some good lessons learned today

[Lloyd Smale]

My best friend Al and i had a memorable but fun hunt. Learned some good lessons yesterday. Learned a guy should be trying to fix wha isnt broke.
We spent the whold day looking at bullet failures. First and probably the only good shot of the day was the wifes hog. She shot a 200 lb sow with a #1 4570 loaded with 540wfngcs that I had hollow pointed and cast out of #2. It was a one shot kill but the size of the exit hole told me that if it would have been a bad angle or a bigger animal it would never have exited.
Second animal was a 4 horned sheep that Al shot twice with HPed 470 swc out of his 500 linebaugh. It took two good hits and hardly flinched and was put down with a 450 swcgc that was soft pointed. we tested the bullets in a big chunk of peanut butter dave feeds his animals and the soft point gave about twice the penetration the hp did but a hard cast easily doubled the soft point. So then on the the next sheep. I think it either took 3 or 4 hits from Als 500 to put that one down and i know at the end he had to borrow ammo from me so i dont know wheter it was a soft point or a hp that put it down finally.
Now the buffalo. Probably an 800lb cow. First ill have to buck up and admitt to my great shooting. First shot i missed a cow clean. We went back to work in a differnt spot and i shot a cow on the trott but hit it a bit to far back. We chased it around for well over an hour trying to figure which was the wounded one to get another shot at it. At the end it was gettting toward dark and i told al and dave to just shoot if they could. Well this cow went down in a blaze of glory. The three of us cut loose on it. Dave hit it once in the shoulder with his 500 using my soft points its spun and i put one behind the shoulder on the opposite side. It took off running and Al hit it with a 75 yard off hand shot with his 44 using punch bullets. It hit it in the hump. (only bullet of the day that gave complete penetration) then i put one in the head along with Dave putting one in the head. NOT ONE of these bullets gave good pentration. All were found. All looked like neat little mushrooms and none did the job a good bullet should have. This load was 31 grains of 4227 so it was far from a mild load and it shows a guy how much of a joke energy dump in an animal was. those animals were taking hits from these big guns all day and barely flinching. All the bullet were still inside so all the energy was dump in the animal.
Ill say this and all bet Al will agree totaly. I WIL NEVER hunt anyting bigger then a small whitetail deer witha soft point or hp bullet again and even in the case of a whitetail its more of a stunt to use something other then a hard cast then an advantage as neither of us has ever had a problem with hardcast killing before.

[30hrrtt]

And then there was the buff you took with the hollow point 44 cast and got complete penetration.  Sometimes it just doesn't make sense.

[Lloyd Smale]

Dont think i havent scratched my head thinking the same thing. One guy on the cast bullet fourm came up with about the best guess. he thought that maybe because the bullets allready a 50 that its going to loose velocity like an expanded 44 because a heavy 44 probably has better sectional density. Now add expansion to that big bullet and your making quite a parachute.

[kennisondan]

Lloyd would you think that the velocity of the hollow point kept it from deforming to the point it would not peneterate straight through ? and being longer for weight went more straight and met less resistance ? just wondering about why .. why..
i wonder about the fifties and how slow with that wide a frontal section will be too slow and how light too light.. for good penetration...
do no know but want to ..
dk

[Lloyd Smale]

heres a guess dan. im no scientist or ballistics expert so its all i can do is guess. I think in the case of the .50 soft points, they expanded into perfect mushrooms and were just to dammed big to allow good penetration. the 50 hps had a huge hp cavity probably even bigger in design then the lyman devestator. They were also cast out of ww. What i think with them is the lead was soft enough that they opened imediately and shed there noses real quickly. The quick opening no doubt made them lose velocity and what was left was about a 200 grain wadcutter. These bullets were holowpointed down into about half the lenght of the bullet and that much of it was gone. The devesators are an extream hp too and i dont in a minute beleive that because this one i shot at a buffalo penetrated the next one will too. As a matter of fact id bet my gun the ohter way. I think what helped it though was that it was cast slightly harder, out of  #2 and it may have delayed expansion till the bullet cleared the hide as it did have a small enterance hole. Then about 1/3 of the bullet lenght is hped instead of 1/2 so after it lost its nose i still had a little bit better sectional density. its also a smaller bullet so its going to have less resistance. I allways thought that with a larger slug the extra weight compensated for this but i think when you get into the real big  bores you are going to need much more retained weight to insure penatration. I never was one for believing in stuff that happened but didnt make sense but ive got to say in penatration testing the .475 about allways outdid the .500 even when you stepped up the bullet weight and velocity of a 500 to get the equivelent SD.  Could be theres just some unknown (at least to me) barrier there that preventing it. I know that if you increase velocity most alloys dont hold up and if you increase weight enough to compensate you get into the the point that the 500 wont push them fast enough to be ideal without beating up yourself and your gun. I think John Linebaugh had it right (as usuall). these gun do there best work with flat nose hard cast bullets at moderate velocitys.  He allways said if you want to really wack a 1000 lb or under animal use the 500 and if you want to reallly get serious with penetration on the big stuff use the .475. Seems like every time we test a new aspect of these big guns we come right back to what John allready figured out.