savage. I shot the deer twice, simply because I didn't feel like tracking. Second shot was into the spine at about 10 yards range. Only the jacket was recovered, expanded down to the interlock belt. The first bullet was not recovered. I didn't have a chronograph back then, but it was a max load, so likely in the 2800 fps range. Too much speed, too close, and I didn't really need a boat tail for the sort of hunting I was doing.

There are other bullets that didn't really fail, but was unhappy with in other regards. One is the Winchester 180 Power Point. I find it a little on the soft side. I was also surprised to recover a 140 gr. Accubond from a .270 this season, another spine hit. The bullet retained 76.5 of it's original 140 grs, expanded well and didn't shed it's core; I just thought, from all I've read about that bullet, that it would just keep going, in spite of the bone hit. Velocity was 3000 fps at the muzzle, and range about 120-130 yds.
 
Most failures I have had have been when taking things to extremes. I really try to judge the performance by wound channels and reaction of game instead of preconceived notions of what the bullet is supposed to look like when its done. I've had more issues with not liking the result of bullets that gave every indication of working as designed.

The most noticeable out and out failures have been 190 Berger VLDs that didn't make it through the ribs of quarter mile deer, a fist-full of 480 grain DGXs in factory loaded 450 Nitro Express that blew up after penetrating 6 " of water buffalo, 40 gr V-Maxes that splattered on the hide of coyotes at both .223 and 22/250 speeds, and 160 grain Speers that exploded over and over at STW speed. Its a shame to have to shoot something to rag-dolls to kill it, but things happen.
 
The only big game animal I've wounded and not recovered in over 20 years of hunting, was last year, and it was the biggest whitetail buck I've ever shot at as well, easily over 180B&C. Long and sad story, but story shortened drastically, I'm 99.9% sure the shot was a high shoulder shot, definitely not ideal, at only ~80yards. I won't get into the gory details, but I didn't recover him, and the blood on the trail was only on the right side of the tracks, the entry side. Pretty sure the bullet blew up on entry.

It was the only factory ammo I've hunted with since I was 13 years old as well, go figure. I bought it by mistake as I wanted a few boxes of brass to start reloading for my cheap, new .308, so I figured I'd just buy some Winchester Power Points and empty them downrange, then load them up with my choice of hunting bullet. Well a box of Winchester Deer Season XP snuck into my ammo purchase without me realizing, and it wasn't until I was on the range that I noticed this XP ammo. XP stands for "Extreme Point", and they aren't kidding, the plastic tip of the bullet is probably 3/4 of the diameter of the bullet! Well I was running out of time to get some rounds reloaded for whitetail season, so I decided that if I was to take this .308 hunting instead of my newly acquired .338-06 (of which I had plenty of good hunting ammo loaded), I'd just use this factory stuff for the year. BIG MISTAKE! I do admit the shot wasn't perfect, and I'm aware there is no way to know for sure, but I do believe if there was an entrance AND an exit hole, he would have dropped within 300 or 400 yards.

So that's my vote. Winchester's Extreme Point bullet. A great big varmint grenade. Maybe ok for those 100lb deer elsewhere, not for the brutes roaming around western Canada.

As everyone knows, match the bullet to the game and distances you'll be shooting as best you can and everything "should" work just fine.
 
Should have described what a "failure" is.

If the animal ends up dead the bullet didn't fail if the purpose of it is to "kill" something.

Now, like others, I would never use a Fusion again because of all the damage caused, but it did put the deer down as well/quick as anything else that I have ever used.

So the bullet didn't "fail", I just didn't like the way it did it's job :)
 
If the animal ends up dead the bullet didn't fail if the purpose of it is to "kill" something.

This argument crops up every time there's a discussion about bullet performance, but I'm not buying it. Just because the animal is recovered doesn't mean the bullet isn't a complete failure. IMO a bullet should perform in a predictable fashion, depending on the intended target. If it doesn't perform as it's designed to, then it's performance on game becomes unpredictable and game recovery becomes a matter of luck. If a hunter uses a bullet for a purpose for which it wasn't designed ( varmint or match bullet on big game) then that's the hunter's fault.
 
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