LEFT BULLET: Recovered from Buffalo. Shot entered front chest, through lungs and stomach and was recovered in the large intestine. Expansion was excellent. Velocity was ~2300fps from a Ruger Mark II in .458 Lott. Weight as recovered 460grns (92%, bullet clean to the naked eye but the camera picked up some amazing detail).



RIGHT BULLET: Recovered from Hippo. Shot entered skull, exited rear of skull and was recovered under the skin in the neck. This is about as a "worst case" test as there is for a softer-softpoint, although The Perfect Shot says that a 150gr softpoint will kill hippo just as well. Weight as recovered 366grns (73%); not bad, just not pretty.











Not as photogenic as the North Forks, TBBC, etc...but they did the job on the lion, buffalo and hippo. Thoughts???

Nice pictures Bill. My first thought is there sure are a lot of good bullets out there today. Your Woodleighs appear to have held up very well under a tough trial.

Bill,
I don't know if you could ask for better performance than the bullet that killed your buffalo. Held together well and really expanded. You're right, the bullet that killed your hippo is downright ugly, but, after going through a hippos' hide, skull, etc. and still retaining 73% of it's weight, it would be hard to argue for any type of bullet failure. On advice from Sterling Davenport, who built my .416, I used Woodleigh solids on my elephant hunt and was very pleased with their performance. I took along some Woodleigh softs for other game, but used solids on everything so I can't comment on their performance but wouldn't hesitate to use them. Your results show them to be more than adequate.

Bill,

Good performance. Just like mine last year--except yours on the front shot buff retained more weight.

I'm assuming that yours were standard Woodleigh soft points rather than protected soft points.

I'm changing to the PPs for buff. They're reportedly tougher, which I like for impact with big shoulder bones, should they be struck.

Very very nice. What was the aprox penetration of the one recovered in the buffalo?

Yea these were the standard softpoints, chosen because of the lion. Penetration was good, (Smallfry, I don't know, maybe 4 feet?), and I agree w/you that the protected points are probably better for buffalo in that I'd feel more comfortable taking a raking shot, and/or shooting through bone. Of course then there's always the X bullets or A-Frames for this... As Nick said, there certainly are a lot of good choices today.

Russell, did you recover any of the solids from the ele? I'm thinking this is what I'll use if/when I hunt ele again, and would be interested to hear how far they penetrated on the bull.