re: odd bullet damage?

Here. Lets take a look at what a Nosler Ballistic Tip in .308 does to a buck at 100 yards. Yesterday morning.

Here's the entry hole side. The hole is in that shoulder in the dark area. The shock to this side extends from way up in the neck down to behind the diaghram. This bullet hit ribs on both sides.



Exit hole. Yes, exit. I've killed more deer than I can count with this round out of '06 at 3200FPS and never once stopped it. Apparently you ain't stopping it in .308 either but that's the smallest exit wound I've ever seen on one of these. Doing around 3000 FPS



The heart, or what's left of it. I wish I'd gotten a pic of the cavity. The chest cavity was cherry jelly. Just liquid and snot. Nothing that looked like it actually came from a lung in there.



Entry on the left, exit on the right.



So you'll forgive me if I don't have a clue what you people are talking about with Nosler BT's not performing. They've been performing astonishingly well for me for a very long time. Why on earth you'd want to slow it down on a whitetail is beyond me. This one made it about fifty feet. And uh, yeah, bloodtrailing isn't really a problem as long as you aren't blind because they tend to have a ginormous hole in their side that's blowing out liquid lungs and heart.

I've never wounded a deer with one of these. If I hit it, it hits the ground. That goes for shots a little too far back as well. It turns guts to jello.

So lets review. High velocity 125 gr ballistic tips in 30 cal will not stop in a whitetail. I have about a hundred or so cases to back that up. I have never once stopped it or found even a shred of case until today where I found a teensy piece of jacket in the heart.

Higher velocity means higher energy so yes, when you hit a rib on entry, the energy transfer is astonishing. That's why that deer has busted blood vessels from his mid neck to his belly. But as far as I'm concerned, that's a plus because I hate blood trailing deer. Fortunately that's something I only end up doing for friends who are using heavier, slower bullets that just poke a hole in it.

Higher velocity does not mean an explosion and your high velocity BT just turned into a frangible. It holds up and passes through, every time. EVERY TIME.

The fartherest I've ever seen a deer run after being hit by this is about 80 yrds. And that was a dead deer running spraying blood like a firehose.



Edit to add.
Entry hole where it struck the rib and turned it into a bomb.





Exit hole where it shows that the bullet is still intact, and still full of energy enough to blow this side up too even upon impact with another rib.

The OP and most posting here are using Winchester, hornady, etc. They aren't using nosler ballistic tips, which is a much more well constructed bullet than the above stuff. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot the noslers.

Most ballistic tips explode at high velocity if they hit anything solid. The jackets are too thin and the open nose leads to really nasty surface wounds.

I personally like bonded soft point bullets. If you like ballistic tips the two you listed are your only options IMO.

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Higher velocity does not mean an explosion and your high velocity BT just turned into a frangible. It holds up and passes through, every time. EVERY TIME.

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THISSSSSSS

And everyone in here is generalizing the shite out of "ballistic tip."

AGAIN, it depends on the bullet design, not the tip.

Just like my last post, the ballistic tip Barnes bullets do not fully disintegrate when hitting flesh. They have a very controlled expansion.

Any bullet that is DESIGNED to hold together after hitting flesh will have a better chance of exiting.

I'm not saying you guys aren't wrong in your statements, but just saying "ballistic tip" is a very broad statement. The tip of the bullet itself doesn't have anything to do with the way the rest of it is constructed (generally).

EDIT: Also, using ballistic tipped rounds in a bolt action gun is much better than using soft tips. Every time you chamber that round, the feed ramp pushes on the tip of that bullet. A regular lead tip will continually deform whereas the plastic ones will hold together.

What do you think of the Winchester Ballistic Silver Tips, 130 grain for deer?

Garbage

Hang on a damn minute, I got a serious question.



Your ol lady lets you yank the hide off right there on the porch?

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Your ol lady lets you yank the hide off right there on the porch?

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As long as I don't ask first, she doesn't bitch.

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Yep, give me core-lokt

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This ^^^^^

I think the answer to a lot of the questions was said by Downshift. We're comparing apples and oranges. The only BT's I have any experience with are Noslers and they are as consistent and inevitable as death. The others I suspect are trying to cheap out on materials or going for the varmint markets and knocking off on the Noslers and others that made the BT name originally a good thing in hunting bullets.

So yes, if you're shooting the knock offs, dropping velocity would make sense. But if you're shooting the Noslers, crank that velocity up. You aren't going to stop it in a whitetail and all you're doing is increasing the damage and shock done to it and making it all the more likely to drop dead in it's tracks.

The only thing I ever stopped a nosler 125gr bt in was a 300 lb boar and I broke his opposite shoulder as well as a rib going in.

I don't see why they would come apart in wet newspaper different from how they do in flesh and bone but they must. Like I said, in my crowd that uses these, we've probably got around a hundred dead deer with these and nobody ever stopped one in the deer. It may be that the newspapers are actually just a lot harder and slow it down faster which would be a much more violent deceleration and probably cause more damage to the bullets. Deer have cavities and squishy parts so it's not a consistent medium for stopping it. It probably maintains it's velocity a lot better so it doesn't have such a violent deceleration and continues on out the other side as a result.

The 200fps or so difference in the .308 and the '06, if this deer is any indication, is noticeable in the size of the exit wound. Because this deer's exit wound wasn't even half the size of what I'm used to seeing on those I kill with the 06. Generally those have a fist sized hole in the other side. I shot a doe one time with it crossing away that had a two fists side by side size hole in her on exit. Just devastating. But granted this deer got hit in two ribs and the heart so it's understandable it would have it's energy reduced before exit.