Pics of Recovered Projectiles Wanted

[rodwha]

I'm looking for pics of recovered muzzleloader (soft lead) projectiles from game animals along with a little detail about the projectile's venture such as powder charge, distance to critter, and trail through said animal.

I've read most people who find their ball on the offside note that it has mushroomed. Yet I've read several who claim it's near perfectly round still despite crashing through bone.

I asked a knowledgeable fellow on a traditional forum the approximate velocity at which soft lead will expand on game and his reply was above 800 fps. I find it hard to believe a ball wouldn't expand when shot with a typical (70-100 grns) load as it likely strikes above 1000 fps, if the >800 fps rule can be trusted.

[BK7saum]

I'll try to round up some pics. In regard to the lead round ball every one I've recovered was about 1/4" thick and almost the size of a quarter. These were hornady swaged pure lead balls. I would imagine even a little bit of anything in the lead might harden them enough to not expand.

Brad

[rodwha]

So about 1 X .25"? Were these initially .50 cal?

[BK7saum]

Yes. I forgot mention that it was a .50. The circumference of the flattened ball is usually fairly thin and thickens toward the middle. The flattened ball is usually lodged under the skin on the off side of the deer. The deer around here usually dress 80-100 for does and 110-150 for bucks with an exceptional buck field dressing 175 or a little more.

[rodwha]

Our typical bucks (Hill Country) are closer to your does.

[rking22]

My experience has been same as BK7saum. I generally get a pasthru(c70%of the time) on TN deer, simular to his, with 60 to 75 gr FFF in a 50. The only one I shot with a 90 grFFF charge did not exit and shattered the far side shoulder"ball" and stopped there about 1/4 inch thick in the middle and bigger than a quarter. 60 yard shot entered just behind near shoulder. I generally always shoot to hit the far shoulder, aiming, "thru" the deer. With a wheelweight ball, I have no idea what they look like as I have never found one ! Deer dosen't seem to know the difference , just have one rifle that likes WW better than dead soft. Shoot the same general load in all my 50s, 60 to 80 gr range of FFF. Hope that helps.

[Omnivore]

This is a commercial, swaged lead .495" ball from Speer. It was patched, loaded over 110 grains of Goex 2F, fired from a Lyman Deerstalker, 24" barrel, 48" twist, fired 85 yards into a mature Northwest white tail buck, in a quartering away shot. I aimed for the heart. The ball struck the hind quarter, penetrated the ham, busted the full gut, busted the liver, punched a hole in the diaphragm, wrecked the off side lung, missing the heart by two or three inches, glanced off one rib and came to rest just under the hide near the far shoulder. 25" of penetration, measure by sticking the ram rod through the wound channel. I commented at the time that I thought it was in good enough shape to be loaded and fired again. Most of the time, the same load will fully penetrate and so I have no projectile to show. Last season' buck had his far side scapula busted into several pieces near the heavy joint-- Pass-through. Exit hole about the same as the entry hole, which has been my experience every time.

My son once hit a mature doe straight into the heart, which must have been in its maximum blood load during the beat, because it blew the heart completely apart. All chambers wide open, flat like a pancake, when I took it out. That ball, having dumped it's energy by exploding the heart, stopped just under the hide on the far side, causing a large "wart" on the dead deer. Broadside shot, range inside 25 yards, same 110 grain load. The ball was in better shape than the one shown. Those are the only two balls that failed to pass clean through. Many more have passed through, often cutting two or more ribs and one glancing off the spine.

[Omnivore]

I'll offer a theory, and it's only a theory, which is that the round ball is less likely to mushroom, all else being equal, because it has less mass behind the striking surface. Because it has less mass, it will slow down more abruptly on impact-- There's less inertia behind the "bullet nose" and so there's less energy to go into deformation of the ball. At distance, the round ball will of course strike at a lower velocity for the same reason. However, most of my deer were taken at 20 to 45 yards, so impact velocity will have been super sonic except for the 85 yard shot represented by the ball shown in the above post.

Another theory is that, for some reason, the Speer balls, made specifically for muzzle loading, are harder than others. I haven't tested for that, but now that I think about it I will. I don't have a hardness tester, so it will have to be done by less precise means. However, some people have said that a swaged ball would likely be softer than a cast ball of the same composition, due to work-softening.

I don't have the answer. All I have is experience and observation in many cases. I use more powder than some people, and have have so far observed no signs significant deformation in game animals whatsoever.

[Omnivore]

I asked a knowledgeable fellow on a traditional forum the approximate velocity at which soft lead will expand on game and his reply was above 800 fps.

i don't think it's possible to put a number on it so simply like that. For one thing there's a huge difference between old, tough muscle tissue and the more ephemeral lung tissue that we're usually aiming for. The heart is very dense, and so if you aim through the "boiler room" in a broadside shot, and only hit skin and lung, as opposed to hitting skin, bone, lungs, the heart, and more bone there's a very large difference there.

Also, projectiles recovered from game will tend to be, almost by definition, those which happened, for whatever reason, to deform more, and so the sample of recovered projectiles is greatly skewed toward more deformation.

[bhuch5]

Just last week my son and I each shot and killed a mule deer. We use the same load in 2 different rifles. Both rifles are .54 cal, his a Cabela's sporter hawken (1 x 48 twist) and mine a Sharon (1 x 60) on a homemade underhammer. We both shot a bare (alox coated) patchless .562 lead roundball over a lubed felt wad and 90 gr Goex 3f. His shot was 40 yd headon thru the neck bone. Ball traveled about 14" thru the neck and backstrap and was just under the skin over the shoulder. Mushroomed to about the size of a nickel.
121386
121388
My shot was uphill quartering away broadside at 80 yds. Ball broke a rib going in, turned both lungs to jelly , broke far side rib and exited high in the shoulder and kept going. Buck took about 10 steps and dropped right there.
I had expected to recover both balls just under the skin with more expansion too. This batch may have had a bit of extra alloy which hardened them a little more than pure, but not sure. By the way we had a blast...literally.
Good shooting, Bruce H

[rodwha]

Omnivore: But it seems most people who recover a ball from a deer have had it mushroom. It seems less than maybe 25% of the people I've read about recover a round ball.

I recall seeing an old (50's?) military video where many different projectiles were recorded traveling through ballistics gelatin with a bone inside of it. They tested an 1860 Army with a ball traveling at 600 fps IIRC, and though it busted through the bone it was nearly perfectly round.

[rodwha]

I'm a bit curious as to what others think likely to happen when either of these bullets are used against just flesh or flesh and bone when pushed by either 30 (Rem '58) or 35 grns (ROA) of 3F Triple 7 or Olde E:

http://accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=45-170C-D.png

http://accuratemolds.com/bullet_detail.php?bullet=45-195C-D.png

I designed these with a very wide meplat as it seems expansion cannot be counted on, and so if it does not expand it ought to cut a nice wide hole, and if it does expand the expansion begins at the .375" diameter.

[Omnivore]

Rodwha; One way to find out is shoot a raw pot roast or hindquarter. Still; that's all meat as opposed to the skin, light bone and lung tissue of a typical kill shot. If I had to guess I'd say that with a square impact they'd both deform at least a little, due to the large meplat creating a sharper pressure spike, with the heavier bullet deforming more than the lighter one. Being that the velocity won't be all that different, the extra mass stacked behind the striking surface will have more of a dendency to start it mushrooming.

But that's a guess. You can already see from the above posts, and many past threads, that there is no single answer that can tell you in advance just what will happen. Your main concern is going to be shot placement, and with a good hit any of those loads is going to do the job.

In the back of the book, "Percussion Revolvers" by Cumston and Bates, there is a first hand account of shooting a California pig with a round ball from a Remington New Army. One shot-- The pig just dropped and flopped. Done deal. On the other hand I've seen video of some yahoos shooting a pig with a 44 Magnum and requiring several shots and some chasing of the wounded pig, plus some more shots, to get it done. They had no clue as to what constitutes a proper kill shot. There's another of a guy using a 40 S&W pocket pistol to drop a pig with one shot, and your proposed loads for the 44 C&Bs are at least the match, and probably better than, the 40, energy-wise, and certainly better than any pocket 40. You can drop a full-grown steer with a 22 LR round nose if you stick it in his ear, too, but if you shoot him ten times in the gut with it he could live for days and days, or even weeks, before succuming to infection.

Shot placement, shot placement, shot placement. It's been said thousands of times, to the point it's become a joke of sorts, but it's true.

[rodwha]

I had to reopen that book as I had never actually finished reading it all.

I've seen a video in which the guy used something much more powerful (.500 S&W?) and went through them all with the hog still going. That kind of stuff makes me angry.

A kid was using a .222 Rem and shot his tiny (probably no more than 75 lbs field dressed) yearling 5 times! He obviously needed more range time.

[Omnivore]

Point being of course (and marketing notwithstanding) that's it not so much the equipment as the hunter.

Col. Jeff Cooper, who was a young man hunting in the early 20th century, fought in W.W. II and startet the school of the modern pistol technique, wrote in the early 2000s that at no time in his life did he feel under-gunned. He went on to say, many times, that for over 100 years we've had all the firearms and bullets we need, and so the problem for the marketer is to make you dissatisfied with what you already have. He further lamented that this has resulted in ****fing the focus to equipment rather than where it belongs, which is on training and technique.

I submit that you would have to shoot a WHOLE LOT of pigs (or deer, etc.) before you could begin to discern the difference between your two bullets. The reason being, and this has been mny thesis for some time now, that every situation is different. When I use the phrase "all else being equal" I am departing from reality because all else is never equal. Pick which ever projectile/gun combination seems to shoot most accurately for you, and the closest to point of aim, with a good hunting charge, and go with it. Then practice shooting in different situations (weather, uphill, downhill, and at un-measured distances, different lighting conditions, different target contrast with the enviornment, etc.) because that experience will prove far more valuable than knowing in advance the exact differences in terminal ballistics between two or three similar bullets you're contemplating.

Then come back and tell us your hunting stories, because I'd be interested.