If some Meplat is good.. is more better?

[DougGuy]

Any feedback from hunters who have first hand experience with these WIDE bullets on thin skinned game? Especially compared to a standard XTP/GDHP type projectiles?

XTP and GD both are made with soft lead cores swaged into a gilding metal jacket. The lead in the core doesn't stay together worth a dang once the jacket is shed, it is frangible and pieces of it break off the core rapidly once it loses the jacket.

The wide meplat of the 45 caliber projectiles is already as large as a fully expanded and mushroomed 30 caliber jacketed bullet and we all know how lethal that is, so now you have the lethality of the expanded 30 caliber, with the momentum of a much larger and much heavier boolit, and an alloy that is tough but still malleable enough to stay together (where it retains much of it's original weight) so a complete pass through is pretty much the norm.

I got away from the XTP when I started having to pick through a wound channel for tiny pieces of bullet material, definitely didn't want to eat right up to the hole with a mess like that.

Haven't taken game with the OWC yet, but it's first up as my go to handgun load for the deer woods. No HP needed, nor recommended.

[oldcanadice]

I used to read everything by Elmer that I could get my hands on and I seem to remember that Keith showed or believed that wadcutters lose accuracy at longer ranges. I think they became unstable out of pistols after 50 yards or so (to which they were very accurate and cut clean holes in paper targets). Anyone else remember this? As an aside; I don't think the standard twist-tables would help to clarify things here because the G1 shape is assumed to be kind of pointed. Anyone else remember about this?

[1hole]

Question #2.... what about full wadcutters for hunting or even turning a bullet around so that the flat base is pointed forward? This would theoretically give you near 100% meplat.

Good idea! SWC bullets loaded backwards would make them boat tail wadcutters for the best of all worlds!

(I really don't have a clue how well that would work but it does sound like something someone else - not me! - should experiment with.)

[Char-Gar]

First you have to find them. Then you have to shoot them in a vital place. Only then do you need to be concerned about the size of the meplat. Any of the above bullets will do just fine.

[bluejay75]

You don’t NEED the largest meplat. Most WFN or WLN has enough that even if it doesn’t expand will provide a wide would channel and complete pass through with most any 275-300 grain bullet in 45 caliber down to 900 or so FPS.

I’m my experience most WFN bullets want to expand and just adds to the killing effect. I have never captured one in game. Only one I have in all my years of hunting with them was a up close finishing shot after a neck shot.

[ddixie884]

There was an article in a gun magazine 40 or 45 years ago about loading bullets backwards to get a wad cutter effect. I believe it concluded that they gave performance on the order of real wad cutters........

[oldcanadice]

Back before good expanding bullets were available, it was a thing (as a self-defense load) to load hollow base lead wadcutters backwards to have the giant 'cup point' forward. I made lots of them and they would impressively explode a gallon jug full of water at 20 feet -- you'd get wet from the huge spray. Unfortunately (or not), they were impossibly inaccurate at 40 feet and had no penetration in anything solid -- the bullets just blew up like a varmint bullet. You'd go to jail almost anywhere today if you ever shot someone with one. BTW: If you try this now for fun, be sure to put a gas-check on the bullet in the case. We messed up a ruger hogleg 357 barrel before we learned that.

We never messed with solid wadcutters loaded backwards because they were essentially the same one way of the other.

[TexasAg11]

Ddixie & Oldcanadice, these are the types of war stories I love about this forum! Awesome insights and really interesting feedback. Much appreciated folks!