berger 168 vld hunting bullets.

[Freedom2live]

Happy family and turkey day, enjoy and make memories

 

[HEVI D]

Just started shooting Bergers in 270 win. 130gr hunting VLD. 3 deer. Hitting solid shoulder every time. Pencil holes in and out with little or no blood trails. Recovered all but had lots of trouble doing so. Had been shooting NBT's. Going back to them. Maybe better on elk but not 150lb whitetails in the south. JMO.

 

[Freedom2live]

Just started shooting Bergers in 270 win. 130gr hunting VLD. 3 deer. Hitting solid shoulder every time. Pencil holes in and out with little or no blood trails. Recovered all but had lots of trouble doing so. Had been shooting NBT's. Going back to them. Maybe better on elk but not 150lb whitetails in the south. JMO.

Were you using the same one I was ?

 

[HEVI D]

Guess so.

 

[bigngreen]

I find it odd that this always seems to happen to guys who are using them for the first time, I've shot dozens of deer and elk with Bergers with not a single issues, best bullets I've used for hunting bar non! I've shot so many elk with the 270 Berger 140 and never had to fire a second shot OR had one move more than a few steps, never seen a 168 7mm fail to open and we shoot the Target version not the hunting.
All bullets will at some point have an odd ball if you shoot enough!

 

[Deleted member 46119]

Are you guys checking to make sure that your seating die isn't closing the tip.

Some brands do not have the depth to seat VLD without contacting the tip.

 

[Freedom2live]

Are you guys checking to make sure that your seating die isn't closing the tip.

Some brands do not have the depth to seat VLD without contacting the tip.

I sure do redding all the way. What sucks is you folks are using target version and having great success, here am using hunting vld and horrible performance. . What gives?

 

[joeycoates]

I am kind of at a loss here as well. I shot a doe this evening (last weekend here in Texas to get a doe and we are out of venison) with a 7RM shooting a 168gr Berger VLD Hunter that I just loaded up on Wednesday and sighted in today. I will post the pictures below, but I could literally put my fist through the exit wound. Needless to say she did not go far and she is a big doe for East Texas. The shot placement was good, but others have had good shot placement without the results that I got. I have to wonder what makes it work some times and not others.

 

[mtnwrunner]

YEP - and also those of us that have held our tongue.

Yeah, what he said.

Randy

 

[bearcat2]

Hmm, I had Federal 22's do that to me in a rifle this summer, I usually shoot Remington's but due to the complete and utter lack of availability of 22 bullets I was shooting what I could get. Had shot one brick of Federals and about halfway through the second one I took the scope off the rifle and put a ghost ring rear sight on it, started out at ten yards and couldn't hit the paper, moved up to ten feet and still couldn't hit it, had six rounds in the barrel before I figured out the problem. And they are a lot harder to remove in rifle than a pistol, I couldn't get them out, took it to a gunsmith and he had a special drill bit designed to drill them out, said he had done it a lot. I didn't think until later to ask what brands he normally had to drill out.

Same here...Out of the 100's of thousands of rounds I've shot in my life, I have only had 2 brands fail me. One, was the Hornady 7mm 139 SST incident, I was rapid-firing, and the other I had 3 Remington .22 LR bullets plug up into the barrel of my S&W 22A pistol, and they were easily removed by a friend of mine, and our former veterinarian, who has since passed away. But ever since those 2 bad experiences I have no love for the SST bullets against medium to large game, and refuse to shoot Remington ammo or use Remington reloading components...Not even brass.

 

[bearcat2]

Okay, going to hit a few points in this reply, so here goes:

I use the 180 Bergers (hunting, never tried the target bullets) in my 7 STW, I have almost the opposite problem, at 200 yards or less they tend to blow up on me, usually nice small entrance hole, but blow to shrapnel inside with just tiny fragments of copper and lead found, with no exit. Over that range they tend to seem to expand fairly well, usually exit (judging expansion by exit hole) but if not I either find a mushroomed bullet or the base of the bullet and three or four torn off 'wings.' They however seem to have the least knockdown of any big game hunting bullet I have used (with the possible exception of the SST), I have shot 7 or 8 elk and more deer than that with them (plus several deer and elk I have let other people shoot with my rifle), and the only ones I have knocked down have been either spine or head shots. Most don't even act like they have been hit until they keel over. That being said everything I have shot with them has been killed fairly efficiently, and the few that have had to be blood trailed left an acceptable blood trail. I don't care for the lack of knockdown, but continue to use them because I haven't had a problem with their lethality and really like the long range ballistics and accuracy.

I will never use the SST's again, after shooting an elk six times (starting at 20 yds, it made it to about 50 before I shot it behind the ear and put it down) with 140 SST's in a 270, and finding EVERY ONE of them shed the jacket shortly after entering and the pieces wandered of on tangents. I know four other people that same year who had the same problems with SST's on deer, elk, bear, and in one case cougar. They used a 7mm Ultra, a 270, and 2 300 Win mags; so it wasn't just the one caliber and bullet that had the problem. Now I have one friend who has used them for years in a 7mm Ultra and swears by them, but he bought a bulk lot of them before any of the rest of us bought the ones we all had problems with, so possibly they have changed the design.

If you truly want an absolutely killing bullet that is accurate I would suggest the Grand Slams, I have never found anything that delivers more DRT kills than them, or any bullet that is as accurate in a 270, and practically anything else you feed them to likes them also. They don't however have the downrange ballistics of the true long range bullets. And they are a little hard on the pocketbook.

Oh and just to throw a little gasoline on the fire, I despise the 7mm magnum also. I know I am prejudiced against without good reason, it is a perfectly fine cartridge, but growing up everyone who had a 7mm mag (the 'new' hot caliber at the time) bragged on them unmercifully and swore there was nothing else capable of reliably killing anything from ground squirrels to Kodiaks. I'm a little bit contrary and listening to a bunch of blowhards brag on their 'superior' 7's caused be to develop an absolute hatred for them.

 

[HEVI D]

Is this a Berger thread or 7mm mag thread?

 

[300rum]

using 168 vld TARGET - out of 7 rm on deers for more then 3 years now.
shot them from 80 yrds to 980yrds And bullet perform flawlessy.
exit holes from 0.5 -3in and i dont complain... some of them drop on spot , other run for 4o yards or more.
yes i know are target but i did my expansion test on wet paper and i dont change my mind.
if you got a bad expansion problem and dead deer... dont give up on them based on one bad expansion experience. look around on this site and see how many of us are using berger for one single reason.... THEY SHOOT AND PERFORM GREAT ON GAMES AND TARGET.
from time to time you will have one bad case as your. but this is not the norm.
get out and do a wetphonebook test with the same berger bullet and see for yourself.
set 4-6 phonebooks ducttaped together and set them at the same distance what you shot your deer. take the shot and see how far and how big is the expansion on bullet path.
then you decide for your self.
i hope you will change your mind after the phonebook test.
let us know your resoults. add some photos too...

 

[Freedom2live]

using 168 vld TARGET - out of 7 rm on deers for more then 3 years now.
shot them from 80 yrds to 980yrds And bullet perform flawlessy.
exit holes from 0.5 -3in and i dont complain... some of them drop on spot , other run for 4o yards or more.
yes i know are target but i did my expansion test on wet paper and i dont change my mind.
if you got a bad expansion problem and dead deer... dont give up on them based on one bad expansion experience. look around on this site and see how many of us are using berger for one single reason.... THEY SHOOT AND PERFORM GREAT ON GAMES AND TARGET.
from time to time you will have one bad case as your. but this is not the norm.
get out and do a wetphonebook test with the same berger bullet and see for yourself.
set 4-6 phonebooks ducttaped together and set them at the same distance what you shot your deer. take the shot and see how far and how big is the expansion on bullet path.
then you decide for your self.
i hope you will change your mind after the phonebook test.
let us know your resoults. add some photos too...

Am over do for wet test