Lloyd Smale
04-07-2009, 06:12 AM
hardest dying animal ive ever seen. She shot it through both front sholders with a 50 beowulf shooting a 420 grain punch bullet. When she shot it it dropped but she hit herself in the eye with the scope and was bleading baddly and it got back up. I took the gun from her and shot it dead on in the chest. It went down again and got back up and started running. I put a cast bullet (we only had two punch bullets) in the neck and it went down on its knees and got back up again. I put two more in the lungs and it went down but was still breathing after a couple minutes so to put it out of its missery i put a 44 325 cast slug in its brain. Didnt even phaze it. I put another in it same results. Al put a 4440 in its brain and it was still breathing. the third 44 325 finally made it quit breathing. We recovered 4 bullets. the first punch whistled right through the front shoulders. the one i recovered went in the chest head on and was found under the skin on hind quarter. It penetatrated the lenght of the buffalo broke the back leg and came to rest under the skin. Other then rifling marks it could have been reloaded. Velocity on all of these loads was about 1600 fps. One case recovered was one of the 44s shot into the brain. It was cast out of #2 and sheared right in half on some bone. It was not fractured but looked like half the bullet was wiped away, Not the nose but lengthwise. The two bullets shot through the lungs were 420 lfngc cast out of straight linotype. They both were found lodged under the skin on the far side. Both had there noses rivited (slightly mushroomed) they looked like someone hit them in the nose with a hammer. I would have never thought that a linotype bullet would have showed results like that on a perfect broadside lung shot. But i guess a 1500 lb animal is different then a 500 lb animal. Could be a rib cause the damage but to have both look about identical id thinking it was just hide which by the way was about twice as thick as any aniamal ive ever seen. this sure wasnt bison hide! What did i learn. There a tough dammed aniamal. Punch bullets like weve know blow away cast for penetration. especially if you want to run velocity over 1300 fps. Maybe the beowulf could stand a heavier bullet. Something with a little more sectional density. One kill doesnt show much but if i used that same bullet i think it try it at about 1400 fps instead of 1600. I also saw again something ive seen many times. Linotype bullets do not fracture! At least not a normal cast velocity. I wouldnt think of shooting another animal this size with anything softer then linotype and would like to experiement with something even harder. Maybe monotype. I also learned not to retract the stock on the beowulf so its more comfortable for the wife to use the scope. She has a real nice cresent around her eye and i couldnt get her within a mile of that gun again!