SmallCaliberCentral

Do any of you guys have any good post-mortem bullet recovery pictures? (and stories) I've got an interesting bullet I pulled out of an elk at work. I'll get a picture up as soon as I get new batteries for the camera.

This is a picture of the Barnes X bullet I recovered from the inside of an elk that impressed me very much.

I work as a Conservation Officer (Game Warden) in Minnesota. Last March I was contacted by one of our local cattle producers who had been issued a permit to shoot problem elk that had been eating his cattle feed. Along with these permits the producer was issued a small number of cartridges loaded with copper barnes bullets because every elk killed on this permit was to be taken into a food shelf. (The copper bullets are for the lead-in-food liability.) The cattle producer called and told me that the previous evening he had shot an elk out of a heard that was feeding on his feed pile, and he had taken the animal into town to have it processed for the food shelf. The next afternoon he discovered another dead elk in his field. This elk laid approximately 150 yards from where the other elk died. (how he didn't notice it the previous day I have no idea.)

I drove to the scene and found a small yearling elk with a bullet hole right behind the shoulder that appeared to have been dead for a day. After some pictures, I cut into the animal and found this bullet. This bullet ruled out a "second shooter" and ruled out the permitee shooting more elk than permitted. What I found was a 180 grain Barnes bullet that lodged in the rib cage after putting a hole in the heart of this, the SECOND elk. The shooter fired one shot from his 30-06 dropping one elk, and striking a second elk that ran 150 yards before it too died.



I took the bullet home and weighed it. 180 grains on the dot. Killed two elk and didn't loose a sliver. This is a great testament to the awesome dependability of the Barnes Copper bullets.

Anybody else have any good pics with stories?

I keep trying to collect at 338 caliber 300 gr SMK, after shooting deer at 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1370, & 1600 yards, but no luck....all are thru and thru.

Your captured bullet held together rather nicely. Quite a bit of energy from the "old" 30/06 as well!

Holy Cow! A two-fer on Elk!, you should make a commercial for Barnes with that one! Gary

acloco wrote: Your captured bullet held together rather nicely. Quite a bit of energy from the "old" 30/06 as well!

I agree. No need for "magnums!"

I'm not surprised. Great bullets, usually always complete penetration.

This really shows their bullets live up to their advertising hype.....100% weight retention.....even after going through TWO elk! Wow, I'm still impressed.

"We don't need no stinkin' magnums!"

Am mostly a mule deer hunter, and haven't recovered many bullets. None until I started using the Berger VLD two years ago. I've found the battered remains of that bullet a couple of times now, but only kept one to photograph. Nowhere near as purty as the Barnes pictured above! When I've used the 100 gr Barnes TSX from my .25-06, it just drills right on through, leaving a very dead deer behind. They're pretty interesting bullets. Here's an unfired 115 gr Berger VLD next to the 33 grain remains of one that I recovered from a good size mule deer:


Must admit, the Berger lays 'em out real quick, pretty much destroying the heart, lungs and major blood vessels with a good chest hit. I've take three deer with it in the last two years. Quick killer for sure. Penetrates into the chest cavity with very little expansion, if any, then opens up violently once inside. Sometimes there's an exit, sometimes not.

Being kind of a bullet nut job, I've been shooting them into water-filled one-gallon milk jugs to "test" for expansion, weight retention & penetration. Usually takes three or four jugs to stop a rapid-expanding bullet and six or seven jugs to stop a deep penetrating bullet. Here's a few photos:

240 gr JHP from a .44 mag factory load (Federal American Eagle)


100 gr Barnes TSX @ 3340 fps from a .25-06 out-penetrated the 300 gr Remington at much lower velocity from my .45/70 Marlin:


350 gr Swift A-Frame on left vs 350 gr Hornady FNSP on right from the .45/70 Marlin:


260 grain Nosler Accubond from a .375 H&H:


Volunteer milk jugs all lined up for testing:


Magazines & catalogs taped together are brutal on hunting bullets. So far only the Barnes TSX bullets do well:


I like collecting the bullets, measuring & weighing 'em. Gives me something interesting to do while I wait for hunting season to roll around again!

Regards, Guy

Great pictures and some nice work! You would do good work for a forensics lab.

I've wondered about using those VLD Bergers on deer. It looks like they bring the deer down fast though? Berger advertises that the bullets "shed between 40% and 85%" which appears in you photo. Cool stuff.

Are the magazines wet or dry when you do your test?

That's a great story VB. What bullets do on game can be very interesting. I've heard a story, think it was on the nosler forum, of a guy shooting through a caribou with an accubond and the bullet ended up in another bull that his wife had already put a bullet through. Definately something you have to be careful on when using good bullets, especially the barnes offerings.

Here's a 130 grain nosler ballistic tip out of my .270 that I recovered from an antelope I shot at just over 400 yards. It was stuck in the off side right under the hide after being shot to far back. Next one broke its neck.


I've killed a few mule deer with bt's also getting full pass through about 1/2 the time, and once a whitetail at 30 yards that left a baseball size exit. Definately a frangible bullet, but kills deer sized critters just fine.
I've got a bunch of milk jugs saved for some fun tests, but I need a nice sunny day for that!

Test media - I've used all sorts of stuff over the years. Wet & dry newspaper. Wet & dry phone books, magazines, catalogs. The magazine stack in the photo is dry. It's really tough on bullets, worse than newsprint, far worse than any paper product soaked.

I gave up using the soaking wet newsprint & magazines etc because of the hassle. How do I get rid of 200 pounds of soaking wet newsprint? It's tough to deal with, so... To heck with it! Seldom even use the dry magazines & newsprint - again, mostly because of handling issues. Years ago noted hunter & gun writer Finn Aagaard used dry newsprint for a lot of his bullet testing, as does John Barsness today.

There's an interesting commercial product called "bullet test tube" which I've been tempted by, but not enough to spring with the cash yet.

Started using the water-filled one-gallon milk jugs a few years ago. I like 'em.

1. They're essentially free. My family goes through about 3-4 gallons every week, so every few weeks I have enough for a test.
2. Very easy to handle. I rinse the empties, put them in a plastic bag out in the garage and then take 'em to the range. Fill with water, and blast.
3. Generally easy to recover the bullet. Rapid expanding handgun bullets (like a .45 ACP hollow point) are usually found in the 3rd milk jug. A .44 mag will make it to the 4th or 5th if it expands well. Bullets that don't expand much, if at all, can blast right through 8, 10, 12 or more jugs! Think 425 gr hardcast from the .45/70 Marlin or 440 grain hardcast from a .500 S&W. Bullets caught in the jugs are usually in good enough shape to weigh, measure and photograph.
4. Very easy cleanup. The water evaporates. The plastic jugs get tossed in the recycle bin.
5. Very easy to replicate - I can do the same test over and over with different bullets at different velocities. You can do the same test 2,000 miles away and we can compare results in a fairly intelligent way. I like that.

Only drawback I see to the jugs for bullet testing is that they're a bit tough on some fast-expanding hollow points, like the 300 gr hollow point from a .45/70 - yet I know it's a good deer bullet via reports from other. Once in a while a bullet deflects and leaves the jugs, never to be recovered.

How well do the tests correspond with results on game? Good question... In general, I think fairly well. The tougher bullets like a Barnes TSX, or a bonded bullet like the Swift A-Frame or the Nosler Accubond tend to hang together pretty well, mushroom and penetrate pretty well. About the same as on game.

The more fragile bullets tend to over-expand, flatten out, and even break up, with limited penetration. Much as can happen on game. Is there a perfect test media? Not that I know of, but this is a fun and interesting part of my shooting hobby.

Regards, Guy

Berger VLD's on big game.

Huge controversy over on 24 Hour Campfire, and likely other forums as well. Much confusion. Shouldn't be.

Berger's VLD was designed specifically for long-range target shooting. Exceptionally low drag, so it has reduced wind drift, less drop, and retains velocity better than more conventional designs. Berger also builds in a lot of consistency with their high-quality bullets. They can be a little finicky to get to shoot really well, but when that load is found, they're quite accurate.

Some long-range hunting fanatics started playing with them... And found that they worked well, really well, on game... Berger picked up on this, and only a few years ago contacted some gun-writers about using the VLD's on game and producing articles about them. Several did so. I read those articles, and as a mule deer hunter, I liked what I read. Am frequently confronted with longish range shots in open and often windy country. Because it's very steep, nasty country (albeit beautiful) I like to drop the deer instantly.

According to the testers/writers, the VLD penetrates the first few inches without opening up. This is very important to understand, and mostly ignored by detractors. According to Barsness, ALL other expanding type hunting bullets start expanding immediately on contact. The VLD doesn't - it penetrates several inches, through the hair, hide, muscle and light bones like ribs & shoulder blades, then when it gets to the chest cavity it violently expands. Here is where it causes tremendous destruction of the heart, lungs and the great blood vessels, causing very quick kills. Barsness and others write of success on wild hogs, goats, deer, and red stag. I understand a red stag goes to about 400 pounds. He doesn't tout them as an all-purpose bullet. This is not an explode-on-contact varmint bullet.

I've dropped three mule deer with the VLD, from 175 - 400 yards. I'm using the 115 grain VLD at about 3200 fps from my .25/06 Rem 700. All three dropped instantly and died very quickly. Taking a look at the damage, I can personally confirm that in each case the VLD penetrated with little or no expansion, then caused tremendous destruction in the chest cavity. Just as advertised. I think they're a very good bullet for open country hunting of deer sized game. The two bullet remnants that I recovered were each in the off-side shoulder, and badly mangled. I only photographed one, because I left the other behind, deep down in a canyon where I shot the mulie. Much as the subject interests me... I don't think I'll hike back in there to look for the bullet!

Note - not all Bergers are the same! Berger has toughened up some of their Target bullets with thicker jackets. These don't have the dramatic expansion of the "hunting" (original) VLD's and have "penciled through" when mistakenly used on game. Bergers web site is pretty good about showing which bullets are suitable for hunting.

Regards, Guy