The use of solids for recreational sport hunting.
There was a time when the use of a solid was the preferred projectile for dangerous game hunting. This was for the most part due to the construction of all bullets during this era. Cup and core crimped together bullets were the only thing available. Plenty of Professional Hunters saw them crumble and fail to penetrate to the needed depth, or fail on bad angle shots with heavy bone or thick skin. The trend was to move towards solids that would stay intact and penetrate straight through. For many PH’s the plan was to shoot only solids, and many PH’s preferred a soft point first, followed by a solid to hit the escaping animal at any angle and provide the most penetration possible from the given cartridge. It was the best plan available at the time. The important part to take away from this, is not that the solids offered better performance, but rather they simply could be depended upon much better then the failure prone soft points manufactured back then.
This is a good plan still followed religiously by many PH’s today. Professional Hunters much like other experienced hunters know that a softpoint provides significantly more killing potential with its more explosive expansion effects on soft tissue. The softs are followed in the magazine with a solid for the insurance shots on departing game.
On thick skinned game like Elephant, Rhino, Hippo, etc. the solids are prudent as the heavy skin of these animals tends to take the steam out of softs, or simply destroy them upon impact.
Today there are some amazing projectiles available with newer and very well proven technology like Bonded core bullets that have the copper and lead core chemically bonded together to all but eliminate the separation of jacket from the core. Then there is Partitioned and bonded bullets as in the Aframe, partitioned and bonded front’s with solid copper rear sections as in the bear claws. Solid copper bullets from Barnes, and GS custom. Plus the many new bonded non partitioned bullets like the Woodleigh, and Interbonds.
There is good reason that the market is filled with high tech soft point bullets. They are the superior killer of all but the thick skinned big game. Solids have become a kind of last resort for hunting. Sure they have exceptional penetration, but completely lack the impact effect, and explosive internal damage that quality softpoints provide.
Solids can penetrate and damage significant tissue, but they lack the outright crumple effect that softs have unless part of the central nervous system is damaged. Solids today are a last resort, not usually an acceptable first choice. Defaulting to a solid is a very good choice for a bullet that might fail. What I mean by that is, any bullet made can have unusual performance at any given time. What that performance may be is, separation of jacket and core, bent like a banana, loss of rear core, complete disintegration of the projectile. Or loss of the petals in a monometal bullet design, and the default to a 2/3 weight solid projectile.
If you accept that a bullet failure will eventually happen, what default condition is it that you prefer? For me it’s the default to the solid. At least with this default, if the aim was true the penetration will go through the point of impact desired. A failure of any other type provides far too many unknowns. Speaking for myself, I fear the unknown results far more then what I do know. However this example is again a last resort “default”condition, not the desired first choice.
I wrote a story some years ago about hunting bears with handguns. During this period of my life I was the wildlife manager for Weyerhaeuser, and also guiding bear hunters. I took about 30 or so hunters a year in Both Washington and Idaho. We were killing about 40 bears a year in damage control and sport hunting. Over a 12 year period that is a lot of bears taken. I had quite a following of Policemen from the Midwest. In Idaho you could legally hunt with anything 22 centerfire or larger. So many of the officers wanted to see and experience taking a human sized animal with their carry guns. One of the most interesting turn of events during this time was how I was kind of dragged into the hype of shooting heavy hard cast bullets in my 44 magnum. I was overwhelmed by all the magazine stories about massive penetration, and the huge animals killed with these big 300 grain heavy hardcast bullets.
Over the next few years, I shot lots of bears with 300 grain Wilson Hardcast bullets at maximum power from my Ruger Redhawk. I also partnered with a little testing for Randy Garrett. Randy has been a friend of mine for probably 20 plus years now. I was shooting lots of bears with his bullets as well. I was stunned that many bears would simply hunch up for a split second and then run off as if I missed them. Some just ran away with absolutely no reaction at all! How could this be the most powerful load possible in the 44 magnum with the greatest penetration, and not just crumple these bears? After a number of bears just ran off, requiring rather long follow ups I went back to the original 240 grain hollow points I was using before these heavy hardcast bullets.
What a difference the experimentation made! The way the hollow points stunned and crumpled bears was night and day different. They did not exit at any frequency, but they had a massively different impact effect. They were clearly the better choice for smaller thin skinned big game say under 500-750 pounds. From a .44 magnum the Garrett hardcast bullets, would provide far better penetration, and do things no softpoint could dream of on the heaviest of big game. They would allow a smaller handgun like the 44 magnum to harvest the biggest of big game, JDJones has killed about everything with a 44 mag using hard cast bullets. As have a number of folks with Randys bullets and loads. It’s not always the prudent choice, to use solids when softs provide such a dramatic difference in performance. Much like my experience with the bears. They would certainly kill anything I hit with them, but it was not the crumple effect most big game and especially dangerous game hunters prefer.
I spoke with Randy about how crazy this hardcast bullet trend had become. I Said to him that I too was sucked into the thought process of shooting the most “powerful” load available in my 44 mag. Then I saw the light and returned to the 240 grain hollow points. He agreed that the hardcast bullets have their place but not for thin skinned or smaller species of big game. They did however allow non typical weapons to get the kind of penetration that was well beyond anything previously available for them.
The hard cast and solid bullets when shot from smaller cartridges can outpenetrate much bigger cartridges using soft points. This does not mean they are equal or better killers, quite the contrary. Shooting clean though game without expansion as stated in the beginning of the text is a last resort design. It’s the right direction to push lesser cartridges to another level of penetration, but at no time can they be compared to an expanding bullet from a bigger cartridge. Penetration with a blunt bullet at lower velocity tends to push organs out of the way rather then disrupt them with a permanent wound cavity (Dr. Fackler proved this on live sedated animals in a lab for then US Military) This is also one of the reasons so many Game Departments across the country mandate the use of expanding bullets for hunting. It's also why so many well respected Professional hunters do not want them used for general hunting and only allow them for Elephant, Rhino, and Hippo.
So by today’s standards with the premium bullets available I don’t care to see anyone use solids in my hunting camps for anything less then thick skinned game. Shooting clean through multiple animals in a herd is not in anyone’s best interest, nor is shooting with solids only to have the big animal run off with far less internal damage then a premium soft point would have provided.
