Lead Ammo - First Hand Reports
Dan Goad is a friend of mine from Southern CA. He recently completed a successful hunt at Vandenberg AFB, and while he was able to fill both of his tags, he wasn’t totally impressed with the performance of the Barnes 12ga slugs. Here’s his report:
Phillip,
As you may remember, I’m a retired Industrial Hygienist well trained in observation and a student off cause and effect. And you know how I feel about lead-free ammo.
I’ve now officially hunted with the new lead-free alternative ammunition and am now able to provide a first hand report. Since my partner and I tagged out, I’ll also provide the results of 4 autopsies.
First, I’d like to say that I’ve always been a huge fan of Nosler Partitions for many years, both in .30 cal and in 12 ga. slugs and have killed many deer with both calibers. I know how the Nosler’s perform when it relates to accuracy and how they behave at terminal impact. This is the standard against which I judge my recent experience with Federals Vital Shok 12 ga in 2 ¾, loaded with Barnes Tipped Triple Shock Expander slugs.
The folks at Federal claim that you can get 4 inch groups at 150 yds with this TTSX, if you use a fully rifled shot gun. They get high marks from me on distance. They will indeed shoot 150 yds and I feel comfortable taking 200 yd shots with this round. I think the 4 inch group part is optimistic. Although I have shot less than 3 inch groups at 100yd, I couldn’t do it consistently, even with the shotgun in a rest and bolted to the bench.
I took my first deer at 163 yds on an uphill shot, taking him through the spine (forgot to aim low). It didn’t kill him. In fact, other than breaking the spine, it did very little other damage and required a finishing shot to the neck. The second shot didn’t kill him either, right away.
The second deer was a 25 yd quartering away shot, the behind the left forequarter. It was a perfect heart-lung combo taken from a slightly elevated position. I could closely observe the impact and the result. My experience with Nosler slugs (385 grains) led me to expect an instant knock down with this shot. It didn’t happen, the deer made it 25 yards before going down.
My partners deer were both shot at about 25 yes, one went down instantly. The other was wounded twice, once in the leg and once in the right rear hind quarter. This second deer took about 1 ½ of tracking with very little blood trail. He went about ¼ mile before finally dying.
We field dressed and skinned all 4 deer. All shots were complete pass through hits. There was a small entrance and exit wound and the wound channels were about 2 inches around the flight path, even when the bullet passed through bones. The evidence suggests that the rounds didn’t expand, or if they did, not enough to cause a DRT wound channel. I’d call this over penetration. Jellification was low to moderate and I’d call the tissue damage the same. The smaller wound channel did equate to less meat loss.
There is good news. We took three deer to the butcher and he saved what he recovered from the meat. It was one wad and 1 plastic ballistic tip. No copper debris what so ever.
In my opinion, the Barnes TTSX is a satisfactory round, but rather unforgiving. You must make a perfect kill shot to bring down an animal. Otherwise, hone up on your tracking skills.
It certainly has the range to do the job, but even at extended range it did much less damage then I expected from such a large slug.
Note to Phillip: A guy in camp showed me a Remington Copper Solid that he recovered from a pig after taking a Texas heart shot. The round transited about 2 feet of pig and lodged in the chest. Only 2 petals opened on the hollow point. I can make this lead-free stuff work, but the manufacturers need to work on it some. These Barnes would be great on African big game or moose/elk. Way too much hitting power for these thin skinned CA deer. Talked to buddies that used the e-tip and they claim the same problems, marginal accuracy and over penetration, but that’s second hand info.
Anyway, we had a great time during the rut, there were deer everywhere we looked. I may skip the spring exotic hunt this year (saving for some swavroski’s) and do the pig o’ rama instead. I GOTTA figure out this pig thing, its killing me. I’m a lousy pig hunter and I figure I can learn at the POR. Look forward to hunting with you again
Dan (ltdann)
I’ve never been a big fan of shotgun slugs, so none of this strikes me as unusual. Getting a .68cal hunk of lead (or copper) to expand seems like it would take an awful lot of resistance. Most of the deer I’ve seen shot by slugs went down, sure enough, but didn’t show much evidence of expansion. I imagine the copper slugs are no difference.
The other thing, since I’m on about it, is that I’ve got a real issue with all this marketing of shotgun slugs as 200 yard rounds. The shotgun was never made for that kind of work, and a big ol’ hunk of metal loafing along at a sub 2000 fps muzzle velocity… even with the Barnes loads. Sure, they can tweak the accuracy with sabots and rifled barrels, but there’s only so much you can do for terminal performance. I believe that this trend is going to increase the number of wounded and lost animals… again, regardless if we’re talking lead or copper, but maybe even moreso with the non-lead slugs.
Enough of my little rant. I don’t knock Dan for taking his shot. I’m sure the accuracy is there, and I know Dan wouldn’t take the shot if he didn’t think it was do-able… but I just don’t believe the ammo is up to the task.
So what do ya’ll think? This is two reports so far by folks who aren’t so enamoured of the Barnes performance. You’ve read my own reports, and my experiences with the non-lead. You may also have noticed the poll on the page as well, that shows about 65% positive reports over a couple of negatives (oddly enough, only one respondent reported making a bad shot).
My experience is VERY limited, but I can report that in two kills with copper in a .270, both shots passed through completely - one a 30-yard shot to the neck of an 85 pound pig (instant death), the other probably a 75-yard lung shot to an adult Corsican sheep (one minute to bleed out).
I’m guessing your friend Dan is right about the need for extra accuracy. Part of me says, Well, duh, of course people should practice. But the other part of me knows a lot of people don’t and won’t. (And, of course, there are those anecdotal reports of people being so freaked out about the high cost of copper that they aren’t even sighting in before heading out into the field - doh!)
I suppose I’m lucky - I’ve killed big game with lead once (and it was a terrible shot), so copper will probably be all I know.
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:40 am
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