180 AB came apart - and it was a good thing - this time

[rodell]

A zebra shot last week with a 180AB from a .30-06 shouldn't have died from the wound due to poor placement, but the bullet came apart and one piece caught a lung and the liver. We couldn't see any reason why the bullet should have come apart - but it did.

Same person shot an oryx with the same load in the perfect spot and the bullet performed perfectly - but the animal ran a LONG ways.

Both animals ended up in the salt, so I would never say the bullets failed. It's observations like this that lead me to discount most stories of failure. Definitely strange, though.

 

[Guy Miner]

All we can do is select a good bullet, and place it well...

Sometimes the results are unexpected.

I can't ever remember a "bullet failure." One .25 cal Barnes TXS I wondered about. Wasn't really sure it expanded, but the animal died, quickly. So that works.

I have done a lousy job with shot placement a few times.

Guy

 

[Blkram]

We must remember that no man-made item is perfect or can be expected to perform perfectly 100% of the time! and many times there will be failures that cannot explained by the average person with limited means of technical equipment or materials. Even the best products can suffer from failure.

Then there is the animals themselves; like us humans, many have their own individual personalities, tenacity and will to live. Even extremely tough animals with reputations for being hard to kill cleanly with one well placed shot, can succumb to poor hits, with marginal calibers and/or bullets (marginal in the minds of some people), whereas some animals not known for being hard to kill can soak up the lead from well placed shots from premium bullets in well suited calibers for the quarry.

Who can predict the reaction of a particular animal of any given species to the shot placement and expected performance of the given cartridge/bullet combination? We can only hope for a quick, clean kill with the selected tools in use!

All I can say from my own personal experience in harvesting a variety of large game with AB's since they first came out, is that they have provided good performance for me on over 30 animals from antelope to bison. And it has proven to be the most consistent bullet for accuracy in all of the rifle cartridges that I have either purchased factory ammunition or developed hand loads for over the years (provided that I have done my part!).

Most often, I believe many stories of bullet failures are coming from fairly inexperienced hunters or rifle shooters who believe that any animal shot with their "high powered rifles" are supposed to be DRT. One of today's myths.

 

[BuddyT]

Only bullet failures I had and was not the bullets fault. Pick wrong bullet for the job. Shot the biggest whitetail of my life, which down here in south Arkansas is not will big, 9 point weight 170 lbs not field dress.
Hornardy 7mm 139 gr. interbond, shot right behind the shoulder. 7 mil hole going and 7 mil hole going out. Got no expansion at all, should have know, or I did know and didn't think it would be that bad. Shot was about 70 yds. went to 139 gr. SST and havn't had a problems on game.

 

[Bbear]

man-made items can, and will, fail. But saying that and expecting a poorly placed shot to 'work' is just plain ridiculous.
I've made some poorly placed shots in my time and paid for it with long tracking jobs and smelly cleaning jobs.
I have had only two bullets that failed to work as advertised; a box of Federal ammo using partitions and TTSX's. I found that for some reason, the partitions were loaded 'light' from the factory and at 200 yards, they didn't have enough oomph to cause the round to open. The times the TTSX's failed were when they just penciled through the deer (4 different times).
So far, the ballistic tips I've used haven't failed to function as advertised nor have the Accubonds I use. But, sooner or later, I'll have one of them fail. After all, they are man-made.
My job is to make certain the bullet is placed in the right place.

 

[Elkman]

I have had several bullet issues in my lifetime. The first was the Speer Grand Slam, I found that at 3,000 fps, that they came apart at "close" range. Speer sent me a nice note and confirmed my findings. The second is/was the Barnes TSX, three different elk have all wandered around and required a second shot after well hit. The last one issue was last season with the Hornady 162 PSP, the bullets separated on a cow elk at 310 yards. I pulled those and with a little range work killed a second elk a couple of weeks later with a 160 AB at a similar distance and got perfect performance.