sharkbait
Well-Known Member
Very true! I was comparing to ppu soft point for the swede at £29 per box 100 heads compared to the more expensive heads you quote above
Tim Pilbeam Copper Bullet Test Data
- Thread starter NigelM
- Start date
sharkbait
Well-Known Member
I think with me when I do make the switch! The zeroing and range work will be kept to a minimum to keep the cost down
samh6
Well-Known Member
I watched the video, I saw the results and thought "excellent", I'll go get some to try...... and there be the biggest problem. Most of the test ammunition are not commonly available and going by the response by the local mom & pop dealers around me they don't seem motivated to stock them leaving us..... where?
A quick google only shows one dealer in the UK stocking Geco Zero, down in Devon, a 4 hour journey away.... great.
A quick google only shows one dealer in the UK stocking Geco Zero, down in Devon, a 4 hour journey away.... great.
Leec6.5
Well-Known Member
Can’t eat paper, that’s why i shoot it as little as possibleI think with me when I do make the switch! The zeroing and range work will be kept to a minimum to keep the cost down
sharkbait
Well-Known Member
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Interesting thread, in particular comparing the early lead bullet data with that of Tim Pilbeam. My reading of both, combined with my own experience and that of others who I know and speak with is that there is really not any real difference between lead and non lead bullets.
There are difference's between brands, calibres and bullet weights -that can all be debated add infinitum
And there are differences between deer and how it reacts to a bullet and another deer and how it reacts to a bullet.
My take home from all of the above is that if you put a bullet designed to expand well into the vital parts of the vast majority of deer it will die very quickly. But there will be the odd exception - probably mostly caused by operator error, or deer moving as the shot breaks.
Thinking about the occasional odd shot deflection - is this caused by the bullet causing the deer to spin when it hits the nearside and the deer is spinning as the bullet moves through the carcass. Given the momentum of a bullet it will in a straight line, but if the deer is spinning it will look as if it has been deflected?
There are difference's between brands, calibres and bullet weights -that can all be debated add infinitum
And there are differences between deer and how it reacts to a bullet and another deer and how it reacts to a bullet.
My take home from all of the above is that if you put a bullet designed to expand well into the vital parts of the vast majority of deer it will die very quickly. But there will be the odd exception - probably mostly caused by operator error, or deer moving as the shot breaks.
Thinking about the occasional odd shot deflection - is this caused by the bullet causing the deer to spin when it hits the nearside and the deer is spinning as the bullet moves through the carcass. Given the momentum of a bullet it will in a straight line, but if the deer is spinning it will look as if it has been deflected?
springbok787
Well-Known Member
I have decided to do a small personal trial over the next 12 months. I have purchased a years worth of copper .308 and I intend on starting with roe bucks now before moving into fallow bucks in August and then reds and boar after that. Come November and the doe season I might push the ranges a bit but up till then I will limit stuff to 150 yards. All will be chest shot from the same rifle and the same batch of ammo. If all goes well by this time next year I will have a sample size of 50 ish to review, shot reaction, run distance, meat damage etc.
It won’t be scientific because the animals will be uncooperative no doubt.
Obviously if things go wrong or start to look bad I will stop and rethink.
Happy to share results and collaborate with others along the way. Slow start to the year so far due to work but the first sample was taken this morning. Hopefully I won’t be reporting back in 12 months with a sample of just 3 deer!
It won’t be scientific because the animals will be uncooperative no doubt.
Obviously if things go wrong or start to look bad I will stop and rethink.
Happy to share results and collaborate with others along the way. Slow start to the year so far due to work but the first sample was taken this morning. Hopefully I won’t be reporting back in 12 months with a sample of just 3 deer!
Good post with some straightforward, objective assessment of what can happen in different situations. The pencilling issue mirrors the experience of our testers exactly. I thought the comment about the park shooters was very interesting, specifically the bit about those that are engaged to cull by head shooting not discussing it on this forum. Those of us that by necessity shoot at much longer ranges than the typical recreational UK stalker get lambasted with sanctimonious judgement all too often, in much the same way as the head shooters. At the end of the day, this type of judgement only results in an incomplete picture of the reality of a lead ban - there are parts of the overall spectrum that are simply not well served by many copper bullet designs.Many thanks for your PM Nigel
The time taken to collate this data is admirable & interesting and it's great to see people trying to better interpret it.
Ultimately lead and lead free bullets can do weird and wonderful things, turn on a rib, give up energy quickly and not exit one day and pencil through the next.
A frangible V-max generally behaves very differently (the vast majority of the time) to a bonded bullet such as an accubond, the same can be said of copper a TTSX behaves differently to the more frangible lead free bullets.
I've shot somewhere between 60-80 beasts with lead free and a few 100 with lead, many friends and colleagues have shot well over 1000 each lead free.
In our experience there is a clear correlation with pencilling with some (most) lead free designs, especially when you are lucky/ unlucky enough to enter the chest between ribs without clipping shoulder cartilage / bone or rib bone. Even when bonded bullets do this they still tend to expand reliably in my experience and have recovered quite a few from red and fallow shot at 300m+ (the Nielsen is the one notable exception)
The other correlation is turning in the body, specifically Barnes.
The final thing little mentioned on here is head shooting with lead free. Those that may head shoot frequently in parks will generally opt for a highly frangible light bullet and may not want it to go super fast as reduced recoil can allow you to quickly dispatch several from the herd as quickly as possible. Most people that work in parks are sensible enough to stay off this forum, or at least not comment. There is no doubt that the less frangible lead free bullets have been known to clip the skull and result in a highly mobile injured deer where as a frangible lead bullet would have resulted in a dead deer. 2 people have also told me that they have found the more reliably expanding nielsons can inure other deer in the herd when head shooting with the petals & base ending up in other animals where a frangible lead bullet would have disintegrated into tiny fragments as it clipped the skull.
I think that we will learn allot more about preferences of lead free bullets as more and more people use them. Just like lead their designs will be marmite depending on your application & preference.
This data set is very small, and if you consider averages a few that dropped on the spot would hide the bigger picture of a few doing 100m or more.
One of my best stalking mates is home loading fox 30cal bullets and the first roe he shot slipped between the ribs, did 300m, led up in a hedge and was dispatched with a head shot a short while later. The next 10 have dropped within 3m. These type of runners might only be 1 in 100 but with an SST. As it goes he'd rather have the odd one run than mash up a carcass with SST's! Each to their own.
My hound is voting for solids followed by ttsxbut he's not teh most ethical of stalkers lol
I've taken 46 deer with the Nielson 6.5 120gr at 2900fps (ish), 6 neck shot the other 40 chest from MJK to Fallow and none have made it 30m (yet) with most falling within 5m. Meat damage is minimal akin to that of the bonded lead bullets I used to use. I am yet to puncture the gut despite taking one MJK facing almost strait at me through the chest (quartering ever so slightly)
I stopped using barnes TTSX after the first few animals, they do seem to like to be going fast to expand reliably resulting in massive blood run / bruising and then still pencil through too often for my liking, foxes in particular seem to run and run where even a bonded bullet would see them do 50-80m max in my experience.
For chest shooting UK deer I couldn't recommend the nielson's highly enough and for head shooting park deer or people that want something more frangible Yew tree bullets would be my recommendation the tips break up lovely and they do not need to be pushed too fast. And as soon as they are available in 6.5 (currently 6mm only) I will try the Yew tree out for at least 50 chest shot beasts but is suspect the damage to shoulders may be more than I personally like which will be a bonus to others.
Sadly neither of my recommendations are in factory, this appears to be the biggest problem IMO with lead free, factory choice is limited and may not run well in your rifle or deliver the terminal ballistics you desire
What Nigel is proposing to test next - longer range expansion performance - is the part that we’re interested in. The collective experience with Barnes TTSX and LRX in our little community is that point of impact is far more critical to the outcome than the various lead core bullets we use, particularly the soft, non-bonded, thin jacketed types we typically prefer.
In simplistic terms, the likelihood of a long runner is far higher when the animal is shot only in the lungs, with the behind the shoulder, upper lung shot a real problem at the typical NZ open hill country ranges.
It is interesting that one of the boutique copper bullet manufacturers was adamant that any kind of fragmenting copper bullet design is wholly inferior to his 98% weight retaining long range bullet design. And yet every study of terminal ballistics at longer range I can think of clearly identifies weight shedding and fragmentation as a critical component of clean and effective killing.
I firmly believe that this is the central issue to copper bullet design - how to make a non-lead bullet that is as forgiving of shot placement as a frangible lead bullet. There are a several distinctly different streams of design theory in the market now - non-segmented swaged homogenous, non-segmented lathed homogenous, segmented lathed homogeneous, plunger activated bi-metallic, compressed powdered core bi-metallic... And numerous different opinions on tip design, from cavernous hollow-points on short ogives, to very small meplats at the end of a very long ogive, plastic tips, bronze tips... what’s next?
At some point someone somewhere is going to find the perfect design that caters for a broader range of applications than the offerings we currently have, at a price point that doesn’t feel as usurious as it does now. That person and the company that backs them, needs to be a lot more open-minded and a lot less dogmatic than some of the propeller heads that are currently involved in this segment of the bullet market, particularly those that have a lot of personal skin in the game.
Heym SR20
Well-Known Member
Don’t disagree with anything that you say. But lead jacketed bullet technology has had a 130 odd years to perfect things. One of the biggest challenges has always been bullet failure of one sort or another. Take the basic cup and core bullet - works really at impact velocities of 2000 to 2,500 fps. Hence bonded core and partition bullets that hold up better at higher velocities. And you have the SST / ELDX styles that work well down range, but tend to over expand at closer ranges. And the steel jacketed solid was mainstay of Dangerous Game hunters, and in smaller calibres still allowed Elephants to be taken.
The developers of non-toxic bullets are still in the early stages of development. The initial monolithics were to give a bullet that penetrated well and allowed big game to be taken with reasonably small calibres, but they would open up to give a decent wound channel.
Of the current crop of non- toxic bullets there seems a pretty good choice especially if you are looking to shoot under 250. And that’s were 90% plus of deer are shot.
There already some fragmenting designs - such as the RWS Evo Green that seems to expand / fragment well at lower velocities, but in a long slippery bullet - so seems to be more ideal for longer range use than say a solid brass or copper bullet.
In time we will get to know which bullets work best on which animals and in which environments.
This has been a pretty easy question to answer for last 50,60,70 or even 100 years, and I suspect in five years time we will all know obvious bullets and cartridges to use for long range mountain hunting, for general all round use, for short distance woodland or for tough wild boar, plains game and dangerous game.
It will be a change, for most not much of a change, other than relearning trajectories, holdovers and clicks. For a few, it may mean a new rifle in a different calibre. But I doubt the move to non toxic will have anything like the impact of smokeless powder, when in the 1880’s cordite effectively made all black powder rifles, especially the big bores pretty obsolete overnight.
We went from 22 long rifle range and trajectory - and if you wanted more power just move up from 40gn to 400, 500, 600 or even 1,000 grain bullets to rifles with ballistics that haven’t really changed to the modern day in the space of less than ten years.
Loler UK
Well-Known Member
Thank you for posting, you are quite right there are too many people that are wedded to one thing or another regardless of application.
I'm not sure that heavy metal powders are ideal in terms of entering the food chain. But who knows. To be fair there's very little if any evidence that lead rifle ammo is causing significant harm new lead free ammo has the potential to be worse as well as better.
Most recreational stalkers and 'extended range' (i hate this term but am not sure of a better alternative) cullers will be aiming for the centre of the chest cavity which gives the largest margin for error but missing any bone and putting them through only the lungs with less frangible bullets certainly can mean longer runners, those that expand little in this soft tissue and thin hide even more so. There are plenty of humans that have had one or both lungs punctured, some with bullets and lived to tell the tale!
Some very experienced full time managers / contractors also swear by switching to a larger diameter calibre to maximise the wound tract with most lead free designs. A small increase in diameter makes for a much larger area. An 18" pizza is more than twice as big as a 12" pizza, that's before we take account of expansion. Another nail in the coffin of the .243 (and perhaps the creedmore) The lady in the pilbeam video made the interesting point that she went heavier and slower and got good results, variations for .338, 9.3mm and .375 anyone?
Terminal ballistics are about as complicated and unpredictable as it gets, in the USA a fatal accident occurred when a bullet ricocheted of a polystyrene ceiling tile then penetrated a concrete block killing a boy sat on the other side of it. Bullets do weird things and most of the people I respect the opinion & experience of are critical of many lead free designs and more crucially their results for their given application.
When I spoke to Richard at yew tree what impressed me most is that he had a clear aim and was honest what would be sacrificed / compromised / did not concern him given the desired application. Perhaps Barnes did the same? Perhaps their bullets were never meant to serve the applications of their critics?
What I think most concerns me is that some of these individuals (potentially with skin in the game) are doing is compromising the welfare of our quarry with bold over egged statements and assurances.
The vast majority of recreational stalkers will not, don't want to, and never should shoot deer at 'extended' range, therefore BC and low impact velocity will be of little concern, park shooters that must head shoot are equally unlikely to have a problem with BC. Some rec stalkers want a deer to bang flop, others want maximum meat yield.
All that said why do I see so many people obsessed with BC?
Very few people cull (or should) at extended range and those that do are generally accurately range finding and dialling or 'milling' with a ffp reticule so flat trajectory is not essential, but can be desirable when shooting multiple at range in quick succession and is nice in case you ping something a tad in front or behind the target with the laser. Despite being very few people, some of these people account for allot of deer as do park shooters.
Abroad ammo sales are a different animal and we shooting thin skinned deer here in the UK are a very small market, this is probably the crux of our dilemma.
For those that want a frangible lead free bullet similar in terminal ballistics to an SST please support a UK manufacturer and at least give them a try: Yew Tree Fieldsports
If high BC gives you fire in your trousers ask yourself if it's really needed for your application? if it is your choices may be limited
Interestingly a master gunsmith I know has been working on modifying barrel design to optimise grouping of lead free bullets (and I don't mean with twist rates) not the most affordable of ways to go lead free and a shocking reflection on those bullet manufacturers that have designed finickity bullet / ammo but an interesting development all the same.
Shootgun
Well-Known Member
As i said many times, i'm using exclusively 130 grains Barnes TSX and 110 grains Barnes TTSX in my .270 , (factory ammo i might add) for the past 7 years or so.
I have shot in excess of 300 deer with Barnes bullets and i only lost one deer last year, due to the shot placement.
Muntjac and roe they drop on the spot almost 100%, fallow never run more than 20-30 yards, when chest shot.
Don't expect the bullet to do everything for you though, you need to put it in the right spot .
I have shot in excess of 300 deer with Barnes bullets and i only lost one deer last year, due to the shot placement.
Muntjac and roe they drop on the spot almost 100%, fallow never run more than 20-30 yards, when chest shot.
Don't expect the bullet to do everything for you though, you need to put it in the right spot .
The Wiltshire shooting centre have .308 in stock
Foxyboy43
Well-Known Member
“All that said why do I see so many people obsessed with BC?”
A very interesting observation. I think this is inevitable nowadays given the hype and marketing that surrounds bullets. Add to the mix the average shooter’s common and understandable desire to “hit the bullseye every time“ and you have the manufacturer’s dream. To my simple mind and based on throwing lead at deer and targets over many years BC has no relevance to the UK deer shooter whatsoever - rather it belongs, rightly, in the long-range target shooting world where any improvement/advantage, however small, can make the difference.
Sooo for deerstalkers in the UK BC might be a mildly interesting detail on the side of a box but beyond that - forget it!
A very interesting observation. I think this is inevitable nowadays given the hype and marketing that surrounds bullets. Add to the mix the average shooter’s common and understandable desire to “hit the bullseye every time“ and you have the manufacturer’s dream. To my simple mind and based on throwing lead at deer and targets over many years BC has no relevance to the UK deer shooter whatsoever - rather it belongs, rightly, in the long-range target shooting world where any improvement/advantage, however small, can make the difference.
Sooo for deerstalkers in the UK BC might be a mildly interesting detail on the side of a box but beyond that - forget it!
Cobblers.
Foxyboy43
Well-Known Member
Well that’s nice and must have required a lot of thought for such a detailed, well considered response, so eloquently put.
Let me explain where I come from on this - first off you will notice that I made it clear that it was my opinion and in the context of live quarry at average UK distances.
I shoot live quarry in the main and my original post made that clear; to do this I home-load for my .308, 6.5x55 and a .222 and have done for very many years. All of these have performed to very acceptable standards in terms of accuracy and required power out to 300 yards for the targeted quarry (though a shot at that distance is very much the exception - rather sub-200 would be the norm). For each of them I developed a “pet load” with a particular hunting bullet and have stuck with them since deciding (and proving) that they provided all I needed - without recourse to BC or any such detail, indeed I suspect that “BC” was not even in live quarry shooter’s common parlance it was so long ago!
Now call me old-fashioned but if I find through experimentation a combination of load and bullet that does all I ask of it why would I wish or need to know the BC? If someone can prove to me that an extremely efficient bullet in terms of BC will utterly transform my live quarry shooting success rate then I will stand corrected but if my bottom-line requirement is to regularly hit a 4” target (anywhere in that 4” target) at a hundred yards and I stick with the same proven recipe, what noticeable advantage will I really find by switching to a bullet with a higher BC? It matters not a jot to me that a bullet with a better BC (I assume) flies faster, truer and with more “authority” - if my humble efforts do the biz to my particular standards.
Helmet on, chin strap fastened and hunkered down……
Well that’s nice and must have required a lot of thought for such a detailed, well considered response, so eloquently put.
Let me explain where I come from on this - first off you will notice that I made it clear that it was my opinion and in the context of live quarry at average UK distances.
I shoot live quarry in the main and my original post made that clear; to do this I home-load for my .308, 6.5x55 and a .222 and have done for very many years. All of these have performed to very acceptable standards in terms of accuracy and required power out to 300 yards for the targeted quarry (though a shot at that distance is very much the exception - rather sub-200 would be the norm). For each of them I developed a “pet load” with a particular hunting bullet and have stuck with them since deciding (and proving) that they provided all I needed - without recourse to BC or any such detail, indeed I suspect that “BC” was not even in live quarry shooter’s common parlance it was so long ago!
Now call me old-fashioned but if I find through experimentation a combination of load and bullet that does all I ask of it why would I wish or need to know the BC? If someone can prove to me that an extremely efficient bullet in terms of BC will utterly transform my live quarry shooting success rate then I will stand corrected but if my bottom-line requirement is to regularly hit a 4” target (anywhere in that 4” target) at a hundred yards and I stick with the same proven recipe, what noticeable advantage will I really find by switching to a bullet with a higher BC? It matters not a jot to me that a bullet with a better BC (I assume) flies faster, truer and with more “authority” - if my humble efforts do the biz to my particular standards.
Helmet on, chin strap fastened and hunkered down……
OK Boomer
The main difference here is the pressure the deer sector is under isnt from a “lead ban”, it is from a food standards perspective.
Any metal at all in a carcase is a negative.
The USP of the main designs in the monolthic sector is maintaining the original mass.
I agree with many of the points but people often assume non lead bullet design is some kind of voodoo.
The principles are identical.
The user requirements are no different.
The only significant aspect is the lack of frangibility in a maintained mass monolithic does not allow the great margin of error for poor placement that comes with a semi frangible lead core, jacketed “expanding” round that may lose as much as 60% of its mass as it passes through.
There are lead bullets in some calibre/cartridges that will not perform at 40m and at 400m with equal efficacy.
Or even 40 and 300m without some significant anomalies coming out with volume data.
A VMax,
A Swift Scirocco
An SST/ELD-x
A Partition
An Accubond
All have reported anomalies with varying range and terminal velocity.
Lack of penetration from frangible rounds at very high or very low terminal velocity.
Lack of expansion with harder, bonded, protected point bullets on small game or at lower terminal velocity.
We put up with excessive carcase damage in lieu of quick death.
I have tried most of the market and many that are not on the market.
Those monolithics that work well in standard rifles and standard scenario situations in the UK (for this we generally regard the 300m range limit and takeninto consideration the skin thickness and frame size of UK species) do exist.
As you push the terminal velocities down and or the ranges up you need to address this with the bullet selection.
That is no different to a lead bullet.
But a larger data set with tighter set of parameters is always going to benefit the users when it comes to selecting a bullet for their application.
I have been field testing various calibre/cartridge and bullet weight combinations on UK species for the best part of 8 years.
Of course there are anomalies in any volume data set.
The change in shot placement of a monolithic into the high shoulder negates a huge amount of these.
It doesn’t reduce the shot opportunity or the shot margin for error.
The same shot with a semi frangible lead bullet is very messy as the combination of secondary would channel from lead/copper fragments and bone creates a shotgun pattern.
Recently I have been exploring longer range terminal effect of both lead and non lead.
I firmly believe that the efficacy of some lead bullets at ranges beyond 400m is also significantly reduced and dramatically increases the risk of runners.
The margin for error of poor shot placement is significantly reduced.
ELD-M that work exceptionally well in 6.5-30cal short action cartridges inside 350m start pencilling at ranges beyond that with the lung shot you describe above.
ELD-X in 6.5-30cal short action cartridges produce significant carcase loss and excessive damage when used inside 75m but work exceptionally well with minimal secondary wound channel damage when up around the 350+m range.
As they were designed to.
Pushing those ranges above 4-500m and the anomaly rate increases again.
You have merely extended the effective range by changing bullet.
The obvious answer is to drive heavier bullets faster. Of any description, lead or non lead.
I use a 200gr 30cal ELD-X specifically in applications that are likely to be 300m+
Some will say that is overkill.
Its not.
Its building a margin of error into the bullet choice.
As I proved the other day when I spectacularly ****ed up at 315m when I didnt realise i had a MIL of windage dialled
As it happened the deer was found and dispatched.
I have no doubt that same shot with my 308 136gr non lead bullet doing 2925 would have seen the deer lost and die in agony.
I am not sure there is a non magnum non lead bullet that will work effectively to expand and kill at short (sub 200m) and extended ranges (300-600m) without relying on a very very small margin of shot placement error.
I will be using 200gr 30cal monolithic in the field from next month.
They require a faster twist but I have a new 1:8” barrelled 300 Norma thanks to Ronin.
They will get the velocity i need and be likely still have a terminal velocity of over 2900fs at 400-500m due to the low friction design.
None of this matters to 90+% of the applications in the UK
Choose one that is available, accurate and works for your quarry choice
There are plenty out there now.
Just don’t discount them on 10 animals shot.
Get some data or find ones that have some.
Very interesting post @Edinburgh Rifles. A lot of stuff to agree with and some stuff not so much.
The flipside to that is that the same bullet design in heavy .30 cal design (200, 212, 220gr) is incredibly effective at much lower impact velocities, tested down to sub 1,600fps impacts from carbine bush rifles. Gaping great big exit holes.
The great thing about this subject is there is a lot of innovation happening behind the scenes to close the gaps in copper bullet performance, cost and availability. You can guarantee someone is going to get it right at some point soon, and the rest will follow. Much of it will depend upon some of the owner/designers that have been around for awhile coming to terms with the competition and realising they need to continue innovating to stay relevant. It’s inevitable there will be some casualties along the way. All very interesting and lots to look forward to.
This statement brings the @Virtus Precision UK and @Yew Tree Fieldsports fragmenting designs squarely into focus. Is some copper in the carcass really a serious issue? Is this being communicated anywhere important, or a personal opinion?
This is the critical issue for me because all the experience we have gathered to date clearly demonstrates that non-fragmenting, low expansion copper bullets are very poor killers at the ranges we must shoot due to our topography and control obligations.
I’ve shot an awful lot of deer and goats at very very close range with the ELD-X, both 6.5mm and .308, and not one of them has ever taken more than a step! Instant lights out! In saying that I can’t think of a single case where the bullet has exited in those circumstances. Same with the Speer BTSP, ELD-M, A-Max, GameKing. All of these bullets perform equally well at 400m. I use the Speer BTSP as an all purpose bullet in my .308 and have absolute confidence that anything that gets hit by this bullet inside 400m is going to die very quickly.
There seems to be a reluctance amongst a fair proportion of deer stalkers to change their shot placement from the traditional crease / heart shot to the shoulder, primarily for carcass quality considerations. Consequently we read stories of long runners and lost deer with copper bullets. What we have found with Barnes bullets (TSX, TTSX, LRX) on red deer is anything behind the shoulder (broadside) is a high risk of a long runner or lost deer; it’s vital to get full damage in the front of the chest cavity either by a broadside shoulder shot, or a raking shot that passes through the thorax sufficiently well forward. But our favoured quartering away shot is high risk with Barnes at the ranges we are used to shooting, they seemed to be prone to deflection sharply away from the line of flight, which isn’t something I encounter with soft lead bullets.
I’ve never, ever experienced anything other than gaping great big exit wounds with ELD-M or it’s immediate predecessor the A-Max. These bullets are a highly favoured long-range hunting bullet. So I’m not sure what we’re doing different but I can’t agree with this, even rear lung shots are dramatically injurious.
I shoot 143gr ELD-X in 6.5mm at 2,800fps routinely out to 500m. I don’t see anomalies at that range. What I see is reliable terminal performance and a remarkably high percentage of bang flops. The anomalies start at around 650m on a calm day where you can be reasonably sure wind isn’t a factor. So in impact velocity terms, sub 2,000fps. That is specifically with the 6.5 mm.
The flipside to that is that the same bullet design in heavy .30 cal design (200, 212, 220gr) is incredibly effective at much lower impact velocities, tested down to sub 1,600fps impacts from carbine bush rifles. Gaping great big exit holes.
Can’t argue with that logic. But the threshold at which I feel it is necessary for me in my conditions is over double yours. I’m only interested in magnum cartridges for proper long-range shooting, so 600m++. Hence the use of various options available… 28 Nosler, .300 WSM being the current options.
Up until recently I would’ve wholeheartedly agreed with you. All the evidence produced so far for non-lead bullets that claim to be effective at “very long range”, as one of them is named, has been entirely unconvincing. But now we have other options starting to germinate and I think it is only a matter of time before we have fragmenting non-lead bullets with high ballistic coefficient that have the potential to be extremely effective killers at all ranges. This I am sure it will be work in progress over the next year.
Agreed, but it matters an awful lot to the remainder, who take this kind of thing very seriously.
The great thing about this subject is there is a lot of innovation happening behind the scenes to close the gaps in copper bullet performance, cost and availability. You can guarantee someone is going to get it right at some point soon, and the rest will follow. Much of it will depend upon some of the owner/designers that have been around for awhile coming to terms with the competition and realising they need to continue innovating to stay relevant. It’s inevitable there will be some casualties along the way. All very interesting and lots to look forward to.
I had a long conversation with Jorgen Nielsen the other day, who makes the Nielsen solids. He said exactly that.
The problem, he said, it to make a solid bullet flexible enough that you do not have to rely on a good shoulder shot to break up the projectile. To that end, he puts a small copper 'tip' in the front of the projectile to help break up the bullet mechanically.
He tests his projectiles with a 20mm thick layer of ballistic gelatin with foam behind it, to simulate a lung shot, with a goal that the projectile should break up within that 20mm with 'normal' projectile terminal velocities. Most other solid projectiles (he says, and he has done more testing than most) will not pass this test and will 'pencil' through. One exception, interestingly, was the new Lapua Naturalis projectiles which, he says, do work effectively in these circumstances.
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