I have just noticed this hunting season, that any rounds in my magazine (700 30-06) seems to get the tips smashed due to recoil. I have always loaded the rounds to the rearmost position in the magazine as possible as they are a bit long, but have no chambering issues. Obviously, the one in the pipe is not affected, and i have dead deer for every shot fired, even ones shot with (now) flat noses, so accuracy is not so much affected.
At least I'm still shooting Minute of Deer; but is there really any way to prevent this? Is this a common issue? I guess it's not a huge problem, but I like having all my hunting rounds to behave like they did when fired from the bench, so.....

This is one of the big reasons why polymer-tipped bullets were invented.

Some tests suggest - as you observed - that accuracy isn't all that much impaired. Personally, I just can't stand the way they look.

Vertical rails can be silver-soldered into your magazine that keep the rounds to the rear. The shoulders of the cases contact the rail.

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so accuracy is not so much affected.

Extensive testing shows that deformed points do NOT have a detrimental effect on accuracy. However, it does lower the ballistic coefficient! Just scratching a bullet with sandpaper will do this!

Polymer tipped bullets as was stated by Jlarson were invented just for this reason,and bullet tips also got mess up when cycled through bolt actions as well.These first design bullets came out in the early 1960,s.made by CIL adn Dominion co. of canada. they didn,t go over and were strached from production,Now they are the big thing to have. Personally if you gun still shoots good,why change? I know they don,t look as pretty,but a downed game doesn,t know the difference. van

quote:

but is there really any way to prevent this?

Yep, Go and buy NBTs, ABs, MRXs, etc.

Plastic tips work great in rifles that recoil enough to damage soft tips.

I love the plastic tip bullets my self. Better life when cycling through a rifle to load and unload during hunting season, better bc, more consistant length for measuring COL, prettier etc.

Reloader

Thanks all for the replies. I guess I'll just live with it for my hunting rounds. May look into tipped bullets in the future...

quote:

Better life when cycling through a rifle to load and unload during hunting season, etc.

Reloader

I guess I shouldn't admit this, but, really the only time my rifle gets unloaded is at the end of season or 5 dead deer (whichever comes first)

/

Battered bullet tips. That is a fun topic, folks have an opinion but they seldom take the time or have the time to experiment. I for one am not worried about it. It started with an experience from a friend of mine, one of the best 200 highpower shooters in the US. He was at his range and there was a benchrest shooter. The guy claimed that deforming bullet tips made little or no difference in impact. To prove it he took a pair of pliers and crunched up a couple of bullets and shot them for my friend. Those bullets went in the same hole (or group). Then he took a perfect bullet and put a scratch on the base. That shot out of the group. And not by a little as it was described to me.

Full of this imparted knowledge, I had an opportunity to test it. One day during the sighting in period at 300 yards (in weather never less than 100 F in the shade) we got a range delay. If you are not familiar, the 300 yards segment of highpower is fired prone with irons. And I got a chance to shoot another sighter. I had good settings so I decided to see what would happen if I deformed a bullet tip. I took out my leatherman tool, grabbed a 308 168 Sierra Match King load, cut a diagonal across the tip with the wire cutters and then crunched the absolute day lights out of the bullet tip with the pliers. When the sighter shot came up it was a pinwheel X. It was absolutely as close to perfect center as I could tell with my spotting scope.

So why aren’t all long range shooters crunching the stuffing out of their bullet tips?, well think of it this way. These guys spent about an hour loading 22 perfect loads. Maybe more. They then drive maybe 2 hours, before dawn, to get to the match. After upfronting a minimum of $30.00 for match fees, they get to pull targets all day ( and it is never less than 100 F in the shade) but only spend 22 minutes shooting on the firing line. After spending $50.00 in gas money, they will get home after 0800 pm. Only a nut case would do anything that might remotely screw up all that effort, and guess what, no one does.

And there is a lot of lucky rabbit foots reloading practices that shooters do. These guys get better with practice but they attribute the improvement to something else, usually something they did when they loaded that batch of ammunition. And once having assigned a lucky rabbits foot cause to the measured phenomena, they will follow the white rabbit.

With respect to the "Domonion" 60's bullets, if I recall corectly those were refered to as "Saber" tip bullets. As far as I know they did not catch on due to somewhat eratic expansion performance. Some worked really well, some pushed on through with no expansion and some just blew up on impact. The modern tips are a different material and they seem to preform very well.