I think my Barnes penciled many moons ago,but the partition left a big wound.But elk have big tough necks.I dont like hearing magnium mania failure,becuase thats my main bullet.I have had friend have expansion issues at 1200 yrds.But ive also one friend with over forty elk with his 338 many at or close to 1000. I have also shot a bull at 40 yrd and bull moose at similar,and the OTM blew massive whole going out. My light rifles are hard on bullet IN rifle,recoil flatens tip,worry on berger on this,but have whole tips broke off on AB's? I also had AB's seperate. Cody what did you go to in 6.5
Bullet failures
- Thread starter adam32+P
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I've never understood the concept that an expanding bullet driven at too high of a velocity can fail to expand. Let alone a bullet designed such that it won't open/expand at high velocity.
The only guarantee not to make a bad shot, is to NOT take a shot at all!
SmokinCrow
Well-Known Member
I shot a nice whitetail buck at 650 yards 2 seasons ago with a 162 eld x. Dropped that sucker like a pile of bricks. As we walked up to it, we saw it stand up and start walking at 450 yards. I laid down and took another shot and that sucker humped up like a classic heart shot and ran off the hill to the river bottom. Before placing my 2nd shot I could see my first shot entrance would and it was right in the crease and a great shot.LOL, those are hunter failures and we've all had them. Nothing wrong with admiting it. But many do blame the bullet and/or cartridge, they should've shot it with a 6.5 CM and it wouldn't have happened
Walked up to where he originally dropped and found dirt kicked up and tore up as well as some blood. Very little surprising enough. Followed to where the 2nd shot was taken and a little more blood and a small chunk of rib bone was found. Followed some blood for 20 more yards and nothing. Never found another drop of blood and it wasn't recovered.
I play that in my head over and over. My dad and buddy saw the shots and saw where he was hit. Good shots by all accounts. I felt super good on my shots and can usually call if I pull. So I am at a loss. I want to blame the bullets, but I still wonder if it was me. I sometimes think we forget how determined some animals just are to live. I shot my first whitetail buck at 250 yards (the one pictured next to my name) and he covered close to 3/4 mile after I shot him. Felt I must've made a bad shot. When I caught up, put a shot in his neck and finished him off. Upon field dressing his lungs were tore up by my first shot and I can't understand how that bad boy went as far as he did with the shape of those lungs. I think pure determination to live can make it look like bullet failure.
Spoonman
Well-Known Member
It happens. The higher the velocity the less time it has to open up in the animal, especially if all it touches is soft tissue. If the projectile doesn't touch a rib or shoulder and just hits soft tissue at high velocity the likelihood of a mono opening up at close range is not good. You'll see when guys say they had a bullet pencil through a animal it's either extremely close or extremely far away. When far away the bullet may not have enough velocity to make it function properly. Every projectile has a optimum speed range at which it functions at.
Yup, I've seen bullets do some crazy things and some animals that just won't give up.
@can1010 and @Petey308 you are correct. In my case I am calling it a bullet failure although it is not. It's was wrong expectations from a bullet designed for a different use.
As far as the Accubond, my friend and I expected them to perform a little more explosive on the vitals, well that's not how they work. And both impacts were at velocities where the bullet should've done more damage, according to our expectations.
Knowledge of bullet performance is extremely important and many hunters just don't know what they don't know. I learned from these two cases what not to expect from a bonded bullet for my preference of shot placement. If I preferred shoukder shots than maybe they'd work better.
A common issue is expecting soft bullets to hold together at close range at magnum velocities. Not going to happen, they'll simply fragment and make a mess.
So yes, it is not bullet failure but poor bullet selection. And there will be cases where bullets will fail, like defective batch.
David_Nosler28
Member
I have never had a bullet failure which I define as a bullet did not perform as designed. I have made more than a few bad shots, and lost wounded animals due to my poor shooting. I also have used bullets I did not understand with bad results. The problem with bullets like everything else, is there is no perfect bullet for all settings. For instance, if I use a bullet and cartridge designed for long range like Bergers or Sierras at 100 yards on Elk the results are not optional for me as I learned that past two seasons. I have seen these thin copper skinned / non-bonded bullet destroy lots of meat at close range and fail to penetrate when hitting shoulder bone at mid distance unless the animal is perfectly broadside. However, these bullets are designed for long range vital placement and I have dropped a bull elk at 612 yards in it's tracks with no meat damage using a 180 gr Berger VLD in my 28 Nosler. I think this bullet would have done the job out another 300 yards - if you are so inclined.
That hunt was a perfect setting - standing perfectly broadside, lots of time, great rest, little wind. I have learned that with my type of elk hunting I can't count on a perfect setting. Thus, I like a bullet that is designed for close and middle distance (50 to 600 yards), so I now load LRX Barnes or Accubond. They are not as accurate in my rifles (but still ~1 MOA), nor do they have as good of energy numbers at long distance (+700 yards) as the Bergers. But I decided to sacrifice range to reduce the chances of destroying meat and to provide a bit more error margin in case I hit shoulder bone.
I am sure there are some "bad" bullets out there but for me it's about picking the right bullet for the job you want it to perform. Do your homework and practice a lot more hours than you hunt - maybe 10 times more hours with a new set-up is my advice.
That hunt was a perfect setting - standing perfectly broadside, lots of time, great rest, little wind. I have learned that with my type of elk hunting I can't count on a perfect setting. Thus, I like a bullet that is designed for close and middle distance (50 to 600 yards), so I now load LRX Barnes or Accubond. They are not as accurate in my rifles (but still ~1 MOA), nor do they have as good of energy numbers at long distance (+700 yards) as the Bergers. But I decided to sacrifice range to reduce the chances of destroying meat and to provide a bit more error margin in case I hit shoulder bone.
I am sure there are some "bad" bullets out there but for me it's about picking the right bullet for the job you want it to perform. Do your homework and practice a lot more hours than you hunt - maybe 10 times more hours with a new set-up is my advice.
The one deer that ran the furthest was one that was hit the hardest. At about 60 yards a medium whitetail buck took a Sierra 165 out of an 06 through the onside shoulder, clipped the top of his heart and blew a big hole out the off side shoulder. That buck jumped straight up, landed and ran about 70 yards leaving a blood trail that was very obvious.The 06 is a hammer. A smaller white tail took a Sierra 150 gr out of an 06 in a close range quartering on shot. The bullet did not survive the impact with the heaviest part of the shoulder blade. The bullet did not blow up on the surface but passing through the bone it must have fallen apart. The fragments of bullet and bone shredded the whole inside of the chest cavity and lacerated the liver pretty good. That buck was DRT. The last "bullet failure" was a near encounter with a doe mule deer. The 270 140gr Sierra went through the lungs broadside and the core and jacket separated, they were found against the far side hide but the doe was DRT. In a certain sense all three bullets "failed", failed to drop DRT on a close shot, failed to stay intact and failed to penetrate through and through. the stories I can not get my head around are the ones where a big heavy 30 cal bullet grenades and has zero penetration. All that comes to mind is that much energy and lead must surely have the momentum to do a good bit of damage, but no they blew up and had zero damage. Must be some bad batches of lead alloy that are so brittle that a heavy 30 cal comes apart that dramatically.
To answer your specific question, an emphatic yes!!! Caribou hunt, like 1996, central Canada, 300 WinMag, 180gr Nosler partition bullet, center chest, quartering slightly to the right, about 70 yards!! At the shot the caribou took two steps and keeled over dead. But I had to look for the exit hole that was just behind the rib cage. There was damage to the lungs and a small hole in the heart,but…..nothing that one would expect from that cartridge with that bullet, I was afraid that I'd destroyed the entire animal being that close with a partition bullet; however nothing catastrophic at all. I shot a very large whitetail deer one year, 6.5 RemMag, like 286 pace shot, 140gr Nosler partition bullet, center chest frontal shot, destroyed that deer internally. Presently I hunt exclusively with monolithic bullets, have been using nothing but Barnes, however switching over to try the Hammers in the Whelen for black bear hunting. The folks at Hammer were very helpful getting a batch out to me for last season's hunt, but didn't get a chance to use them, but….this coming season they will be on the bullet selection to be tested!!
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I've only ever had 1 billet fail to open and it was 100 % my fault . A Sierra match king out of my 30-06 . It just penciled through him he never got out of his bed just laid there looking around and was bleeding out slowly. I realized something wasn't right and shot him in the head . That morning in my rush out the door I'd grabbed from the wrong box of ammo
My daughter was hunting with 25-06 loaded with Remington 100 grain core lokts. Told her if she shot one to shoot through the shoulders and put it down, due to a large patch of 7ft. weeds on edge of the wheat field. She did that, knocked the buck down, then it proceeded to run into the weed patch on 3 legs. Bullet disintegrated on the shoulder with no penetration. After chasing the buck around for an hour before finally dispatching, that was when I decided to start reloading my own ammo.
The answer to this question is absolutely yes, but it wasn't a problem with the bullet but with the use of the bullet which it was never intended for. Case in point was a 5.56mm 62 gr green tip FMJ round that seems to be so popular with the MSR shooters. Please note that this bullet is not and has never been considered a hunting type of bullet. In my infinite stupidity I allowed a friend, who uses this type of firearm and ammo to hunt deer all the time. He gets a lot of nice bucks using his MSR and the 62gr green tip bullets, but he says he has also missed a few deer using the same combination. Anyway to cut to the chase. I tried it. A nice 6 point buck showed itself at 125 yards. I carefully aimed, took the shot and watched the buck flinch then raise it's tail and run away like nothing had happened. I knew I had hit the deer and was not happy with what happened after that. A bullet kills via two very important means, 1 - hydraulic shock, which the little 62 gr solid bullet has very little of. 2 - by penetrating and destroying vital organs required for life to continue. I went to the spot where the deer was standing when I shot and was dismayed not to find a single drop of blood or a single hair laying on the ground to indicate a hit. I started to follow the trail that the deer had run down and came across a few dots of blood in the snow. The animal had been hit. Without further thought I went back to camp and got my .308 out of the car then went back to trail the deer. I found it standing at the edge of field about 100 yards away feeding on left over beans apparently none the worse for having been shot with the 5.56 bullet. This time the 165 gr Nosler Partition did it's job and dropped the deer in place. After getting the deer back to camp took a close look at it and found that the little 5.56 solid bullet had hit a bit high, passed under the spine and above the lungs. There of course was no expansion just a tiny hole in and a tiny hole out. The 165 gr partition was another story completely. hit just behind and above the shoulder went in did it's thing and never came out expending all of it's energy into the animal as it is designed to do. Now in answer to the question above, did the bullet fail? The answer is No. It did not fail simply because it is not designed to be used hunting. In this case it passed slightly below the spine and exited without really causing any major damage. If it had been the .308 and the 165 partition the chances are that the spine would have been severed by the larger expanding bullet and the deer would have dropped right there. That is the last time I hunted with a .223/5.56. My friend continues to hunt with his MSR, still gets deer and still supposedly misses a few too. He is a very good shot and when sighting in our rifles each fall consistently shoots 1MOA groups. I doubt that he misses the deer in it's entirety but the little 5.56 mm FMJ might just make it's way through without causing any major damage and allows the deer to simply run off, maybe to live on or maybe to die. Who knows. The moral of the story here is, "Do not use ammo for a purpose that it was not designed for."
Muzzle velocity was around 3,000'. Deer was around 200 yards.How close was the shot? What was the impact velocity? One poor result and you swore off the whole line of bullets?. Your call, obviously, but I see that a lot. People have a less than ideal result and jump to a premature conclusion. It's fine until they start telling others a particular bullet is terrible and they shouldn't use it, when in reality it wasn't the bullet's fault.
Had the same experience on hogs with it.
Buddy quit them cause they did it to him. I know terminal ballistics and when to use a certain bullet. These are designed for that shot and they failed. They failed horribly in my book. Remington corelocks work a lot better lol. Don't use them but they do.
Spoonman
Well-Known Member
Ideal velocity for ttsx is 1800 min to 3000. You focused on one line in my post. The odds of a ttsx opening at high velocity and close range (over 3200 on impact) and only hitting soft tissue is not where that projectile shines. I'm simply saying that projectiles operate best at different speed ranges and are also intended to operate best on certain parts of the body.
