180 Berger Performance

[bigngreen]

Wow! I've haven't had anything move after taking a 140 Berger from my 270 WSM, several elk out to near 400yrds though the heart or lungs, they just stop and fall on there nose, deer have just kissed dirt! Had a little weirdness with the 210's but I think that it was more shot placement looking back, going to give them a try again.
Got my buddy to try the 60gr Berger in his 22-250 and he shot an antelope and three deer with them, antelope at 506 through the lungs she sprinted then tipped cleaned her clock out, nice buck under 200yrds in the neck and destroyed all his intention on life, one doe through the shoulder at heart level blowing through the shoulder and shredding the heart and finding the jacket in the of leg. Second doe hit the same spot but bullet went more forward and didn't take out the vitals requiring a tracking job and a second shot. Really impressed with it, but it is much better right though the lungs and was quit impressive!

I'm a firm believed in testing a bullet out and drop it if you don't get along with it, why waste energy and time.

 

[goose]

I wonder if the Target bullets would be more fur friendly on coyotes. I would like to find something fur friendly for 7mm and 25 cal.

 

[Eric Stecker]

I lost a 4 point mulie on a Friday and on the next day I lost the biggest buck I have ever shot at. I was shooting a 270 with the 140 Bergers on both days. Kirk

Kirk (Catahoula),

My apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner. I am very interested in your report as we are working to understand why such things happen. One of our biggest challenges is that they happen so rarely that we have little information to work with.

I'm eager to pursue your situation further either here on this thread or directly. You can reach me at [email protected]. What I'd like to know is the lot number of the 270 cal 140 gr bullets you used. Also, if you can provide the load you used as well.

Regarding the cow elk shot with the 30 cal 190 gr, it seems from your report that the bullet performed as expected. Cow elks are large bodied and your shot was at an angle. Our bullets penetrate and then fragment inside the internal area.

Depending on body size, angle of the shot (how much length will the bullet travel before reaching the other side) and impact velocity it is normal for our bullets to dump all of its energy inside the animal resulting in no exit hole. The result is a far more devastating primary and secondary wound channel which is typically quickly lethal. Some animals are tougher than others but this is usually enough to keep the animal from going anywhere.

I am very interested in learning more about the 270 cal 140 gr bullets you were using. Let me know as much as you can as we are continuously working on terminal performance testing to get our bullets as close to 100% performance as is possible to achieve.

Regards,
Eric

 

[Coyboy]

I have used the 210 in a 300 rum and the 180 in the 7 rum. From my experience I tell customers if they hunt with a berger keep the bullet off of HEAVY bone.

2 seasons ago I shot a large muley buck (perfect broadside)square on the knucle of the scapula, that large massive ball and socket joint. The shot was 826 yards and that bullet detonated at impact with the knucle. The buck took a few leaps and stood broadside once more. My partner called a correction and the second bullet fired aproximatly 60 seconds later went high shoulder, penciled thru the "fan" of the shoulder blade and then took out a vertabray or two, with the bullet core mostly exiting the far side.

Upon disecting the first shot we found a mess of bullet frag in the shoulder meat, the lungs were near normal condition other than a few small frag holes/channels, at least one rib under the shoulder was cracked. The knucle was in about 4-5 large pieces.
It looked as if the bone mass acted as a catchers mit and sucked in the bullet energy, absorbing the impact and compressing the chest. (my impression not science based)

I have seen 140 bergers do very well punching thru rib cages and making quick kills. That is where I will try to place all berger bullets, when hunting.

I had one similar results with 140 a-maxes 300 yard quartering to me shot, hit the knucle, but at that angle and being a smaller mule deer it transfered enough bone frag thru the lungs that the bullet fraging on the knucle still produced a 5 second death run.

My 210 berger on a very large muley buck at 550 was the worst of the lot and taught me a good lesson. It had rained earlier and the buck was feeding and drying off. I aimed for a mid shoulder, (first mistake) at impact I could see a very visable halo of water vapor come off what apeared to be the shoulder area. The buck tipped right over, I heard a very audible bullet smack. And the buck was then hidden by the high brush of the alpine meadow. I watched for a few minutes and seen no movement so I had a very short walk to camp to round up a little help. Well one hour later the buck was not in the spot I left him. He apeared to crawl away about 15 feet. Then recovered all 4 hoves and departed from the sceen. 3 men and 2+ hours of trailing and grid searches revealed little to no blood and no animal.

I have thought about this long and hard and my only conclusion is one of two things. A knucle shot that needed a follow up to perminatly incapasitate the deer, or a just nicked the top of the spine and caused temporary poralasis. From the very audible smack of the bullet impact I have always leaned toward the knucle senario.

So until some one manf. the perfect bullet I'm going back to aiming for solid double lung shots only. My friends still tease me about my unlucky knucle hits.