Some weeksback I was shooting at a local in door range. I was shooting a 44mag. One of the rounds shed its jacket when it hit the backstop. The reason I know this is because the jacket came back the 25 yards and hit a fellow shooter in the cheek. I was using 240gr Speer soft points. I see this as a failure of the bullet and I am looking to changing to another brand. The brands I am looking at are Sierra and Hornady XTP. I would like information on them in 9mm,44mag and 30cal. Thank you for your information and time.

What was the backstop made of? Chances are, this is NOT bullet failure. Under hard impact, most jacketed revolver bullets, other than absolute premiums, will come unglued, so to speak. A little more info as to the backstop, angle of backstop, etc. would be helpful...

It is a commercial backstop. I don't know what it is made of, it looks like metal. It is curved and I have never had any other bullets do this at the range, nor have I seen this happen to any other shooter. It probly was just a freak thing. I just don't want to take any chances, a little higher and the man could have lost an eye.

I've seen this before with metal backstops. I don't think it was bullet failure.It was probably caused by the angle of the backstop. I hope the guy was wearing eye protection.
Rich Jake

Thats why my club only allows lead indoors, you don't need jacketed bullets with gallery loads.

I Shooter,

This is typical of most conventional cup jacket bullets. While this happens less when the bullet is shot into game animals, it still happens enough to be a concern.

You must remember that we are talking handgun bullets, not rifle bullets. When a rifle bullet sheds a jacket, nearly all penetration stops because the jacket is a large part of the bullet weight. In a big bore handgun, the jacket is very light compared to the core of the bullet and while penetration is still compromised, it is not nearly as bad as in rifle bullets.

There is a simple way to solve this problem if you feel it is a problem. Speer make a line of bullets called the Uni-Core line. These bullets include three different designs, a FMJ, a SP and the Gold Dot HP. All have bonded cores and simply will not shed a jacket under any impact. I have driven the 230 gr HP .452" bullet to 1500 fps into a water trap 5 feet from the muzzle to try to destroy this bullet. The result was a nearly perfectly flat flower shaped object nearly 1.5" in diameter. It still weighted 215 gr.

There are several uni-core bullets in both 9mm and 44. As far as 30 cal bullet, it really depends on what round you are using

As far as the XTP and Sierra bullets go, they will behave the same as the conventional Speer as they are conventional cup jacket designs.

The nice thing about the Speer Uni-Cores and Gold Dots are that they are only slightly more expansive then regular bullets.

Another way to solve this problem using conventional cup jacket bullets is to increase the bullet weight that you are using. For example, if you are using say a 240 gr XTP in a 44 Mag, you could increase bullet weight to 300 gr and jacket seperation will be reduced a bit.

Remember that the jacket seperation can be caused by a few things. It can happen when a bullet impacts something that will grip the jacket and pull it from the core. It can happen from excessive speed causing the bullet to over expand and loose grip on the core.

What most shooters do not realize thought is that to low of a velocity will also promote jacket/core seperation. Upon low velocity impact, the bullet nose does not expand much at all but it does enough to just buckle the jacket away from the core. this seperation line allows the jacket to snag on the target media and pull it off the core. This is also true in low velocity rifle bullet impacts.

Hope this helps a little.

Good Shooting!!!

50