What was did wound cavity look like? A lot of times a tumbling bullet does some serious damage
Lapua Scenar on game
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You’re right on - it was a tumbling bullet and wound channel looked like a high speed miniature fan knife went through it stem to stern. Serious damage. Didn’t travel in a very straight line of projection though. Obviously the manufacturer didn’t design or intend it to do this.
It‘s quite entertaining to deal with a bullet company‘s sales and promotional department and after numerous emails and phone calls finally get a call from upper management. You never get an answer, but you get enough information to make you half dangerous and develop your own opinion.
ImBillT
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That’s officially weird.
My first two animals with Bergers died right where they stood, but the bullets acted as FMJs. I had taken a F-TR rifle and load to shoot does from a blind on a meat hunt my FIL had arranged with a land owner friend of his for myself and my wife. I took that rifle and load because he required me to show up a day early, which meant an extra day off work, to sight-in in front of him. I wanted to shoot the best group he’d ever seen anyone shoot to prove a point. I proved my point, but I wasn’t really thrilled at the bullet’s performance. I contacted Berger, and mentioned that I had shot their bullets in benchrest and f-class for many years, but that my first experience on game was lacking. The first question they ask was “are you pointing your bullets?” I had been. They said they had been experiencing an issue in a little less than 1% of bullets, and thought they had the issue figured out and resolved. They told me never to point a bullet for use on game, and that pointing bullets would lead to the issue I’d had. They still wanted my box for testing. This was probably 2013ish. I’ve been VERY PLEASED with Bergers ever since. I’ll take the blame for pointing them, and possibly give them credit for fixing an issue I don’t know the details of.
That said, I had one head scratcher in 2019. It was a 180 Elite Hunter fired at an MV of about 2600fps in a 12” twist barrel. I shot a mule deer at 300yds. His butt was facing me, but his chest was almost broadside and he was looking back at me. The bullet hit rear lung. He dropped instantly. I recovered the bullet in his neck, on the IMPACT SIDE. THE BASE had exited his neck and stopped in the hide. That’s right, it tried to exit base first. The tip was smashed to one side as if it had hit sideways, and the bullet was otherwise intact. It appeared to have tumbled along a horseshoe shaped path from rear lung to mid neck(the deer’s body was in horseshoe position, but the bullet should have gone straight). My assumption is that it deflected off of a rib that was almost parallel to the bullet nose. It was a slightly unusual shot. A year or two later I encountered some videos of a guy testing Bergers in gelatin who seemed to demonstrate that a Berger would either fragment wildly or tumble based on impact velocity. His demonstration was flawed because he decreased impact velocity by loading less powder, which means less muzzle velocity, which means lower RPM, which means decreased stability. It has been proven that RPM degrades so little that it almost doesn’t matter in spite of substantially decreased velocity as a bullet travels down range. That test was flawed if looking for what impact velocity would make a Berger tumble instead of fragment, BUT, it did show that with poor stability a Berger could tumble rather than fragment. A 180 Elite Hunter is marginally stable in a 12” twist. It’s possible that is what caused my problem. Whether it was impact angle or twist rate, I don’t really fault Berger on that one. There are a lot of Nosler and Barnes bullets on the market that aren’t even marginally stable in a factory twist, yet they don’t give a recommended twist, and neither Nosler nor Barnes has a twist calculator on their website.
I don’t know what happened to your bullet. That’s a little disturbing. The one I referred to above was not so flat. Where did all the lead go? Very strange.
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ImBillT
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Mine did some damage.
Don Fischer
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I didn't know that. Something I found with them years ago shooting some Sierra Match Kings into bundled newspaper at 100 yds is that the bullet's tip closed up and the bullet's bent a good deal. Wincherster ln their ad for their ammo with mono bullets said one reason for the plastic tip was it insure the bullet opened when it hit something. I seldom use them and if I do I never use HP's on big game.
Don Fischer
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From the sounds of that I'd guess the tip did close and the bullet bent and then you said it tumbled. I don't think they all do that tthough but that would keep me from even trying them.
ImBillT: will send you a lengthy PM on what I surmised happened and what might have been the cause. You obviously know what your doing by your response. My only reason for posting that incident was to show no matter how much testing a bullet manufacturer say they do you still can get head scratcher results. Berger is a good company and they make good bullets.
I apologize to the original OP, didn’t mean to send your thread off the rails.
Now back to known results and experience on using Scenar bullets.
My experience has been nothing but stellar on Scenars.
I apologize to the original OP, didn’t mean to send your thread off the rails.
Now back to known results and experience on using Scenar bullets.
My experience has been nothing but stellar on Scenars.
No worries. Like you said bullets can and will fail. I had a partition fail on me I’ll see if I can find that one.
