berger 168 vld hunting bullets.

RT2506 said:
It is not just the bullet it is the 7mm Mag. Worst caliber I ever shot deer with. Did not matter which bullet I tried. Even with placing a bullet in the shoulder 90% of the time deer would run off. I could not carry enough flashlight batteries to hunt with that 7 mag I would tell people because I would have to hunt for the deer so long after dark in the evening hunting I did. After shooting around 25 deer with it I decided to go back to my 25-06. 99% of the time where the deer was standing when shot is where it is laying. Most reliable bullet I ever used in the 7 mag for in the tracks kills or for those that did not go over 50 yards was the Hornady 154 gr Interlock SP.
I have only shot one deer with a VLD bullet and it was the 30 cal. 155 gr out of my 30X47 cal rifle at muzzle velocity of 2650 fps. Deer was a big doe at 111 yards broadside. Bullet was placed in the center of the right front shoulder. Deer just flinched and ran into the cut over. At the spot it was shot at on the off side it looked like you had filled a quart jar with blood and lung tissue that had been run in a blinder and slung it down the logging path. The cut over was VERY thick it ran into. There was a deer trail when the deer ran. I got on my hands and knees and crawled back down this trail. There was not a single drop of blood from where that deer was shot down the path for 50 yards where I found the deer laying. There was an exit hole the size of a baseball that just caught the back part of the offside shoulder. The deer literately sloshed on the inside. The heart and lungs were pulp. I like the 125 gr Nolser ballistic tip in this rifle better. Probably have shot 25 or so deer with it and all have been BANG FLOP. This just goes to show you that everybody has different experiences and when it comes to killing game even though they are dead on bullet impact they can still go a long ways.
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The 7mm RM has been the standard for which whitetail calibers has been set for over 1/2 a century...Please tell me how that caliber is garbage? I read your story...Just because your experience sucked doesn't mean that the 7mm RM is a bad caliber. I've shot deer with a whole lot of different **** over the last 20+ years, and have had no issues, other than with some Hornady SST 139's in a 7mm RM because that is a super-thin jacketed varmint bullet, and I learned my lesson, and moved on to something better, still in the 7mm RM caliber, of course.

I don't own ****** guns or ****** calibers...I own three 7mm RM rifles. That should tell you something.

The worst deer shooting experience I had was with a .30-30 Win...But I kept using it for years afterwards when hunting thick brush.
 
MudRunner2005 said:
The 7mm RM has been the standard for which whitetail calibers has been set for over 1/2 a century...Please tell me how that caliber is garbage? I read your story...Just because your experience sucked doesn't mean that the 7mm RM is a bad caliber. I've shot deer with a whole lot of different **** over the last 20+ years, and have had no issues, other than with some Hornady SST 139's in a 7mm RM because that is a super-thin jacketed varmint bullet, and I learned my lesson, and moved on to something better, still in the 7mm RM caliber, of course.

I don't own ****** guns or ****** calibers...I own three 7mm RM rifles. That should tell you something.

The worst deer shooting experience I had was with a .30-30 Win...But I kept using it for years afterwards when hunting thick brush.
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Yup
 
Joe King said:
That's what I was wondering. 90yrds on a double lung hit isn't unreasonable, I've seen deer go a lot farther than that while pouring out enough blood to have you thinking "how in the h*&1 is this thing still going?" One Doe I shot years ago ran 50yrds with a lung hanging out of the exit wound, and she to 3 good hits to the chest at close range.

Just because you don't get a bang flop the first time you try something doesn't mean it's bad. If you repeatedly have critter after critter run off from a particular bullet and good solid hits then yea I'd try something else. On the same note if you find a combo that consistently puts em down fast I wouldn't screw with that either. I've ran into both ^.
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Best post yet...With the best quote yet. "Just because you don't get a bang-flop the first time you try something doens't mean it's bad." I agree 110%.

I've been hunting for 20+ years and had VERY few bang-flop incidents, and I (not tooting my own horn) am one hell of a marksman. I simply don't miss my mark. Every bang-flop incident I've had was with a 7mm RM, come to think of it... The best one was with my old A-Bolt II 7RM, and Barnes 160 TSX's. Perfectly broadside and flopped her 180* so violently that I thought it would have broke its neck if the shot didn't kill it.

Perfect shots are perfect shots...What happens when that bullet leaves the barrel and passes through the animal is completely out of your hands.

Don't say bullets and calibers are crap, when you haven't given something a fair chance.

And I agree....I would LOVE to see the lungs. I shot a doe @ 125 yards with my .257 Wby and 110gr Accubonds....Bullet was probably moving around 3350-3400 still at that distance, and never touched a bone....And she ran. Perfect broadside shot, passed between 2 ribs on each side (never touched bone) and hit both lungs & clipped the heart, she was dead-man-walking when she took off. The lungs and heart looked like a jar of strawberry preserves. Nothing bigger than your fingernail, and she still ran for 50 yards, and barely dripped any blood.

Did I bitch & complain?....Hell no! You know why? Because meat in the freezer means a successful hunt.
 
Freedom2live said:
Yeah I did watch in complete disbelief. That buck I shot didnt flinch 1 inch when he was hit. I see people shooting game on youtube everyday with these berger and I use them and it sucks.

Question were did you hit those deer ? Lungs or shoulder blade
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you can see the one video shows a slight quartering away lung with the exit hole bleeding right behind the offside shoulder. I've killed roughly 15 KY deer now with the Berger VLD. Same outcome each time. I only started doing videos recently.
 
Some of these posts are funny. I remember over 20 years ago a fella told me he got rid of his 270 because it shot so fast the bullets blew all the way through the deer and ran. He stated he always recovered the deer, just didn't like the fact that the bullet exited and the deer ran. He was a physics major and said the best caliber is the one where the bullet doesn't exit, dumps all energy into the animal and drops it, so he traded his 270 for a 30-30 and couldn't have been happier. To each his own.

My experience with the 7Rem Mag is a stark contrast to the previous poster's. In my opinion, it is the perfect "magnum." Not picky, kills quick, and dumps everything I use it on every time.
 
Derek M. said:
Some of these posts are funny. I remember over 20 years ago a fella told me he got rid of his 270 because it shot so fast the bullets blew all the way through the deer and ran. He stated he always recovered the deer, just didn't like the fact that the bullet exited and the deer ran. He was a physics major and said the best caliber is the one where the bullet doesn't exit, dumps all energy into the animal and drops it, so he traded his 270 for a 30-30 and couldn't have been happier. To each his own.

My experience with the 7Rem Mag is a stark contrast to the previous poster's. In my opinion, it is the perfect "magnum." Not picky, kills quick, and dumps everything I use it on every time.
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Same here. Other than that 1 incident (which I should have known better than to even continue shooting varmint bullets at deer), I have killed everything I've dropped a crosshair on out of my 7mm RM rifles. Before the SST incident, the 139 SST's had worked perfect out of my 7mm-08, but all I can figure is that the added velocity of the 7mm RM caused them to explode on impact... But that was a quick lesson learned and situation fixed.
 
Derek M. said:
Some of these posts are funny. I remember over 20 years ago a fella told me he got rid of his 270 because it shot so fast the bullets blew all the way through the deer and ran. He stated he always recovered the deer, just didn't like the fact that the bullet exited and the deer ran. He was a physics major and said the best caliber is the one where the bullet doesn't exit, dumps all energy into the animal and drops it, so he traded his 270 for a 30-30 and couldn't have been happier. To each his own.

My experience with the 7Rem Mag is a stark contrast to the previous poster's. In my opinion, it is the perfect "magnum." Not picky, kills quick, and dumps everything I use it on every time.
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Thats funny, in a way he's right. Not dumping all energy is like hitting them with broadheads, kind of
 
Freedom2live, just a thought, but I have posted in the past my horrible experience with the SST bullet on antelope. So, like you, with that one personal experience where the buck had to be shot around 5 times to die, I will never ever use a Hornady SST bullet. In my book, they re-define "garbage bullets." Evidently, you have had success. I'd stick to those or nosler Btips if I were you. Maybe consider the ABs or Scirocco bullets.
 
Freedom2live said:
Your using target vlds ?
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The Hybrids have developed a nasty reputation as creating a massive wound cavity and exerting ALOT of it's energy into the target.

Which is why I'll be using the Berger 7mm 180 Hybrids this year for whitetails.

I asked Bob Blaine @ Berger his opinion, but he just said, "we don't recommend any target bullets for hunting live game".....Which is understandable for them wanting to cover their butts. He also said they had never done an expansion test on the Hybrids simply because it was listed as a target bullet.

Maybe in the future we can see some Berger expansion tests proving the Hybrid to be a superior hunting bullet.
 
Derek M. said:
Freedom2live, just a thought, but I have posted in the past my horrible experience with the SST bullet on antelope. So, like you, with that one personal experience where the buck had to be shot around 5 times to die, I will never ever use a Hornady SST bullet. In my book, they re-define "garbage bullets." Evidently, you have had success. I'd stick to those or nosler Btips if I were you. Maybe consider the ABs or Scirocco bullets.
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This really sucks I just bought two boxes of sst 154 gr 7mm and was finishing reloads. Anyway coyotes are in so I ll use them
 
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