FAL Shot
Well-Known Member
Nathan Foster is a New Zealand PH who has amassed what is possibly the largest collection of data concerning the on-game terminal performance of most commercially available hunting bullets in one website.
If you want to see how your favorite hunting bullets stack up against others in actual killing power on game animals, then you should check out his knowledge base at www.ballisticstudies.com
In my own actual big game and varmint shooting experiences, I have found that my results match his very closely. Therefore, I would take his advice on bullets that I have not tried very seriously. I tried the Hornady A-Max bullet on long range mule deer hunting and found it to perform similar to as he described it.
He has detailed on-game information on literally hundreds of bullets, gained from shooting game in the field, not ballistic gelatin (per his claims). His site is geared toward game hunted in New Zealand. Not for large dangerous game such as Africa or Alaska, nor for extremely short range shooting such as southern USA whitetail in thick cover.
There is no information on camp carbines, which does not apply to this long range hunting forum. Strange, since NZ has some terrain that would favor those type rifles. Information on things such as scopes is scarce. There was a recent forum post on how to adapt an SFP ballistic reticle scope to just about any cartridge to get standard 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 yard ranges to align perfectly with ballistic reticle marks, but the post was deleted. This was excellent basic knowledge, which I have used for years.
There are not many forum posts in number relative to the time the website has been active. Several recent posts that held useful information were suddenly deleted. Since this is a commerical website, I soon deduced that the posts were deleted because they were not originated by the website owner, or more precisely, in line with his interests. I am beginning to suspect that any posts that are permanent are agreeable to the owner's commercial interests. So, be aware of that.
The forum posts all seemed to be from the Australia/New Zealand area. Most of the posts that were recently deleted were from outside that area, so take that for what it is worth. It is unlikely that outsider posts will be taken as seriously as more local posts. It's probably a waste of your time to post anything if you are not from Oz or NZ.
The animals that the bullets were tested on seem to be in the deer, elk, goat, boar, antelope, and sheep category. For bears, bison, moose, large cats, cape buffalo, rhino, and elephant type game.....look elsewhere. He has never hunted those animals in their native range and any info given is what he has gathered from elsewhere.....the same as any of us could do.
He had some totally erroneous info on SS109/M855 ammo, which he wrongly attributed to be the same as 62 grain Federal American Eagle .223 Rem. He was corrected in a recent post, and the info given could have easily been gathered from Youtube where genuine SS109/M855 is compared to the fake stuff made in Turkey and passed off as real SS109/M855. Federal American Eagle 62 grain FMJ is similar in weight, but is not passed off by Federal as SS109/M855 as the terminal performance difference is huge. Since I have shot many hundreds of rounds of this military ammo, and know a guy who hunts with it, I wondered why such misinformation on such common NATO ammo. I deduced that being in New Zealand, he does not have access to this ammo and had posted info on hearsay and/or what he read somewhere. He may have made some changes in his knowledge base concerning the 62 grain Federal American Eagle, but the forum post was deleted concerning SS109/M855 that corrected his info and any references to SS109/M855 in the knowledge base seems to be gone now. This is a far, far underrated bullet in .224 cal as it is not understood how to be used correctly by most hunters, so this one error is glaring in nature from my viewpoint.
Those intimately familiar with other bullets he lists may see similar errors, but I can't correctly ascertain what I have not used. I'm just saying take things with a grain of salt and crosscheck with other sources if possible.
However, this is a lot of information in one place on hunting bullets and you can quickly build up a short list of bullets to crosscheck with other review sources.
If you want to see how your favorite hunting bullets stack up against others in actual killing power on game animals, then you should check out his knowledge base at www.ballisticstudies.com
In my own actual big game and varmint shooting experiences, I have found that my results match his very closely. Therefore, I would take his advice on bullets that I have not tried very seriously. I tried the Hornady A-Max bullet on long range mule deer hunting and found it to perform similar to as he described it.
He has detailed on-game information on literally hundreds of bullets, gained from shooting game in the field, not ballistic gelatin (per his claims). His site is geared toward game hunted in New Zealand. Not for large dangerous game such as Africa or Alaska, nor for extremely short range shooting such as southern USA whitetail in thick cover.
There is no information on camp carbines, which does not apply to this long range hunting forum. Strange, since NZ has some terrain that would favor those type rifles. Information on things such as scopes is scarce. There was a recent forum post on how to adapt an SFP ballistic reticle scope to just about any cartridge to get standard 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 yard ranges to align perfectly with ballistic reticle marks, but the post was deleted. This was excellent basic knowledge, which I have used for years.
There are not many forum posts in number relative to the time the website has been active. Several recent posts that held useful information were suddenly deleted. Since this is a commerical website, I soon deduced that the posts were deleted because they were not originated by the website owner, or more precisely, in line with his interests. I am beginning to suspect that any posts that are permanent are agreeable to the owner's commercial interests. So, be aware of that.
The forum posts all seemed to be from the Australia/New Zealand area. Most of the posts that were recently deleted were from outside that area, so take that for what it is worth. It is unlikely that outsider posts will be taken as seriously as more local posts. It's probably a waste of your time to post anything if you are not from Oz or NZ.
The animals that the bullets were tested on seem to be in the deer, elk, goat, boar, antelope, and sheep category. For bears, bison, moose, large cats, cape buffalo, rhino, and elephant type game.....look elsewhere. He has never hunted those animals in their native range and any info given is what he has gathered from elsewhere.....the same as any of us could do.
He had some totally erroneous info on SS109/M855 ammo, which he wrongly attributed to be the same as 62 grain Federal American Eagle .223 Rem. He was corrected in a recent post, and the info given could have easily been gathered from Youtube where genuine SS109/M855 is compared to the fake stuff made in Turkey and passed off as real SS109/M855. Federal American Eagle 62 grain FMJ is similar in weight, but is not passed off by Federal as SS109/M855 as the terminal performance difference is huge. Since I have shot many hundreds of rounds of this military ammo, and know a guy who hunts with it, I wondered why such misinformation on such common NATO ammo. I deduced that being in New Zealand, he does not have access to this ammo and had posted info on hearsay and/or what he read somewhere. He may have made some changes in his knowledge base concerning the 62 grain Federal American Eagle, but the forum post was deleted concerning SS109/M855 that corrected his info and any references to SS109/M855 in the knowledge base seems to be gone now. This is a far, far underrated bullet in .224 cal as it is not understood how to be used correctly by most hunters, so this one error is glaring in nature from my viewpoint.
Those intimately familiar with other bullets he lists may see similar errors, but I can't correctly ascertain what I have not used. I'm just saying take things with a grain of salt and crosscheck with other sources if possible.
However, this is a lot of information in one place on hunting bullets and you can quickly build up a short list of bullets to crosscheck with other review sources.
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