Quoted directly from the Woodleigh website:


For other heavy dangerous game, we recommend and have proven from much experience, the use of soft nose bullet for the first shot, followed by FMJ if needed. Use the heaviest bullets available for your chosen cartridges. Heavy bullets are much more reliable at moderate velocity than light bullets at high velocity.Good quality FMJ's are essential for second and subsequent shots on other heavy dangerous game. In the case of buffalo the bullet may have to penetrate rear end muscles (which will pull most soft nose up), the large grass packed stomach, to finally reach the vitals of the chest cavity.Similarly a rear raking shot will necessitate the bullet penetrating the stomach before reaching the vitals. No soft point made can be relied on to penetrate sufficiently for a successful rear end or raking shot. Also, head or spine shots on a charging animal are very risky. Only good quality solids can be relied on for this, such as Woodleigh's steel clad FMJ bullets.

Read it for yourself Nigel right here under the heading of "Other Dangerous Game". How long do you want to continue this?

http://www.woodleighbullets.co...rence/dangerous-game

OK, Steel clad.

I class a steel "insert" to be a steel inserted core penetrator like on the SS109 5.56mm round.

I can certainly see how the Woodleigh steel jacketed FMJs will not have much 'compressive give' to them when looking at the massive sidewall thickness they have been constructed with and also appear to have full bore contact all along these sidewalls, unless they taper to undersized?

There are FMJs and FMJs. The RWS FMJ had a much thinner sidewall construction and I guess this was in deference to many of the earlier firearms they were likely used in. The profiles below show the sidewall thickness difference quite dramatically.

RWS 400gr .423" FMJ


Woodleigh FMJ

The Woodleigh's taper. They are only full size
near the base and forward but they taper off.

I have been shooting old English doubles for a lifetime, mostly 450-400s I have shot hundreds, perhaps thousands or Woodleighs both solids and softs through the old "soft barrels?" I have also shot hundreds of GS Customs and North Fork monolithics through them and today not one problem has cropped up..

I suggest that improper reloading and too much powder is the culprit and the bullets get blamed perhaps, but then as many double gun shooters as I know out there, and I don't know but one that has blown up his double and that was Barry Van Heerden and he was shooting left in camp ammo from a clients gun, Lord knows what it was loaded with..

There is more voodoo in the double rifle world than in the bowells of deepest Africa.