bud
.30 Stingray
Posts: 233
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Post by bud on Dec 12, 2013 10:13:20 GMT -5
I quit using XTP bullets years ago. It all started when I hit a doe in the shoulder with the 180 xtp using a 357Herrett 14" barrel. It blew up in the bone. Thinking that was bad luck....a few days later I took the same shot on another doe with the same results. Friend knocked a big bull elk down with his 309JDJ, but it was still alive. Using a FA 454 and 250 gr xtp I put a round high up on the neck right into the spine.....distance was about 1 foot. That did the trick, however when we pulled the hide what was left of that xtp was just up against the bone. Granted this was over 20 years ago....maybe they have hardened up the current xtp's.
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Post by warhawk on Dec 14, 2013 2:49:29 GMT -5
I quit using XTP bullets years ago. It all started when I hit a doe in the shoulder with the 180 xtp using a 357Herrett 14" barrel. It blew up in the bone. Thinking that was bad luck....a few days later I took the same shot on another doe with the same results. Friend knocked a big bull elk down with his 309JDJ, but it was still alive. Using a FA 454 and 250 gr xtp I put a round high up on the neck right into the spine.....distance was about 1 foot. That did the trick, however when we pulled the hide what was left of that xtp was just up against the bone. Granted this was over 20 years ago....maybe they have hardened up the current xtp's. I don't think the XTP has changed much, I had very similar performance from Hornady 240 XTP factory loads on a cow elk about the time last year. The write up is here in the hunting folder.
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groo
.327 Meteor
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Posts: 855
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Post by groo on Jan 29, 2014 18:08:34 GMT -5
Groo here I for one am not overly impressed with the xtp's in hunting ... A revolver can use a bullet with a good amount of lead exposed ---and should.. A Sierra ,Nosler,Remington or Winchester will do just fine. For deer just keep the weight down so that you get good speed, which will help with expandsion. You need about 1000fps at impact to open up. Cast needs enough speed to poke through.
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groo
.327 Meteor
I yet live!!!!
Posts: 855
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Post by groo on Jan 29, 2014 18:08:55 GMT -5
Groo here I for one am not overly impressed with the xtp's in hunting ... A revolver can use a bullet with a good amount of lead exposed ---and should.. A Sierra ,Nosler,Remington or Winchester will do just fine. For deer just keep the weight down so that you get good speed, which will help with expandsion. You need about 1000fps at impact to open up. Cast needs enough speed to poke through.
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Post by Cholla on Feb 1, 2014 10:24:05 GMT -5
I'm really new to handgun hunting so bear with me and my thoughts/ramblings. In regards to jacketed hollowpoints, it seems to me they would dramatically decrease penetration if/when they expand. I once read it explained by John Barsness something like this: If you start out with, say a .41 caliber 210 gr. hollowpoint and it expands to .50 caliber, you now have .50 caliber bullet that weighs at best 210 gr. which means your bullet now has a really low sectional density and won't penetrate well. I guess the point is that an expanded handgun bullet with a large frontal area won't penetrate well, will it? If a design such as an XTP doesn't happen to expand, then the bullet is pretty much a jacketed Cowboy Action bullet or an RNFP.....sort of. Judging from the OP I'm wondering if that's what happened. I kind of thought that was one of the ideas behind designs such as the Keith SWC; a fella could get good penetration out of a bullet while getting a wound cavity better than that provided by an ordinary RN bullet. I cast some SWCHP's a couple of months ago and fired a couple of them into water jug at an impact velocity of around 925 fps. There are two different designs but both bullets expanded well in the water with the nose fragmenting. The penta HP expanded violently in the first jug with most of the nose fragments stopping therein while the remaining base of the bullet went to the 5th jug. The other one expanded more slowly with the fragments of the nose all exiting and the remaining base of the bullet travelling to the 7th jug. The water was not an attempt to simulate flesh or anything, but to see if the bullets would expand, which they did. It occurred to me that both these bullets acted to some degree like a Nosler Partition with the nose pretty much disintegrating and the remaining portion retaining 65% and 74% respectively. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, I did end up shooting a buck with one of the HP bullets and it appears it did expand and did fully penetrate. I'm sort of on the fence when it comes to handgun bullets. I love the assurance of good penetration from a solid SWC, but if a hollowpoint bullet will fragment out front while the remaining 70% or so of the bullet continues, that wouldn't be so bad, would it? Plus, if for some reason the HP didn't expand, a fella is still left with a time-proven SWC. Thoughts?
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Post by seancass on Feb 1, 2014 11:00:07 GMT -5
I have just a couple thoughts before the smart guys get here to comment.
I don't consider fragmentation and expansion the same thing. When a bullets expands properly, it expels a bunch of energy in the first couple inches which gives you good violent impact, perfect for thin skinned game. Now, what you want is for that bullet, which is now (from your example) 50 caliber to continue punching thru as a 50 cal out the other side of the animal. You got violent expansion and deep, large penetration.
But your bullet fragmented. (Maybe only because of water instead of flesh) If this happens in an animal, you probably did get that good initial violent expansion. But then the bullet broke apart. You now have 3/4 of the deer being shot with a 180gr slug(the piece that's left after it fragmented very early on, the first jug) Those little bits of shrapnel aren't going anywhere, they have the energy of a BB!
You are correct that there is a give and take between expansion and penetration. Luckily deer aren't very big! I won't try to sway you one way or the other, i just wanted to point out that for a bullet to work it HAS to stay together! I think about this every time i see a new magazine ad for a new wonder bullet that breaks up and sends shrapnel everywhere. Those little bits of bullet don't do anything. That's why we don't hunt deer with bird shot.
My other thought was that your bullet Could be cast too hard, making it brittle for HP use. Could be perfect for SWC, but a HP needs to bend and unfold. Perhaps shooting some wet newspaper pack would be enlightening.
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Post by Cholla on Feb 1, 2014 11:24:51 GMT -5
But that's the point; now that it's a .50 caliber bullet weighing only 210 grs., just how much will it penetrate in comparison to say a 210 gr. SWC ? Certainly not as far/deep as an unexpanded HP would. Especially in comparison to a SWC or the shank of a fragmented SWCHP. I somewhat disagree with the assertion that the fragments won't penetrate. In the picture above of the heavier HP, I found no fragments from the nose because they all exited the water jugs somewhere around the 3rd thru 4th jugs. Actually I think those little bits of bullets, while certainly not penetrating very deep, aid in hemorrhaging. Check this out: That's the shoulder of a little buck shot with the 251 gr. HP pictured above. Impact velocity would've been roughly 930 fps. That's the first time I've used a SWCHP on deer, but I've seen bloodshot meat like that when using a fragmenting jacketed rifle bullet. Regarding the hardness of the alloy, 9.5 Bhn is pretty darn soft, especially for the velocities I'm running them. Pure lead is about 5 Bhn. Like you, I initially felt the HP bullet needed to hold together. I was showing a fellow handgun hunting buddy the bullet and lamenting the fact that it hadn't held together when he simply said: " Kinda acted like a Nosler Partition, didn't it?" I was somewhat taken aback, not having thought of it in that way. (I've used Partitions on several deer and one bull elk so know how well they work) It's hard for me to question the success of bullets that perform in this manner. Anyhow, good discussion here! Cholla
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Post by seancass on Feb 1, 2014 12:10:04 GMT -5
I may not have all the answers, but I can atleast stir the pot, er, discuss! 41 vs 50 at 210 gr, obviously the 41 will penetrate better. But, do you need all that penetration? If you're 210 gr 50 still comes out the far side, you could have expanded to 60! (Maybe, perhaps, different bullet etc) Secondly, which penetrates better, a 210 gr 50 or a 160-180 gr 41? Probably the 41, except you've ruined the nose and it could be tumbling or turning. For thoughts on fragmentation, let's use math to muddy the waters. Your bullet, 250 gr at 925 fps has an energy of 475 ftlbs. You lost 65-86 gr in fragments(roughly 5 pieces) so they weighed 13-17 grains each. We almost have to assume zero velocity loss for the math because its so hard to get a chrono inside a deer. Now you're left with the shank at 300-340ftlb and those pieces at 25-30 ftlbs. A BB weighs roughly 8 gr with a bone crushing energy around 15. So, lets see what we have here. 300 ftlbs should be plenty of energy to go thru 3/4 of a deer. So the shank/base should punch thru. But those little pieces, do you think 17 grains at 925 really carried thru 3 water jugs? I feel like they were carried there in the wake of the bullet, or stayed attached to the bullet after expansion. I wonder what kind of tissue damage you'd see with a full wadcutter? Like, say 180 gr at around 925 fps? Maybe all that tissue damage was the result, not of shrapnel, but of a FWC doing it's thing? Just making conversation here. You're bullet hardness sounds spot-on to me. Please don't think I'm questioning your abilities in the reloading room or the field. Like i said, just stirring the pot and making food for thought.
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Post by seancass on Feb 1, 2014 12:14:32 GMT -5
We've wondered slightly from 41 cal XTP's, but a good bullet discussion none the less.
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Post by Cholla on Feb 1, 2014 13:03:10 GMT -5
No, no I love the discussion and questions bring answers...sometimes new ones, sometimes the same as always! As I said, I'm as green as a gourd in the realm of handgun hunting.
First let me say, bullet energy means nothing to me, it's just a mathematical formula. I like to think of it as simply a way to compare the relative power of two similar projectiles. If energy were all that mattered then a 115 gr. bullet from a 327 Federal would have the same killing "power" as that of a 260 gr. SWC @ 950 fps from my .44 Special. Moving on....
I'm absolutely certain the fragments carried through the water jugs on their own. It was easy to tell because ALL the fragments exited the sides of the water jugs, NOT the ends as did the remaining shank. And this is to be expected from mis-shapened pieces of lead because there's no way they're going to track straight and true through water in their current shapes.
Regarding the wadcutter, somewhere on YouTube there's a video of a .358" 148 full WC being fired into ordinance gelatin. It's interesting to see. I recently read a column by Dave Scovill in Handloader magazine in which he states a full wadcutter, specifically a .44 caliber, is a very destructive bullet even rivaling varmint type bullets fired form rifles. Your point about just how much penetration is need is a very good one that swims around in my head constantly. Were I to ever hunt elk with a handgun, I imagine I'd stick with a Keith SWC to insure penetration. I've set my last handful of 251 gr. SWCHP's aside in hopes of getting a shot at a large hog to see how well they penetrate..
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Post by seancass on Feb 1, 2014 13:46:39 GMT -5
I know energy is Nearly useless, but what else do we have when there is no bone and flesh around to make data! and even then it seems like every animal/bullet acts different. Maybe if every site member would just go out and shoot 100 deer with their chosen load we could get somewhere! I only meant to use energy as a means of comparison. I wonder is any members have tried a full wadcutter on deer. I'd also like to know what the effective range might be.
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Post by Cholla on Feb 2, 2014 9:24:22 GMT -5
Wouldn't it be nice if we had the data from several hundred handgun deer kills? But then on the other hand, there'd be no need for experimenting with loads which I find lots of fun.
I've only fired wadcutters out of 38's and 357's and then only at 25 yds. It's my understanding their accuracy doesn't hold up well at long range.
Cholla
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jsh
.327 Meteor
Posts: 884
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Post by jsh on Feb 3, 2014 19:59:23 GMT -5
I will drop in my.02 for what ever it is worth. I have shot a truckload of deer with handguns/pocket rifles. Very first deer I ever shot was with a sw29. Thought that was almost to easy so I went to rifle tactics with the tc and XP. I hunted with handguns exclusively till '99 or 2000. The 41 mag always seemed to be a love hate relationship. I was always of the thoughts of it being less than a 44 and just a bit over the 357 magnum. Of course there was always the 357 sm but it was a bad cartridge design because it ate top straps for lunch. ( took me way to long to find out different, all I can think of is all of them I passed up) I have yet to draw blood with my new to me 657. I have some XTP's and some cast from Lynn. I have yet to wring this cartridge out. Will get after it this summer. I have shot several deer with the 357 magnum in a tc, revolver and a carbine all with cast bullets. I cast all my own and prefer a 160-180 in all of them. Molds were all special group buy designs from cast boolits. I use WW sweetened with some tin. Started off with water quenched and have since went to air cooled. Designs were all of a flat nose or lbt looking design. I have yet to recover a bullet. I always strive for a shoulder shot. Blood shot is very minimal. Nothing like a jacketed that seemed to bruise everything up so bad. Internal performance organ wise looked like a jacketed wound. Just guessing here on this. I think and this was after a lot of reading and looking at my results and others, that bone and cartilage fragments send a lot of shrapnel towards the organs. The blunt flat nose designs give tremendous amounts of hydrolic shock. So a lot of expansion is not needed. It was already there from the get go. I forget some of Elmer's comments but think it was him that mad comment on the front driving band doing a fair bit of damage it's self? In my own ways of thinking I want what a premium bullet gives you some expansion but weight retention to assist in forward momentum. Maybe tip expansion to full caliber. On the hollow point above I myself dislike the results. If it does that on water flesh and bone would be worse? One last remark on the 357's. I have tried like heck to shoot a deer at various angles and ranges in order to recover a bullet. I have let them get to my max feeling safe distance of 175. The large bodied buck I held dead center on the front shoulders and plugged him in and out, DRT. Hole in and hole out. This was with the carbine. The handguns my max range is 100. Same results. After getting the 3" GP 100 I am going to load up some +P+ 38's and see if I have any luck. My way of thinking on the carbine results that should mirror what a revolver in 357 sm would do at the same ranges Jeff
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Post by whitworth on Feb 5, 2014 7:50:16 GMT -5
Wadcutters tend not to stabilize in media. Too much of a good thing. About the biggest meplat that works well is an LBT (true LBT) WFN. Deep, straightline penetration, and a large wound channel.
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groo
.327 Meteor
I yet live!!!!
Posts: 855
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Post by groo on Mar 25, 2014 13:34:27 GMT -5
Groo here I have never really liked the XTP bullet. I like a bullet with a lot of lead exposed on the nose [like the remington] Cast fn or hp are an option.
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