I agree that this gives a baseline to see how these bullets performed in this test. I would like to think they would have similar or better performance on game...but who knows. It appears from the two bullets recovered from game, this appears to be the case.

The way my son catagorized the bullets was based on what HE decided was best to worst, based on his findings. As sabotloader pointed out...some that appeared worse in his findings, actually did exactly what they were supposed to. So I guess we have to come to our own conclusions on each one. Or better yet, lets go test some out on game and see what happens

I know I want to try out some big lead...can't wait to whop something with one of them!

That was an interesting project. If I am reading this right he chose my paper patched "moose maulers" as his top pick?
I have shot, and I have seen animals shot with these bullets and I have never found one in an animal. They plow through no matter what angle. I saw my buddy shoot a buck in the right rear hip and it exited out his front shoulder.
How did you guys like the paper patched bullets as a whole. Did they go down the rifle ok? They were sized for my gun so I wondered how they worked.
Did you use the same powder charge for all bullets? Ron

If anything I would expect better performance on game, at least from the bullets you tested that I have used on game. Though it is an interesting test and provides a good baseline, I wouldn't jump to any major conclusions from it.

For example, I have shot a fair number of deer with the 200 XTP and the 200 SST. In your son's test, they both penetrated 9.5". When shooting live deer however, I found that the 200 SST/Shockwave always out-penetrated the 200 XTP, usually by a large margin.(this is with similar powder charges and ranges)

In general, I always recovered the 200 XTP in the deer, usually under the off-side hide. With the 200 SST/Shockwave, I only every recovered one bullet, the rest being pass-thrus. The only bullet recovered was on a deer facing me head on- bullet was found in one of the rear hams after penetrating almost the entire length of the deer. So real-world results may vary....

However, thank you (and your son) again for doing this, I found it very interesting.

Yesir Ron....those bad boys were awesome! Thanks for sending them to test! They were his top performer

They fit right down the barrel fine, and other than punishing my son when he shot them (LOL) were amazing. I really liked them and personally wouldn't hesitate using them on anything I would ever hunt. We did use the same 80gr load of pyrodex every time, for all bullets.

If you (or anyone else) want me to email you the spreadsheet, shoot me your email address via pm. It has all the data in one place.

Yeah, I agree. There are alot of variables when it comes to shooting an actual hunting round at live game. My thought was at least we could see how each bullet did, and how they stacked up against each other in an apples to apples test.

We got to see how much weight they retained, and how well they expanded....which to me (in this test) was more important than penetration. Since they varied so much in size & weight, I knew penetration was gonna vary alot. The fact that several bullets expanded to over twice their size, while retaining almost all their weight was extremely impressive.

In your shockwave / xtp example...even that can be analized as to which did better. Some believe that the best a bullet can do is to penetrate 99% of the way through (stopping just under the skin) thereby using up all of its energy on the animal, vs. blowing through and still having 'unused' energy that is wasted.

I personally choose to have a passthrough...two holes is a good thing, imo.

Bottom line, it all comes down to shot placement anyhow most of the time..so the vast majority of these bullets would kill just fine most likely.

There isn't anything on this side of the world I wouldn't shoot with them.
Too bad you didn't get a chance to so a accuracy test with them. You would have been impressed. Ron

Well...he took 1st place with his project last night

He was proud...lots of the parents and teachers really liked it.

I'm not the least bit surprised WV Hunter.

Please extend the congratulations of all members of the HNI Black Powder forum to the young man. He made us all proud.

Congrats to your son! Great job!

Hooray!! From what we read here, he certainly deserved first place!