So, after all the threads lately about bullets and how one is better than the other etc etc etc...
Has anyone truly had a "bullet failure" on a game animal? Where you for 100% certainty, can say you made proper shot placement and the bullet actually failed at killing the animal humanely?
Do any of these new bullets actually "kill" better than a Cor-lokt? Partition? Game King? TSX?
Have hunters been losing animals for a hundred years by using soft point lead core bullets?
Quite a few of them unfortunately and I've detailed them out here over the years.
The worst were Nosler BT's which lacking another way to say it frequently turned completely inside out and reversed at high velocity hitting hogs and occasionally on deer.
The base would become the leading edge of the bullet and punch through leaving a smaller than caliber sized exit. Often they left horrible large but not deep gaping wounds on the entry side. We found some of those animals a mile away from where they'd been hit, some, we never found. Most we were lucky enough to get a second shot into the shoulders and/or spine and anchor them.
I saw a lot of this with Nosler Partitions that people hit nothing but rib with as well, they'd shed everything in front of the partition and just pencil through, some running a long way before grounding.
I recently detailed out the tail of the TSX's doing something similar resulting in a lot of lost deer I had to track for others.
We've had numerous threads over the years discussing Berger's that failed to open and penciled through. I haven't shot a lot of Bergers but after one similar incident I cased using them on game.
The problem with understanding a true bullet failure is that more often than not you don't recover the bullet and often lose the animal. How many of those are failures vs, complete misses and poor placements? Without at least finding the animal you'll never know.
I'm more fortunate than most, I'm a very good tracker and got lots of experience doing so guiding and I've always had dogs that could follow a seemingly invisible blood trail.
Tracking is a skill that we've largely lost in this country.
I also had a horrible failure with an SGK that turned after impact and somehow ran down along the ribs and spine just below the skin creating a disgusting open wound over 2' long. Little bits of lead were round along the desired wound track in the chest, the rest somehow went along the spine. I've not shot an SGK at game since and won't if I can avoid it.
People tend to want different things when it comes to terminal performance. I want a bullet that mushrooms nicely but retains about 75-95% of it's weight giving me ideally a golf ball sized exit.
I flat won't shoot a cup and core HPT at a game animal period anymore because of penciling through or exploding shallow.
If we could somehow come up with a bullet that guaranteed 6" of penetration before detonating like a small grenade destroying everything in the chest cavity we'd have a real winner but I don't think we'll ever get there.
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