RE: recovered bullets
 

recovered from under the off-side hide of a 7pt whitetail. Started life as a Lee .457-405F sized to .451 and weighed ~423 grains. Recovered weight was 373 grains (if my memory is correct) and there was an obvious small chunk missing from the nose section.

RE: recovered bullets
 

This looks pretty good but not perfect, anperfect performing terminalbullet is completely expanded at the head and the long shank of the bullet is intact, like the picture perfect barnes bullets with the petals fully expanded and the shank totally together, like the 300g Nosler I showed above and like the 300g Gold Dot shown above. To >>me<< this bullet worked and obviouly killed, but itover expanded (I do NOT believe pancake flat is good in a bullet either--please push back if you think otherwise), not as overexpanded as the 250g Gold Dot shot into sand but getting there. I am NOT saying this bullet didn't do it's job and I am NOT saying I do not recommend this bullet. Chap

RE: recovered bullets
 

OK I'll ad one from my 1860 Army Revolver that I've shot yesterday as an expiriment "you guys inspired me."

Gun:
25 year old Pietta 1860 Army steel frame .44
Loading:
30gr. FFFG Goex
Remington #11
Hornady .454 144gr.Ball

Chronograched @ 858fps. = 236ft. lbs.

Please forgive the pictures, they were taken with my camera phone here at work where my dial caliper is.

unfired ball.


Hitting into5 1X6 pine planks @ 20 yards. recovered weight = 130.2gr.


recovered from 9.1" of wet news print "inside a cardboard box" @ 20 yards. recovered weight = 139.8gr.


Yes it's just a round ball but the point is they do expand, maybe not a pretty as the new Gold Dots or what not but they do expand when hit into even relatively soft media & they have been killing Game for a long time..

RE: recovered bullets
 

This one killed a deer and I had to fined it on the far side in the ground with a metal detector,it went through the off side shoulder about aninch away from the bone and was about 2 inches underground.[deer was about 50 ydsthe bullet is a 250 Gold Dot with 100gr 777-FF]
Now there are several different ideas on the subject but I go with amount of energy expended in the right place is important what goes into the ground on the far side of the animal is waste and has noeffect on the animal.

RE: recovered bullets
 

Try again

RE: recovered bullets
 

I can't do anything with pictures from this computer [:@], but you can check out my last post over in this thread. Somebody can copy it over here if you want.

Hopefully Redclubcan shed some light on this. He's probably busy hunting or something though.

http://www.huntingnet.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=2388110&mpage=5

RE: recovered bullets
 

"Now there are several different ideas on the subject but I go with amount of energy expended in the right place is important what goes into the ground on the far side of the animal is waste and has noeffect on the animal."

That bullet did it's job and that is all that matters.

RE: recovered bullets
 

Chap

Back to Semisane's 250 Expanded Gold Dot....

I would really like to disagree with your statement.... I do not believe that 250's are over-expanded and near the end of their life. The 250 is constructed differently than the 300. If you look at a 250 you wil notice it has a much deeper HP than the 300. In fact if you look at Semisane's pictures again - look carefully at the right hand picture you can see the copper dot - about 1:00 off center. When the 250 expands to fully open it does not have the length of body as the 300 does (it does not have the body length in the first place. It really looks to me likeit expanded out just about right... the petals migh be laid back a little bit more that normal but still way over .75" and I would bet the bullet still has 85/90% of it weight.

And I guess as long as I am disagreeing - I should say i disagree here also. UC's lead bullet looks really great to me of even the one Cdad posted of a 460 BS. All lead (soft lead) do not and are not designed to expand the way modern hunting bullets do. The fact is his or both conicals expanded near perfectly for a lead bullet. Pan-caking of the frontal portion of the lead bullet is normal and depending on length or weight the remaining shank looks really good. Again if you weight either one of those bullets I would bet they are over 90%

Just my thoughts and goodness I am no expert...

Here is a picture of expanded Speers and you see the same process. The 300 has more rear mass weight than the 250 does non-the-less they expanded to their max - both far from the end of their lives - neither of the two were the petals even close to coming off.

RE: recovered bullets
 

I use a real scientific approach to bullet effectiveness :D ... if when I shoot, the animal either drops in its tracks or goes no more than 30 yards before expiring- the bullet did fine. (If I cleanly miss, that bullet also did fine. ;)) In the case of the bullet I pictured, the buck dropped straight down.

I very rarely recover bullets and never make any real attempt to do so. That one just happened to be handy.

Those Gold Dots look WICKED good! Do you have any pics of XTPs recovered from similar testing? Was just wondering how they would compare to the Speers.

RE: recovered bullets
 

Let me get a little more involved here. Not because I don't believe what is being said but i've got to take sides out of personal experience. I used to shoot the 300 grain Hornady XTP over 90 grains of pyrodex RS. It shot beautifully. Very tight, tight groups, often with bullets overlapping each other. But, I couldn'tshoot and finda deer with the friggin things. From what i gathered, they wouldn't expand in thedeer. Maybe they take too long to expand, I don't know. I could find blood for 15-20 yds, then nothing. My hunting partners and i searched for 2-3 hours for each deer I shot and still nothing. I searched forums and was told to try the precision rifle dead centers. I was reluctant to shoot only a 220 grain bullet but hell, I couldn't do worse than what I had been doing. I changed to 80 grains 777 powder and the 220 grain dead center. WOW! The 1st 2 deer I shot with them fell over immediately and the 3rd (heart shot) ran about 40 yds or so straight toward me with blood spewing out of her until she collapsed and died right at the base of my tree. So, as long as the bullets expand well and hold together I think they are performing optimally. I don't really have an opinion on overexpanding but if they expand all the way to the base and hold together I think it would be fine. I was concerned about the all lead bullets but they hold together great. They expand almost down to their bases but continue to mushroom and push through the deer and cause damage that is lethal, lethal, lethal. Here are the bases of the bullets pictured in my 1st post as well as a "before" picture of the 220 grain dead center.