Power,
regardless of the buck's reaction to the shot, that is stellar bullet performance. You shot the animal at very close range with a high velocity round. The bullet, as evidenced by your photos and post-mortum, opened up very well and held together and gave complete penetration. I really don't see how you could ask any more of a projectile than what it gave you in this instance. You can shoot a deer straight through the heart and it will still run up to 100, or so, yards. Further evidence of good performance is the fact that, based on your photos, you can "eat right up to the hole" as the old timers say. I don't see the evidence of a bullet failure that can often cause a large loss of edible meat when a bullet fails to hold together.
HHI812,
the bonded core bullet wouldn't really be needed with hangun velocities. It wouldn't hurt to have the feature, but a bullet should be able to be designed to hold together on a close hit, yet still expand when the velocity drops. I'm currently waiting on some tooling to make 7mm bonded core bullets with a very thin jacket for this express purpose. The very thin jacket, and pure lead core, should let the bullet expand when the velocity is decreased due to longer range, yet the bonded core should hold it together no matter what range the game is encountered at. I'll be using the thinnest jackets that are available in order to facilitate expansion, but I admit the selection is rather limited at this time. My "plan B" will be to use a jacket of variable thickness to attain rapid expansion at high or low velocity, when coupled with the bonded core, will not allow it to overexpand or blow up. This is the ideal, expansion at any reasonable velocity level, but limited expansion so the penetration is not adversly affected, this is the holy grail of hunting bullets. This is why the X bullet works so well in high velocity rifles: it will open down to around 2200fps or less, but even if the petals break off, it will still cause extreme damage in the vitals and continue to penetrate completely. The bullets expands and retains it's weight at lower velocities, yet doesn't blow up at high velocity and still retains a good bit of it's weight, raising holy hell in between the entrance and exit wound either way. The only downfall with the X is that it can often be hard to make shoot well from many rifles, especially if using the heavier weight bullets for that particular caliber. The claim of "excess copper fouling" is a joke, all bullets foul and the fouling from the X is just as easy to clean out as any other. It will be interesting to see how it works, but it doesn't look like I'm going to have the dies in time to work things up for this deer season. Perhaps I'll be in luck. I've got my fingers crossed. If it comes down to having to wait for next years season, I'll start with the tapered jackets, because it is my belief that they hold the most potential for optimum performance at handgun velocities. If this is the case, I'll have time to get tooling to make the front section of the jackets drawn to a very thin thickness which will ensure expansion to a point, a tad less than two calibers would be ideal, with near full weight retention in order to not hinder penetration. Expansion without penetration is the downfall of a hunting bullet, otherwise we'd just use varmint bullets for game. If I can find a happy medium, I'll be very happy. The other upside to the tapered jackets is that they start out at benchrest tolernace before being modified. I'll be testing the bullets in a XP-100 in .284 Winchester, so I can go as fast as the fastest handgun and as slow as the 7TCU and 7-30 Waters. I know there are more powerful rounds in handguns with the easy availability of the Encore, but the big mags are certainly not for everyone. I'd rather have the performance and light weight of a contender in 7-30 Waters, not to mention the fact that it has mild recoil and muzzle blast, than a 7mag (or whatever) in a Encore. If it's fun to shoot you will, and you'll become a better shot.
