I had two instances this season that left me and my hunting buddy scratching our heads. On the same day we both shot a deer, acually within 3 seconds of each other and thru the same hole in the brush. I was huting with my marlin guide gun 45-70 and handloads (50 gr of H4198 and a 350 gr lazer-cast bullet) He was hunting with my Mark X Mauser in 300 Win mag and Winchester 180gr Supreme failsafe factory loads.

He shot the first deer, which took off thru the brush and couldn't be seen, then a deer which had had it's head down stepped into my view and I shot it. This all took place in pretty thick brush, which is my best gueass as to the cause of what we found. The deer I shot dropped in it's tracks, but was still alive so after slitting it's throat we went off on the blood trail of his deer. The range was only about 65 to 75 yards. anyway, my bullet entered just behind the front leg (both deer were shot when standing pretty much broadside, and we were on level ground) and exited in an upwards direction between the shoulder blades, without penetrating into the chest cavity. On his deer the bullet entered a little high, but just behind the front leg and fragmented with the 2 of the 3 main chunks exiting downward, one on each side of the sternum, and the other yawing left going thru the diaphram, liver, stomach, and out the off side abdominal wall. We found her after about 80 yards of tracking in a circle. She circled around us and expired about 25 yards behind us, with half of her stomach hanging out.

What in the world happened? could brush have caused this to happen but still have our bullets shoot pretty much to point of impact? I retired my 45-70 for the rest of the season and will work up a new load and do some tests and investigative work before next season. I may be pushing those cast lead bullets a little faster than they can handle, but they are accurate and I've never had any problems before. This load has always punched a big hole straight on thru.

The Winchester Factory load bewildered me the most because those fail safes are supposed to hold together and go deep. This bullet and cartridge combo is an elk load, yet it came apart like a varmint load. We recovered several black petals while field dressing his deer out.

These were both small deer, mine weighted about 60 lbs dressed and skinned, his about 85 lbs. dressed and skinned.

What did the entrance holes in the hides look like? They should tell the story.

If they are round and more or less the diameter of the bullet, I have no idea what happened.

My guess is the holes will be anything but round!

I too would have liked to seen the entrance hole of the Winnie shot deer. My only wag (wild assed guess) would be: Could he have hit a twig or something and the bullet have already started to open up? That's still pretty violent disruption tho.

having the bullet strike a twig the thickness of your pinkie will pretty much guarantee that the bullet will strike in a random attitude.

but there is random and there is random, in this case with a 1:10twist common to most 30cal rifles I can pretty much predict that on even the slightest impact the bullet is going to be broadside within 3-6feet from the intermediate obstruction and it's going to stay broadside until it stops

The cast bullet from the 45-70 it'll deflect, the upward trajectory pretty much guarantees that it did, but the one thing you can be 100% sure of is that cast bullets aren't going to expand much (if at all) at 45-70 speeds.

what they do is penetrate.

That being said the reputation of cartridges like the 45-70 for "Brush busting" is more related to their slower twist rate

And their short length relative to width makes their attitude on impact less than critical

I'm thinking that the 45-70 bullet was indeed "upset" by striking a twig but not deflected materially from it's path.

It tumbled

but the term "tumbling" is often misunderstood
think of the tumbling bullets flight to be like that of a thrown football with a "wobble" rather than the end-over end tumble of a place-kicked football

Basically it was wobbling in flight and simply happened to be oriented nose up when striking the animal and thus the initial atitude the bulled skipped upwards like a sufboard inside the animal.

the 300 mag bullet probably started to expand from striking a twig, and then tumbled violently because of it's faster twist then struck the animal broadside and came apart.

Remember that the bullet is designed to strike the animal nose first, but it didn't, it also likely struck already deformed.

Bullets don't like brush.

It wasn't a bullet failure by ANY definition I would agree with
because bullet are supposed to leave the barrel and strike ONLY the target animal.

If it strikes some other object first it's striking the animal at all is Serendipity in it's purest form.

Basically you suffered no bullet failures.
You shot at a deer hit something else instead
then by slight luck the bullet managed to wind up almost where it was intended to go and you recovered both animals.

All things considered in their proper context you just got lucky, VERY lucky.

AD

Maybe cast bullets in a 45.70 just don't penetrate that well?

quote:

Originally posted by Fjold:
Maybe cast bullets in a 45.70 just don't penetrate that well?

Yea right...

I think Allan hit it right on the head. I have seen this happen when bullets hit something before they hit the target. Bullets that are wobbly or completely tumbling will do really strange things. If you want to do a test get a 3 foot square of cardboard and put it about 25 yards behind some brush so you can just see it. Shoot whatever gun you want at the cardboard. You will be amazed how few rounds hit a 3 square foot target. It will really make you thing twice before shooting thru brush again.

Even better shoot a 2ft square of painted plywood
with a few sticks 4-6 feet in front of it.

You'll be amazed how many irregularly shaped holes
you'll get from bullet fragments.

and just how often you'll miss it completely.....

With a 45-70, 444Marlin or 44mag you'll rarely fail to get a BIG hole for each shot,


High velocity rounds? they have sufficient energy to cause the bullet to disintegrate, and whatever the impact does
is added to by the centrifugal forces acting on the bullet
at right angle to it's longitudinal axis after it has been deflected.

this can cause the major fragments to fly considerably off the intended flight path.

Remember that with a 1:10" twist that winchester failsafe bullet is rotating at more than 200,000rpm
Deflection and conversion of angular momention along the longitudinal axis to rotation along the transverse axis will slow the rotation considerably (the total rotational INERTIA will be unchanged)
the bullet will still be rotating along an axis parallel to it's original rotation even though the bullet has been rotated as much as 90degrees.. but think of the forces being applied to a bullet when it'll still be rotating at 50,000rpm...

the rotation is still likely to tear the bullet apart, even without considering any other subsequent impacts
or aerodynamic forces....


In practice Cup and core bullets will tend to splatter the target area with chips and chunks, while premium bullets will make atleast one hole from some solid section of the bullet that proves resistant to being torn apart.

THIS is the situation that Fail-Safe, Barnes and Nosler Partitions are made for, not as "all aspect penetrators"

Fast rotating Cup and core bullets striking a hardwood twig the size of your thumb will behave like varmint bullets to anything behind that twig if indeed they don't simply disintegrate in flight as a result of the imposed dynamic forces.

This is why bullets deflect so much, it's their own rotation forces that do most of the work of changing their direction, not the actual impact that upsets the rotation.

AD

The term " brush busting" should have been banned years ago ! I've had 45-70 and 44 mag and others deflect and missed the deer.That's why I use a scope here thougth ranges are short -to find a hole in the brush. In two of those cases I looked for and found the culprit .Bullets can do strange things. Twice I had a 300 gr jhp make a 2" entrance hole and 1" exit hole through the lungs -easy tracking !! I switched to the 300 Nosler Partition ! Bullets can kill by secondary projectile - if they hit bone the bone fragments can penetrate great distances through the animal. Look thorugh the forum and you'll find photos of bullets that tumbled and were strangley distorted.Don't retire your 45-70 because of one bad situation...Happiness is a warm 45-70 !

Don't worry mete, I only put it away until I have a chance to make sure that the load I am using is sound and brush was the cause, instead of a cast bullet being pushed to fast and not properly stabilizing. I'm just not in to wounding animals, and prefer them to be DRT. I was neglecting my CZ 550 anyway. Apparently I made the CZ happy because I shot 3 more with it.

trekker111, I have been pushing hard cast bullets with gas checks fast out of my 45-70 for a long time. Never a problem, it sounds like you hit something before the animal was hit.

The 45-70 is a hard round to beat.

A couple of years ago a co-worker and his brother had an argument about brush busting a 50 cal muzzle loader vrs ones 243. They set up a piece of cardboard in some light brush with a heart sized orange circle that they could see well enough through the brush. I think they ea fired about 5 rounds of each gun marking the hits. I can't tell you the exact final tally (and the test isn't scientific) but in the end run they called it a "tie". Both had defections and both had a bullet or two that would have made a killing hit. Bottom line is the muzzle loader seemed just as prome to problems and the little 243.