www.impalabullets.co.za

What is your opinion, or you experience, with this bullets for hunting big game ? Look at "EUROPE" in the homepage and you have recommendations to use light solids for this purpose !!!!!!!

They are great for shooting medium sized game with your big bore...They flatten trajectory (to 300m) and reduce recoil. If you want to shoot a buffalo choose a bullet with a name like TSX, Swift A frame, etc...tried, tested, works. If you want to shoot elephant do not even think about impala! they break up (we shot a dead ele with one from a .375 just to see. bullet failed to reach the brain from frontal.

quote:

Originally posted by Ganyana:
They are great for shooting medium sized game with your big bore...They flatten trajectory (to 300m) and reduce recoil. If you want to shoot a buffalo choose a bullet with a name like TSX, Swift A frame, etc...tried, tested, works. If you want to shoot elephant do not even think about impala! they break up (we shot a dead ele with one from a .375 just to see. bullet failed to reach the brain from frontal.

Could we perhaps see a photo; would be very interesting as the material is supposed to be much harder and tougher than brass. How deep did the bullet go? Was a tooth struck on the way in or was it straight and centre in the skull?

Also dif the bullet veer off course with its very sharply pointed nose?

Warrior

The bullets tumble very soon after impact (even on soft skined game). We did some high speed photo's of this for Pierre van der Walts book - big bore cartridges. Also supplied Pierre with the photo of the failed impala bullet and broken in half PMP monolithic solids and a whole bunch of other bullets that have come appart spectacularly on the Zim proficiency exams over the years.

Just because it is Brass doesn't mean you cannot break it. At a certain speed each type of bullet material will fail. Steal Jacketed solids like Woodleigh are great u to 2500fps. Good brass bullets like Barnes are fine up to around 2600fps or so. Less well built solids are only suitable at lower velocity.

Also, not all grades of brass are equal. Barnes has improved alot over the years. They started too brittle, then were too soft (they nushroomed and bent) and today they are pretty darn good. From experience, too soft is actually better than too brittle. I made bullets for Zim parks out of pure copper for the remaining .404's and .425's for many years. They mushroomed but never broke up.

Shape is also critical- See Pierre's book and accompanying photo's for full details but basically, flat nosed is best, very blunt a good alternative, and the sharper the bullet the less reliable penetration you get (on elephant - armour plate is a different story)

The composition of the Impala bullet differs from the typcal 70/30 Brass bulet: -

57% Copper
40% Zinc
3% Lead

What I have witnessed so far is that the bullet is tough and does not yield or break at all in game. In small calibers one typically would notice a slight bending of the tip, wheras in bigger calibers the tip does not bend at all. On elephant there is no question that a Flat Meplat bullet is the bullet of choice.

Rudi Campbell, a friend of mine, shot a Blue Wildebeest with his 458 Lott with a 300 grainer Impala bullet and the wounding was awesome - far beyond what one normally expects from a non-expanding solid.

Here is an example of the 180 grain 9,3 mm bullet - a bullet shot by Johan Rossouw of Krugerdorp - he first shot his first animal and retrieved it, then reloaded it again (apparent perfect dimentions), and then went out and shot his 2 nd animal with it. Now that must be a first. In attendance was PH Gustav Drotski from Arizona Game Ranch and he was quite amazed at the performance of the bullet. These pictures depict the flawless bullet after retrieval and the wound channel that it created:






Kobus du Plessis of Centurion, designer of the Impala bullet recently introduced a second design (RNFP = Round Nose Flat Point), as can be seen in the next photos - 170 GR IMPALA RNFP shot in his 30-06 Spr at 2,690 fps:-











Staight-line penetration with the RNFP seems quite evident here with less meat damage than with the Spire-Point design.
Kobus tested his design himself on game before making it available to the public.
Despite many critisisms levelled at the Impala bullet it sells very well in Europe.
Perhaps some Europeans can comment on their experience for us.

Just got my first consignment in 9,3 mm from Kobus a few months back to try out.
Will be back with my own pics later on.

Warrior

Nice example of an Impala bullet recovered from a dry pack of glossy magazines - tough target media, but it certainly can be compared with the hardness of big game's bone structure. That makes this example below



say something loud and clear, namely:

Bent bullets do not penetrate in a straight line!

As confirmed by collani in his post dated 1 November 2009:

quote:

The bullet tumbled after approx. 17cm of penetration. The bullet has exit the ballistic soap block after approx. 65cm of penetration.

Not acceptable at all, not even in medium sized game hunting.

I don't know a thing about Impala Pointed or RN solids but the pictures of the RN solid kill is exactly what I experienced years ago with the 300 RN solids from Barnes in the .338 Win Mag. on typical large game. They were heavy jacket copper clad lead with the jacket swaged shut in FRONT so that it had a tiny hole there. They made them for years. If you hit something other than non-vitals, RN solids kill very well.

quote:

Nice example of an Impala bullet recovered from a dry pack of glossy magazines -

I suspect Kobus did not design the Impala bullet to shoot a dry pack of glossy magazines. The stated medium (dry glossy magazines) hardly mimicks the flesh of game animals.

What we would rather like to hear is hunting reports on a variety of animals. I believe plenty Red Stag is being shot with Impala bullets in Europe. Is there anybody out there to send reports in on this to share with us.

Warrior

@all

Well I tested these new Bullets from SA.

Due to the fact that I have access to a ballistic labor in Switzerland I tested different kind of Bullets available in the market of Switzerland.

To get an impression of this bullet I bought 20 rounds of the cartridge 9,3x62 loaded with the Impala Bullets from Impala bullets in Austria.

I have shot this cartridge at 300 m distance (approx. 328.09 yards) to estimate the real BC and to estimate the accuracy. Then I have tested this bullet with the ballistic soap to determinate the terminal performance of this bullet.

Here a picture of the bullets tested by me:
http://www.gian-marchet.ch/ima...6_18239700132983.jpg
From left to right:
- Cartridge .375 Holland & Holland Magnum
- Impala Bullet .375
- Impala Bullet .366 after the test at the ballistic labor in Thun Switzerland
- Impala Bullet .300
- Cartridge .300 Winchester Magnum

Here the results from the ballistic labor in Thun Switzerland:
Bullet speed Impala with the rifle 9,3x62 Sauer 202:
BC = 0.240 (and not BC 0.293, according to the values published in their Webpage!
GEE = 175m
V° = 890m/s
V100 = 766m/s
V200 = 652m/s
V300 = 549m/s
E° = 4620 Joules
E100 = 3419 Joules
E200 = 2480 Joules
E300 = 1754 Joules


What I got is the following terminal results:
http://www.gian-marchet.ch/PDF...ballistik-Impala.pdf

The bullet tumbled after approx. 17cm of penetration. The bullet has exit the ballistic soap block after approx. 65cm of penetration.

Good shooting and good hunting

Collani

I can't understand the point (no pun intended) of the Impala bullet.

For game requiring solids (elephant, buff 2nd shot, hippo), it's been known for 90 years that pointed solids do not penetrate in a straight line when compared with round nose or flat point solids. The Impala material is harder than other monolithic solids? So what? The others don't distort.

Good expanding bullets (Nosler partition) will create a more damaging wound channel because they expand. They also have adequate penetration on all game where soft points are recommended.

So what possible advantage does Impala offer?

quote:

Originally posted by Indy:
I can't understand the point (no pun intended) of the Impala bullet.

For game requiring solids (elephant, buff 2nd shot, hippo), it's been known for 90 years that pointed solids do not penetrate in a straight line when compared with round nose or flat point solids. The Impala material is harder than other monolithic solids? So what? The others don't distort.

Good expanding bullets (Nosler partition) will create a more damaging wound channel because they expand. They also have adequate penetration on all game where soft points are recommended.

So what possible advantage does Impala offer?

The only thing that I see that it does is give you a lightweight, higher BC bullet for your larger caliber rifles.

Well guys, for 2 weeks now you are talking about the wrong bullet! Impala offers 3 different designs (LS, RNFP, conical flat point) for different applications. While you CAN take buffalo and even elaphnat with the LS on a mixed bag hunt (the LS bullets have taken many buffs and eles and have proven to penetrate buffalo both sideways and lengthwise- see the bullets recovered from elephants in the catalogue-so much on "bended bullets"), the BIG GAME Impala is the RN.
Read more at www.impalabullets.at You can browse on line through the catalogue(English/German), download or print it.
The RN ist THE dangerous game bullet.High energy, deep penetration, extreme course stability and high shock effect due to the large cutting edge. This year a friend of mine on 3 hunts in Zimbabwe has killed 4 elefants with 4 shots. The 2 frontal brain shots at 20/6 yards,respectively were instant kills-no surprise. But even the 80y heart shot banned the bull on the spot and completely penetrated it also. #4 was a 100y lung shot and this one made it some 200y before he fell over.
In the rain forest of Central Africa the 420-grainer in the .458 Lott imediately dropped ele (brain) and buffalo (frontal chest), very much to the liking of the hunter whoe killed both at under 15 yards.
Any more questions? Go ahead!

OK. Referring to their web site, I conclude:

1. The LS has no useful purpose that I can see. There is a plethora of lightweight expanding bullets available and I can't see why a non-expanding one with a smaller wound channel would be an advantage.

2. The new RN looks like many other monolithic solids, and probably works for this purpose.

3. I am not competent to comment on the truncated cone pistol bullet.