On track with the OP. Given what has come up in this thread it gives merit to the choice of the Sledge Hammer line of bullets for "normal range hunting". The larger the hollow point the less likely the bullet is to have unusual behavior on impact. In our R and D we had determined that the 1.5mm hollow point that we have on the Hammer Hunter line was the smallest that we could go and still expect reliable bullet performance on game. Until this report of the `124g Hammer Hunter on elk we had never heard nor seen bullet performance that was less than we expected. Another thing that should be taken from this is twist rate for hunting bullets. The twist that was used on the elk with the 124g Hammer Hunters was measured at 8". As it should have been. That puts these bullets at our min recommended twist. After the last couple of years of killing (a lot) of big game animals and testing in media, I set my hunting rifles up with bullets that are as close to 2.0 sg as I can get. The higher the rpm's on the bullet the longer it penetrates nose forward in a straight line. If a bullet is still penetrating but no longer spinning it will deviate from it's original path and become unpredictable. We will be doing some testing to see if we can duplicate these events. I am fairly certain that the nose petals on these bullets did not shear off as quickly as we expect them to. It is an anomaly that I am chalking up to variance in metallurgy within the lot of copper. It happens in all metals.
Cudos to
@SnakeRiverEric for staying on the gun and finishing the job. It is not how we as hunters want things to go down but sometimes have to do in order to finish the job the best we can at the time. Well done sir. Also thank you for helping me answer questions yesterday, I appreciate your help.
