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Long Range Hunting & Shooting
exploding bullets on impact...is this real or are people guessing?
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<blockquote data-quote="Stokesrjsr" data-source="post: 1754219" data-attributes="member: 108548"><p>I've witnessed it first hand but it may be irrelevant because the issue has since been fixed. In 1984 I had a Steyr Model M Professional in 30-06 that shot the Nosler Solid base bullet really well, under 1/2 MOA. At that time in Arizona you could take two Coues Whitetail Deer and I regularly did that each year. I had no problem with those bullets at all, Coues are really small deer and even shoulder shots exited the opposite shoulder and killed quickly.</p><p> </p><p>Then Nosler introduced the Ballistic tip and discontinued the solid base bullet. I found the 165 grain Ballistic Tip equivalent shot just as well with the same load, 57 grains of IMR4350 at about 2950 fps. But I soon noticed poor penetration on raking shots, such as quartering away shots. Then one day I shot a small buck I had jumped from his bed as he ran up the opposite side of a canyon, about 200 yards, the deer went down at the shot but just laid there with his head up. I watched him for a few minutes waiting for him to expire but he seemed alert and wasn't fading, so I put another in his neck.</p><p></p><p>I was curious what had happened so I opened the chest cavity to have a look (I usually use the gutless method and pack only the boned meat) what I found was that the bullet entered the right ham on a trajectory to take out the heart and lungs but had not made it to the diaphragm. I found only small pieces of jacket and lead in the meat of the ham and then into the abdomen which totally absorbed the impact with no hematoma even to the liver.</p><p></p><p>After that I switched to the Nosler 165 grain Partition and continued to kill them stone dead. A friend of mine that had shot some of my ballistic tip loads found them to be very accurate in his Remington 700 and asked if he could have the rest of the 100 rounds I had loaded. I gave them to him and described the terminal performance concerns I had, but he decided to use them anyway.</p><p></p><p>Then one day he and I were glassing for Coues when I noticed a slight and very blurry movement in the bottom field of my 15X56 Swarovski binoculars. Looking over them I saw a small Coues buck had fed up the slope we were sitting atop of glassing and was only 30 yards or so from us. I got my friends attention and he was able to slowly raise his rifle and take the shot as the deer turned broadside, unaware we were there. My friend shot him dead center of the shoulder and the deer collapsed with a cloud of hair and debris in the air where he was standing. Because of the angle of the slope we couldn't see the deer any longer so we both stood up from our sitting positions behind our tripod mounted binoculars and were shocked to see the deer laying there with head up and alert, the same as the small buck I had shot the previous year.</p><p></p><p>My friend quickly dispatched the young buck with a neck shot. As we approached the deer the entry wound to the shoulder was massive, about the size and also the shape of a football. I could see several fragments of jacket glistening in the morning sun in the entry wound. We took the shoulder off and I were surprised to see that not a single fragment had penetrated into the chest cavity. After that he also stopped using those Ballistic Tips.</p><p></p><p>I called Nosler and discussed the experiences I had with lack of penetration. They acknowledged that they had many similar reports and were changing the jacket design to correct the situation. The changed jacket design is what is now labeled Hunting Ballistic Tip and it is a very good bullet that penetrates deeply while still creating a wide wound channel.</p><p></p><p>Current bullets such as the Hornady ELDM and Sierra Tipped Match King are jacketed just like the early Ballistic Tips with a thin non tapered jacket and behave much the same. Now that I have much more experience and have seen several hundred big game animals taken with all kinds of bullets I choose to use these thin jacketed bullets on purpose but use them appropriately. They kill much quicker at long range than heavily constructed premium hunting bullets because they create a wider wound channel that provides more margin for error at long range and at the lower impact velocities they penetrate well. If I need to use them up close I simply choose a rear lung shot placement and the deer go down in a flop.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Stokesrjsr, post: 1754219, member: 108548"] I've witnessed it first hand but it may be irrelevant because the issue has since been fixed. In 1984 I had a Steyr Model M Professional in 30-06 that shot the Nosler Solid base bullet really well, under 1/2 MOA. At that time in Arizona you could take two Coues Whitetail Deer and I regularly did that each year. I had no problem with those bullets at all, Coues are really small deer and even shoulder shots exited the opposite shoulder and killed quickly. Then Nosler introduced the Ballistic tip and discontinued the solid base bullet. I found the 165 grain Ballistic Tip equivalent shot just as well with the same load, 57 grains of IMR4350 at about 2950 fps. But I soon noticed poor penetration on raking shots, such as quartering away shots. Then one day I shot a small buck I had jumped from his bed as he ran up the opposite side of a canyon, about 200 yards, the deer went down at the shot but just laid there with his head up. I watched him for a few minutes waiting for him to expire but he seemed alert and wasn't fading, so I put another in his neck. I was curious what had happened so I opened the chest cavity to have a look (I usually use the gutless method and pack only the boned meat) what I found was that the bullet entered the right ham on a trajectory to take out the heart and lungs but had not made it to the diaphragm. I found only small pieces of jacket and lead in the meat of the ham and then into the abdomen which totally absorbed the impact with no hematoma even to the liver. After that I switched to the Nosler 165 grain Partition and continued to kill them stone dead. A friend of mine that had shot some of my ballistic tip loads found them to be very accurate in his Remington 700 and asked if he could have the rest of the 100 rounds I had loaded. I gave them to him and described the terminal performance concerns I had, but he decided to use them anyway. Then one day he and I were glassing for Coues when I noticed a slight and very blurry movement in the bottom field of my 15X56 Swarovski binoculars. Looking over them I saw a small Coues buck had fed up the slope we were sitting atop of glassing and was only 30 yards or so from us. I got my friends attention and he was able to slowly raise his rifle and take the shot as the deer turned broadside, unaware we were there. My friend shot him dead center of the shoulder and the deer collapsed with a cloud of hair and debris in the air where he was standing. Because of the angle of the slope we couldn't see the deer any longer so we both stood up from our sitting positions behind our tripod mounted binoculars and were shocked to see the deer laying there with head up and alert, the same as the small buck I had shot the previous year. My friend quickly dispatched the young buck with a neck shot. As we approached the deer the entry wound to the shoulder was massive, about the size and also the shape of a football. I could see several fragments of jacket glistening in the morning sun in the entry wound. We took the shoulder off and I were surprised to see that not a single fragment had penetrated into the chest cavity. After that he also stopped using those Ballistic Tips. I called Nosler and discussed the experiences I had with lack of penetration. They acknowledged that they had many similar reports and were changing the jacket design to correct the situation. The changed jacket design is what is now labeled Hunting Ballistic Tip and it is a very good bullet that penetrates deeply while still creating a wide wound channel. Current bullets such as the Hornady ELDM and Sierra Tipped Match King are jacketed just like the early Ballistic Tips with a thin non tapered jacket and behave much the same. Now that I have much more experience and have seen several hundred big game animals taken with all kinds of bullets I choose to use these thin jacketed bullets on purpose but use them appropriately. They kill much quicker at long range than heavily constructed premium hunting bullets because they create a wider wound channel that provides more margin for error at long range and at the lower impact velocities they penetrate well. If I need to use them up close I simply choose a rear lung shot placement and the deer go down in a flop. [/QUOTE]
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exploding bullets on impact...is this real or are people guessing?
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