It has been a long week of working in the woods cutting firewood and my new shooting range. A long week of not shooting everyday. [&o] I finally was back to where I wanted the range to end. There, at the back of the range,was a large Popular Tree there which was about 3' on the stump in size. I decided I had behaved so well all week working, I need to shoot the White Rifle. I was going into withdraws reading all these posts of everyone else shooting.

For those not aware, a Popular Tree is not a hard wood. It is a softer wood, but being a green tree does have a lot of strength.

I took some marking crayon red in color and made a 2.5-3 inch circle on the white bark trunk of the tree. From the 100 yard station with the White Rifle shooting 80 grains of Triple Se7en 3f, 2 -1/16th wonder wads, and a 460 grain NO EXCUSE CONICAL.

The two hits aimed at the RED DOT were side by side in the dot,looking at the outside of the tree. They actually travelled approximately 9 inches into the three, but took different paths as they travelled through the tree. I also shot a 200 grain Shockwave with 100 grains of Triple Se7en 3f under it. The 200 grain Shockwave travelled just under 5 inches into the tree.

The 460 grain No Excuse weighted 449.7 grains & 446.3 grains with an excellent mushroom pattern. The 449.7 grain conical expanded to 7/8th of an inch. The 446.3 grain expanded to 15/16ths of an inch which I was very impressed with. Just thinking of driving a hole that size through an animal would be most exciting. Also the degree of penetration was very impressive. I could see this conical making it a long distance through soft body tissue of a deer or elk.

The 200 grain Shockwave weighted 176.0 grains and flattened out to 3/4 of an inch which again was very impressive. It should be noted the Shockwave hit three inches higher then the large conicals.

I am not trying to compare the density of an animal to a tree by any means. All I wanted to see washow well the conicals held together. The Shockwave really impressed me holding together as well as it did. This Shockwave would really IMO make a good deer load.

All I really wanted to do was make an excuse for shooting the rifle and not working all day...