ORIGINAL: Pglasgow
ORIGINAL: petasux
My kids use Hornady XTPs and have killed 4 deer and one coyote with it in the past two years. The performance is much better than the power belts and I don't think you could over drive one.
In my Knight with a 90 grain 777 charge the bullets actually seemed to be coming apart before they actually hit the door.After every shot there were two holes instead of one in the target, one a little smaller then the other.
The second hole must have been something blowing back. Maybe even a blast of hot air could punch a hole in the paper. My guess would be this had more to do with the steel refrigerator door than the xtps. After you filled it (the door)full of holes, if the problem was something blowing back, the problem would have ceased.
It was the bullets, I tried moving the paper away from the door and got the same results, tried a piece of 1/2 plywood behind it as well and got the same thing, like you I thought at first it must be the door either shooting metal back through or forcing air out of the hollow core inside the door but different backstops, ranges, etc.. made no difference.The first box of shells were ones I had left over from the previous year, the rest were bought that year and did the same thing so it wasnt the same lot of bullets either.
I did hunt with them that way the first year, they killed deer but even at extremely close ranges I never got a complete passthrough and there were always two distinct entry wounds on the deer.Dad was shooting a Knight also, same bullets, same powder charge, and never had any trouble with them in his gun, he even finished off what was left of my second box without any incident like that.
The main difference between his gun and mine was that my bore was a lot tighter then his, dont know if they were building up two much pressure behind the bullet and the lead and copper were seperating or what the problem was.The two bullets I found intact inside deer had little if any evidence of the copper being on the bullet.The Shockwaves had athinner sabot on them, dont know if that would account for anything or not but they loaded much easier even with a fouled barrel.