Pics of Berger Bullets NOT Performing????

[WildRose]

This is a great topic on why the bullet didnt exit or expand thats why i posted this pic! Obviously my velocities and point of aim ect..had to be dead on to hit this animal at 626 yards. so i think that i did my part on placing the shot ect. BUT exactly that is my Question why didnt this bullet expand at 3,025 fps?? Also here is a great question to you as well: why is Best of the West all of a sudden promoting the 300 win mag after all these years they said the 7mm mag was the best??....Maybe Broz is right on this one by shooting the 300 win 215VLDs

The inconsistency must be a problem in the design or MFG process.

If the hollow points are not consistent in depth and diameter you would get inconsistencies in expansion. Since there are no petal cuts to aid in beginning expansion that's about all that's left to consider unless it's a metallurgical problem with some of the bullet shells being harder than others.

I've never seen a cutaway section of the Berger bullets so this is just speculation.

 

[WildRose]

I am with everyone. I love berger bullets but just for the first time after this hunting season have every doubted what I am doing. I am not braggin about shooting great but I am ok with a shooting a gun single shot. Until this year. Found myself digging for more bullets. So that is where I get on here. I like the info about how bullets can vary. If I can account for this some how I will try. I don't like two shots one kill. Zero or 1500. Could a guy take a small piece of something and try to measure the distance to the lead core then????

Call the guys at Berger and tell them your story.

My bet is they'll want you to mail them the bullets too so they can see just what is going on.

 

[bigngreen]

On the cow elk, what exactly did the bullet hit going it, shoulder, ribs, between ribs? Sure looks like it started to open then went dramatically sideways. I've seen Bergers look like that but only after flying to the 2000 yard mark, tips will look started to open the they go sideways and turn into bananas.

 

[midnightmalloy]

Maybe your seating stem is crimping the tips of the bullets. That would essentially make it a fmj. I noticed I needed to get a vld seating stem to load these effectively. You may check that.

 

[bullridety]

The cow was quartering to me face on, i shot her on the tip of her front left shoulder and found the bullet lying under the hide behind the right front shoulder! There was plenty of vitals/muscle/bone to hit on the way through for this bullet to expand! The entrance hole was a perfect circular hole, so it was definitely apparent the bullet did not tumble. This was a very embarassing moment for me because I had a guy with me and i was bragging about the Berger bullets and long distance shooting. And as we were skinning the animal out in the garage, HE found the bullet and said "this is what your talking up a Berger Bullet for??" I was dumbfounded and didnt know what to say!

 

[bullridety]

No crimping involved, i checked that one as well! And as stated before, i shoot year round at long distances, whether it may be hunting, targets, coyotes, filming, or dialing in multiple long range setups and calibers, so i think maybe it has to be something with manufacturing the bullet or basically cutting the bullet open to see if there is an inconsistency? this bullet is cracked near the tip in a couple places but nowhere near expansion.

 

[WildRose]

No crimping involved, i checked that one as well! And as stated before, i shoot year round at long distances, whether it may be hunting, targets, coyotes, filming, or dialing in multiple long range setups and calibers, so i think maybe it has to be something with manufacturing the bullet or basically cutting the bullet open to see if there is an inconsistency? this bullet is cracked near the tip in a couple places but nowhere near expansion.

Take it to a jeweler and ask them to spit it down the center (best they can) from tip to tail. That will tell you a lot about the jacket thickness. If the jacket was overly thick that would prevent expansion.

Whether it tumbled or not on the way to the target there's no way that kind of deformation happened without it tumbling either befor it got there or more likely INSIDE the cow.

The more I think about it the more I'd think the metallurgy is the likely issue with the jacket being too hard.

Keeping those alloys consistent for literally millions of jackets I should think would be quite the task as it's impossible to mix things where there's an exactly even distribution throughout.

 

[bullridety]

ya i was thinking maybe it was overly heavy jacketed and the bullet was getting bent up by hitting bones and not expanding made the indentations that the bullet has.

 

[Pdvdh]

My bet is there's nothing wrong with that Berger bullet, other than it didn't expand. And probably only God knows why there are instances where this happens, while most of the time the VLDs will expand under your described scenario and shot. Clearly the bullet didn't tumble before it hit the elk, otherwise you'd have never hit the animal at that range. Plus you describe a normal, circular entrance hole. What are the odds a tumbling bullet would happen to hit exactly point on, or butt-end on.

Long bullets have quite a tendency to tumble inside game animals if they don't expand. The military knows this and it's a well documented fact, so the tumbling which deformed the bullet most certainly occurred inside the elk. Which also explains the loss of velocity within the animal, and why the bullet was caught under the hide on the off side.

 

[bullridety]

I agree with your conclusion! I appreciate the feedback and posts, like stated in previous posts, we always hear the success stories which is great, and I do have some success stories with the bergers that I'm proud of, but I will not hide anything and that's why I'm sharing this physical evidence with you all. I'm very picky and precise and just would like to have more confidence not with shot placement but with performance. I don't want to be proud just sometimes. I want to be proud each time I pull that trigger.

 

[edge]

IIRC GG used to test SMK's into newspaper and if the nose plugged they looked just like yours did.

I say the nose plugged with hair and it just tumbled through. Cut it open and check for a plug of hair/hide.

edge.

PS I found the link, it was mainly about Scenar bullets in newspaper, but the SMK's were inconsistent too!
Link with a bunch of pictures:

http://www.longrangehunting.com/forums/f19/scenar-bullet-failure-no-really-bad-16091/

 

[Broz]

Broz----Did Erick send any bullets your way for the testing and all the info you produced?

No, All the 215's I tested with and hunted with I purchased from a distributer. I believe the first 150 came from Sinclair's if my memory serves me well. I just bought another 300 from Bruno's. But for sure they were all from distributers and none came directly from Berger. I do not now nor have I in the past received free bullets from Berger. Why do you ask?

Jeff

 

[bigngreen]

I would not cut up that bullet open before talking to Berger!!! I think issues are rare and guys who don't just flip out and point fingers but try to get down to the bottom of what happened are even more rare, golden opportunity to get it figured out!!!!!

I always check the tip to make dang sure it's open, use a light or needle to make sure there is no obstruction, that hole being open is critical function!!! I've seen exactly one Berger bullet that was obstructed in the thousands we've shot but we did find it and removed it from out hunting line up.

 

[Tikkamike]

I didnt read all of the replies but this is why I dont care for this type of bullet. I have had my 300SMK's act similarly in my 338 lapua. And I have seen this happen with 168's in a friends 7mm. the other fail I have seen is they sometimes blow up on contact, Controlled expansion is the only way to go in my opinion