Bobby

I sincerely wish more hunters got into it at the level you do. It would add much to the sport and prevent a lot of mishaps that really don't need to happen in the first place.

Bullets, aside from the obvious of needing to go to the right place in the humane killing of a game animal, are one of, if not the most important ingredient in the equation.  How that bullet behaves when it contacts flesh, bone, and vital organs determines how fast the animal will hit the ground.

Let's look at the metrics a bullet maker goes through to produce a line of pills. If he's a full line jobber he'll have a good section of varmint bullets. These bullets by design fly at high speed, must be accurate, and must literally explode once flesh is hit. By design then they wear a very thin jacket and most are Spitzer shaped having a rather sharp point to assist in long range velocity retention. There is no special parameters in varmint bullets other than make sure they are frangible. While some varmint bullets have been used from 22 center fires on game as big as deer it's not one of the best ideas as the results can be very unpredictable.  The 40 grain bullet traveling at 3800 fps sounds like a real Hell bender, and on a woodchuck it is.  That same bullet slamming the rib of a deer will do little more than form a dark spot on the hide of the deer where the hair was burned off.  If, the bullet manages to slip between ribs and get into the lung area the wound will be shallow at best, and again, very unpredictable.

Target, or Match bullets are more precise simply because of the steps taken in manufacturing. Here again, there is no need to bond a core to a jacket as killing paper does not require anything more than one hole precision.  A lot of the match bullets are hollow points, those showing no exposed lead at the tip. Since there are no lead tips they can't get battered, mashed, or even broken off.  As a result, the hollow points tend to be more exact from one bullet to the next.  It did not take long for some nimrod to add two and two and come up with an answer of five once he saw the precision that came from a match bullet.  What he did not realize is in order for the bullet to expand on contact it needed an opening at least big enough to get some fluid in so that it could open by hydraulic force.  The results were animals shot that took the hit and took off as if nothing happened. Even a full metal jacketed bullet through the lungs will kill, eventually.  And so animals hit with match bullets that did not appear to be mortally wounded went off and died a slow death without ever being recovered.  There were, and are, some match bullets that have large enough openings to be of some use, but the wisdom should be not to use them unless they are designed as either dual purpose or specifically for hunting game.

Game bullets are the toughest to manufacture. They of course must be accurate. They should hold together at close range impact, and they should still expand reliably at long range when the velocity is much lower.  They need to expand to a minimum of twice diameter, they need to penetrate, and they must inflict a very large wound channel to make the fastest possible kill.  Too, they must be able to smash the large leg bone of say a moose, and then continue on to disrupt the vital organs.  That's one Hell of a set of requirements for a bullet.

The early Hornady bullets were garbage. They unglued just like the Sierra bullets still do on game.  Hornady's Interlock bullets are much much better, so long as you don't violate the velocity window that they should work within. Some specific bullets such as the 265 grain 44 cal that were designed to be used in the 444 Marlin work like models made in Heaven, perfect every time. That same bullet in a 44 mag revolver won't open at all. A better choice for the revolver is the 240 grain XTP, a bullet designed for the hand guns. It's dead accurate, opens as it should, penetrates, and kills game quite efficiently.

Speer bullets follow the same road. The "standard" bullets aren't worth shit in my opinion as game bullets.  I'd rate their hot core models with Hornady's Interlocks. IMO, the best bullet Speer ever made is their Grand Slams. They are as accurate as a match bullet in 9 out of 10 guns I fire them out of.  They hold together, they penetrate, and they kill game very cleanly. They have a good balance of about everything in one bullet.

From there one can go in to what I call the big buck novelty bullets. Trophy Bonded Bear Claws, A Square's Triad, Barnes, Bitter Root....Hell, there's a ton of them out there.  They all have insane price tags, some are accurate, some are not, and some, are just plain stupid when you think about it.

Bonded bullets, those whose core is welded to the jacket should be failsafe. In as far as core separation they are. But I have seen some very strange expansion results from some of those type bullets on game, enough to steer me away from them. Too, they weren't the most accurate.

Then we have the Barnes and Talons. Myself I don't like them.  Oh I used them, Hell, I think I used about everything at one time or another.  Here's the deal for what it's worth. Copper does not have the same specific gravity as lead. Therefore, in order to get 180 grains of bullet in a Barnes or a Talon you must make the bullet longer. Period. No other way to do it.  As you know, no two rifles are exactly alike. So an older rifle with its throat eroded may benefit in accuracy from the longer bullets if they are hung out further from the case. Then again, that could cause feeding problems.  If, you load to the manuals in OAL the longer part of the bullet goes where?  Yes Sir, right into the case. Either it cuts down on the powder space, or, you end up with a compressed load. Good? Bad? Depends again on the rifle. While the pure copper jobber sounds about as good as it can get, in my experience, it's not.  I hit a deer straight behind the fore leg on a broad side shot and found the bullet in the ass of that buck.. One petal had broken off and the bullet curved around like a hockey puck.  And they produce a narrow wound channel like a Nosler partition.

Regarding exit wounds or not.  One school wants the bullet to get into the vitals and blow up, thereby theoretically expending all of its energy in the target.  The other sanction wants an exit wound at all costs. If someone can convince me that they have programmed a bullet to get exactly 12 inches into the chest of a deer and then explode I may be interested in testing it out.  What if that bullet hits a rib on the way in?  What if it's a quartering shot that has to be driven in from far back?  Perfect standing broadside shots every time? If you hunt, you know that wet dream ain't happening.  The closest thing to that type of bullet that I have used and found a wicked killer are none other than Nosler's Ballistic Tips. Nobody elses ballistic tips, only Noslers.  And yes, I did try the rest.  The NBT bullets are the most accurate, expand violently, often give an exit hole, and drop em in their tracks 9 out of 10 times, sometimes 10 times.  Of course we're talking deer here, NOT moose.

As stated, I want an exit wound, again, for the reasons stated. Given my choice I'll go with a round nose bullet as I hunt in the woods and the distances are not long enough to worry me about lost velocity.  A round nose bullet opens faster than a Spitzer in a conventional game bullet.  It creates a larger wound channel, generally expands a bit more, and is more predictable in the ultimate path it will take in game.  Which by the way is probably why most bullets used on dangerous African game are of round nose design.  On a moose I may not be able to break the on shoulder, but I can direct a bullet to take out the vitals and the off shoulder as I know where the path of the bullet will most likely go in getting there.

Given a choice of being shot, or hit with a Rage broad head I'll take my chances with the bullet.  At least you MIGHT have a chance. The Rage, you're dead. No way in Hell you'll get out of the woods before you bleed out.  I believe that covered that question.

Good point Bobby about the Moose absorbing lead.  I would rate the nervous system of a moose on par with a Texas armadillo. We used everything on them from 22 mags to 12 ga slugs. And that was a lot of in between center fires. The ONLY thing that stopped em dead in their tracks was a 12 ga slug.  Imagine that! 75 caliber to stop a diller cold.  Moose can take about as much punishment.

Which is why my philosophy is hit em hard with something big. If they so much as twitch at the shot, FILL EM UP and keep shooting until they don't twitch no more.

Of note regarding deer bullets. A good spell back we loaded Sierra 165 BTHP bullets over 54 grains of H414 in 30-06 Winchester cases, fired by CCI 250 Magnum primers. Those bullets consistently shot 1 MOA out of just about all of our BAR rifles and some of the Remington autos. In a Remington 700 BDL or a Mauser bolt they'd do inside of 1/2 MOA. Between myself, my Father In Law, and my Brother In Law hunting in NH,Vermont , and Maine we killed well over a hundred deer with that load and bullet.  The results were always pretty much the same. Dropped in tracks, or, ran no more than 25 yards.

When that hollow point first came out it was the bullet to end all bullets on deer. I remember running into a herd of deer in a cedar swamp. Deer were running in every direction. I was caught off guard and when I pulled my head out of my ass a huge doe made a leap accross a skidder road. I got on her at the peak of the jump while she was in the air. At the shot the deer dropped like a sack of potatoes and never twitched. Distance? About 15 meters.

Same bullet and load the following year I came up on a buck in the laurals that spied me the second I got an eyeball on him. He was a good buck, well over 200 pounds and I knew he was getting ready to bolt.  I snapped one off and at the shot he took off. As he took the first leap I saw something swinging below the front leg. Going over to where he was when I shot, it looked like someone had taken a 5 gallon bucket and poured blood on the snow. He made it less than 20 meters before piling up stone dead. The bullet had entered behind the front leg, blew the bottom 3rd of the heart off, turned down and ripped a 4 inch slot in the bottom of the buck, at which point the heart was hanging outside of the deer and is what I saw swinging. Nasty nasty bullets.

While we were reducing the deer population the boys were falling in love with the new 300 Winchester and 300 Weatherby Magnums. And of course they loaded up some steamy loads with the Seierra 165 Boat Tail Hollow Points. In short order they bitched to Sierra as the bullets that worked wonders at 308 and 30-06 velocities were little more than varmint bullets at 3400 and 3500 feet per second. Game hit at those speeds with that bullet took off for parts unknown and it was a bad scene all around.

The right call would have been to leave the existing bullet alone and fashion another one with a heavier jacket for the magnum boys. Sierra chose to stiffen up the old 165 BTHP to make the velocity junkies happy and of course did not bother to make any announcements about the change.

The year they did that trick we shot a lot of deer and ended up tracking every single one of them. Some went as far as 2 miles with perfect placed shots. This caused us much ponder. Something was way wrong all of a sudden.  I cut apart an old bullet and then a newer one. It became quite clear what had happened.  I called Sierra and confronted them with my observations and that's when I was told about the thicker jackets. That was the last Sierra bullets we ever fired.

In a 26 inch tube the 165 BTHP is a wicked killer out of a 300 magnum, but I for one don't want the added weight or the longer barrel of the mags when I'm crusing the wood lots for deer. Stands over clearcuts ok, but that's not normal white tail hunting in New England.

One must pay attention to the velocity windows when reloading. If ever in doubt, go with a factory load from either Remington or Winchester. What's in their cases will work, their name is on the line.

The pen is yours once again Sir