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Post by cedarthicket on Dec 24, 2009 19:08:52 GMT -5
Two days after muzzle loading season ended I shot an adult doe with my TC Thunderhawk rifle. Before you report me to the DNR, this was to put down a severely injured deer hit by a van on a local county road. The sheriff’s deputy authorized me to do the job. The rifle had been loaded for most of muzzleloading season. So this was a good opportunity to do that chore, look at bullet performance, and donate the deer to a family that would appreciate the meat. The rifle was loaded with 100 grains of GOI FFFG black powder (the real thing). The bullet was a 245 grain WFN (wide flat nose) gas-checked bullet enclosed in a green Hornady sabot. I had purchased the box of bullets from Montana Bullet Works. Bullets are heat treated to a Brinell hardness number of about 22. These bullets are nice for hunting big game for several good reasons. They are gas-checked and relatively hard to work well without leading the bore at rifle velocities of 1500 to 2000 feet per second. They also have a very wide flat nose to assure good tissue destruction even without much expansion. They are hard enough to not go to pieces upon impact at rifle velocities. When properly crimped in the crimping groove there is no semiwadcutter type lip just ahead of the brass case mouth to snag on the entrance to the chamber of lever action rifles. The deer was lying down and facing me (actually somewhat quartering toward me) at a distance of about 20 feet. The bullet entered the skull just above the left eye and exited near the base of the right ear. It then entered the very wet topsoil in the road ditch that was kept mown by the person who owned the front yard next to the ditch. The bullet still had considerable velocity as it created a two inch wide cavity as it entered the wet, almost muddy soil. It penetrated a total of 15 to 16 inches of soil. The picture shows the bullet performed well under the conditions of relatively high velocity (need to chronograph) and striking a considerable amount of bone. I look forward to 2010 and using this bullet in my Marlin M1894 in .44 Magnum as well as my TC. It will be interesting to see how the bullet performs with the more typical broadside shots through the rib cage at typical hunting distances. Unless a front leg bone is also hit I suspect the bullet will exit the deer on the far side, but there should be a very good blood trail. Attachments:
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Post by jkd on Dec 24, 2009 19:25:55 GMT -5
Cedar - no offense intended, as it sounds like you know what you're doing, but why FFFG in a rifle? It was my understanding that FFFG was only for smaller pistol loads, and use in rifles with larger loads can lead to overpressure and exploding guns... may be a typo?
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Post by cedarthicket on Dec 24, 2009 21:05:27 GMT -5
No offense taken. According to my deer and turkey hunting diary I killed my first deer with a custom made .50 caliber Hawken style rifle on November 23, 1966 at a special hunt for archery and ML license holders at Camp Atterbury. The load was 80 grains of Dupont FFFG, a .012 cotton twill patch, and a .500 round ball in a Douglas 1 in 66 (I think) inch twist barrel. The 6-point buck was hit broadside at about 45 yards. The 188 grain round ball broke a rib going in and coming out the other side. I shot competitively in local, state, and national matches (NMLRA at Friendship, Indiana) from about 1965 to about 1980. I have practically always used FFFG black powder in my .45 and .50 caliber rifles and I have chronographed lots of loads and rifles. In fact, I wrote a small book on ballistics and the muzzle loading rifle in 1974. I did not have pressure testing equipment but I made a pretty thorough search of the literature at the time. The book was published by the NMLRA and has long been out of print.
Regarding FFFG black powder, it is very suitable and practical to use in rifles as well as pistols. ROUGHLY speaking, you can get approximately the same velocity and pressure with 20 percent less black powder if you are using FFFG versus FFG. And, the bore is somewhat less fouled. I know a lot of people nowadays use the black powder substitutes. I will readily grant that some of them do foul less than the real thing. However, many of them are noticeably harder to ignite than black powder, enough so that sometimes you will get a very slight hang fire even in a clean gun. Why do you think Pyrodex pellets were (maybe still are) coated with real black powder? And ignition systems were developed to use the "hotter" musket caps and even modern shotshell primers. In over 40 years of deer hunting with ML rifles I have never had a miss fire or hang fire while hunting with black powder. The key is to make sure the bore, breech, nipple, threads, etc. are clean, dry, and completely free of all oil (use dry patches and a degreaser) before it is loaded for hunting. And, DO NOT fire a cap or two before loading. You will only be putting water absorbing residue into the worst possible place and may block or partially block the flash channel from the primer or cap to the powder charge. But I digress. Sorry.
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Post by Dan Reeves on Dec 25, 2009 0:55:27 GMT -5
I've been shooting triple F in my fifity for over 25 years, 70 grains pushing a round ball.
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Post by dbd870 on Dec 25, 2009 7:33:23 GMT -5
FFFg is the normal powder for smaller bore rifles as well.
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Post by omegahunter on Dec 25, 2009 10:35:06 GMT -5
Back to the bullet performance, I bet that will break at least one leg and exit if not both unless your shot is a long one. I have only been able to recover one bullet from a deer's body. That was a 270 grain GoldDot shot from a T/C Black Diamond at a distance of about 70 yards. The bullet hit high in the on-side shoulder breaking it, angled up THROUGH the spine and was found snuggled up just under the hide on the off-side upper back.
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Post by indianahick on Dec 25, 2009 13:31:46 GMT -5
Omega. I too had a bullet do exactly that same thing. Only I was using 90 grms. of fffg and I believe a Hornaday bullet. Shot the deer and looked around to see where it had gone, looking past the smoke to the left. Never seen it. After the smoke cleared enough I looked at where I had shot the deer and there it lay. Watched the ears twitch once and then fall flat. Climbed down and went over to examine it. One hole in the left shoulder. No exit hole. While field dressing found no entrance into the heart/lung cavity. Heart/lungs were perfect. Upon skinning to take to my then processor. the bullet fell out of the right side from under the skin. I laughingly said that the deer died from a heart attack. After finishing skinning and under further examination realized that the bullet had traveled up and then thru the spine, dropping and killing the deer on the spot. I still have that bullet someplace. Quite a keep sake. At least to me.
Oh yes I started using ffg but was not at all happy with the performance. Since fffg said that it was usable I switched to it and liked the higher performance. I believe that the performance was because of the smaller more uniform size of the black powder.
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Post by jabba on Dec 25, 2009 13:36:02 GMT -5
When it comes to ML bullets... I like exit wounds. I shoot a 450 grain flat nose solid in a .50/.54 sabot. I have never not had one exit. I'll have to check the log to see how many deer have perished to it... but my GUESS is 25 or so. I used to shoot a 600 grain solid, and I recovered ONE of those. I shot a buck at about 80 yeards... and the bullet tracked right down it's spine for about 30" breaking 8 vertibrae in it's path. That's a fun one to have too.
Jabba
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Post by cedarthicket on Dec 25, 2009 15:12:52 GMT -5
Omegahunter, you are probably right regarding the penetration. On nearly all pass through shots the bullet is never recovered. However, on two deer over the years I have been so lucky. One was a 12 gauge slug that hit a tree (and bounced off!) a few feet behind the deer and the other was a heavy .50 caliber Powerbelt (?) hollow point that hit a few small saplings, the deer’s neck (no vertebrae), and stopped in an old stump. The Powerbelt is very soft lead with very thin copper plating. The whole front end of the bullet forward of the bottom of the hollow point “hole” was completely missing.
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Post by cedarthicket on Dec 25, 2009 16:03:13 GMT -5
Jabba, I too prefer an exit hole where both lungs have been penetrated, although this is not always possible. The ideal situation tends to give faster external bleeding for better, and hopefully shorter, blood trails to where the deer has expired. In most cases we want a bullet that expands somewhat, or otherwise assures good tissue destruction, such as with large diameter bullets having a wide flat nose or a semiwadcutter shape. Of course, when it comes to thicker jacketed bullets you need enough velocity to get the soft point or hollow point to expand, but not so much that it goes to pieces or otherwise fails to give adequate penetration to (and ideally through) the vital zone.
The whole field of terminal ballistics (bullet performance) is very interesting to me. There is much that is not well known and much that is yet to be discovered. We are all subject to likes, dislikes, advertising hype, testimonials, experience of “professionals” and old timers, and often very limited anecdotal evidence that can often be misleading. I do not consider myself an expert, but I try to learn from the experiences of others as well as my own observations. After a while a few basic principles, or ideals, emerge. This is not to say that these principles or ideals can not still be better defined. No one will ever “know it all.”
Life is a journey with a multitude of opportunities to greatly increase our knowledge. Thanks for sharing your experiences and letting me share some of mine. And, thank you Woody for this great web site.
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Post by jabba on Dec 25, 2009 17:01:07 GMT -5
One of the things that Ithink makes my bullets work, and it's according to the bullet MFR, a custom bullet outfit out of Canada, is that they are swaged, NOT cast, and pure lead, which makes them VERY soft. They deform a lot, and still dump a lot of energy into the deer. Most of the deer I have killed with them, drop on the spot, even with a double lung shot. Not all... as BIG deer tend to be a lot tougher than smaller deer. But I have quite a few, double lung, no spine shots, that have dropped deer where they stood.
I'd rather follow a good blood trail for 100 yeards than a crappy one for 50. Especially in the thick stuff I hunt.
Jabba
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Post by Squealy on Dec 25, 2009 21:17:21 GMT -5
Before I switched to the Darkside (Savage M/L) I shot a 320 grain .45/50 cal in a Kieth nose solid. I shot a dozen or so deer with that bullet and LESS than 100 yards TOTAL recovery. That bullet out of the Knight T-Bolt with 110 grains of 777 had AWEsOME preformance. I never recovered a bullet, ALWAYS pass throughs...
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Post by cedarthicket on Dec 25, 2009 22:05:58 GMT -5
Jabba, I too have had excellent results with heavy, large diameter soft lead bullets. In 1989 I killed a mature cow elk at a distance of 90 yards. The rifle was a custom .58 caliber loaded with a 565 grain Minie ball shape (no hollow base) soft lead bullet pushed by 90 grains of FFFG black powder. The bullet hit the left front leg (skin and muscle only), rib, vitals, rib, right front leg (muscle only), and stopped just under the hide. It showed the classic mushroom shape. I believe the muzzle velocity was in the 1150 to 1200 feet per second range. With a heavy, large diameter, soft lead bullet you have the big MO (momentum) to help you out even though velocity and trajectory are way less than spectacular.
Squealy, your experience certainly reinforces conclusions regarding relatively heavy, large diameter bullets. In your case the .45 caliber bullet may or may not have been soft lead, but it had the Keith semiwadcutter nose shape and a considerably higher velocity than the bullet from my .58 caliber elk rifle. That is certainly good medicine for deer and other big game hunting.
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Post by jabba on Dec 26, 2009 10:17:14 GMT -5
I'll toss in a little more anectdotal evidence. In my ML bullet progression, I shot the Speer 325 grain hollow point .50 pistol bullet in a .50/.54 sabot. It was awful. It left terrible blood trails, didn't do nearly what it SHOULD have done. It shot great... but was less than spectacular on deer.
A young hunter this year shot a nice mature doe at 25 yards with a 250 grain shockwave bullet. Hit her a little far back... but was adament about a hit. There was NO blood trail. None. We searched for a while and eventually found a little blood starting about 75 yeards from the POI. We lost that trail 3 different times, only finding it again thru sheer bull doggedness. Eventually when she headed UPhill, she started bleeding pretty good, and we found her after a 300 yard track. NO exit wound.
To each their own I guess... but I'll take a soft LEAD bullet and an exit wound at almost any range.
Side note... my 450's shoot a 2.5" group from 25 thru 125 yards on top of 70 grains of FFFG 777 loose powder. so at any predictible range (for me) I put the crosshairs on the deer and pull the trigger.
Jabba
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Post by omegahunter on Dec 26, 2009 17:42:25 GMT -5
I have always used 300 grain .44 caliber Hornady's and 270 grain Speer GoldDots in the past in my muzzleloaders with all pass-throughs with the exception noted previously. My Omega however does not like those previous combinations, but shoots the Hornady SST (T/C Shockwave) very accurately. I used the 250 grain version for a couple years, but never shot a deer with it. I had a few friends that did though and the 250's just came apart; finding the lead and jacket separated on both deer. I switched to the 300 grain version retaining the phenomenal accuracy, but have only shot one deer with it. I brained a button buck with it two years ago at 25 yards; no bullet found since it only had to penetrate about a 1/4 inch of bone total and less than 4 inches of brain matter. I think that the heavier 300 grain SST would give me the pass-throughs I like on the double-lung shots if I could have some deer cooperate for some bullet testing during the muzzleloader seasons.
That is what I hear is typical Powerbelt performance; bullet explodes and the only thing big enough to find is the solid base just above the plastic skirt. A good friend just got one this past muzzleloader season with a 270 grain Platinum AeroTip and he couldn't even find the base as it was lost in the off-side lung.
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Post by cedarthicket on Dec 26, 2009 18:32:17 GMT -5
Omegahunter, the points you made plus my one experience seems to me to indicate the possibility that current Powerbelt bullets are not designed to give desired (in my opinion) performance at the velocities to which they are pushed by deer hunters. The anecdotal evidence being considered indicates the bullet expands too quickly and/or too much so that a high percentage of the bullet’s mass is lost before it penetrates adequately. The soft lead composition certainly will give some expansion/mushrooming even at relatively slow velocities. So, perhaps the flaw in bullet design (in our minds anyway) may lie in the hollow point (whether open or covered with a plastic tip). Perhaps the hollow point hole is too deep and/or too large in diameter.
Has anyone here sectioned one of the Powerbelt bullets to see what the hollow point hole looks like? I would like to hear and see the results. Has anyone here sectioned any kind of bullet using a Dremel tool cutoff wheel? Any suggestions and cautions on trying this or another approach?
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Post by huntingman on Dec 27, 2009 15:49:03 GMT -5
well i have more about muzzelloading bullets here than i have learned my entire life. one question i f your using round balls in a 50 cal sidelock how many grains would you reccomend and what patches
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Post by dadfsr on Dec 28, 2009 9:57:14 GMT -5
This is certainly an interesting post. I have switched around from solid "buffalo bullets" to sabots to Powerbelts....and have always had the best results with the biggest grain bullet and pass through shots for downing and/or tracking deer. While I haven't spent the time on the range that some of you had I have taken a few deer since I put my first kit Hawkins together back in the early 80's. Now using a Knight DISC but still have the "kit" gun and keep looking at it every once in while  . I totally gave up on the sabots both in the shotgun and smokepole-never had a pass through and always had the most difficult time recovering/tracking the deer. |
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Post by tickman1961 on Dec 28, 2009 10:08:47 GMT -5
A well placed shot will bring down the biggest game, been using 240 grain Hornady XTP sabots for over 20 years without a problem, regardless of the charge behind them.
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Post by jabba on Dec 28, 2009 12:52:27 GMT -5
I totally gave up on the sabots both in the shotgun and smokepole-never had a pass through and always had the most difficult time recovering/tracking the deer. They make solid sabots. Don't give up on the sabots... give up on the light hollow points. JMHO. Jabba |
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