357 and a big deer

[Moon Tree]

Dang the drug store lost my film. Good thing I used a digital camera. haha

In the shoulder blade entrance wound the hole measures .7255 x .480. The longest distance in the crack to the hole is 1.588.

The exit wound is .674 x 326. Two cracks 1.390. Longs like the bullet was tumbling at this point.

Two entrance wounds shoulder and back.

[Moon Tree]

RD, I measured the metplat of this Keith bullet. Best I can determine holding a pointy caliper to rounding then flat surface is it's between .2586 and .260. That gets it in the 72% range. The mould is a copy of the old Ideal mould.

I'm still thinking of buying Ranch Dog mould from NOE with a gas check. SC359-175-RF 4 cavity GS. But, I won't have time to get it in and play with it before my hog hunt Dec. 6th. I think I'll play with pushing the max. published load a little bit.

[akuser47]

Great info moon thanks for sharing

[mr surveyor]

Thanks for the pics Moonman. Good work and good info. It was good of you to document all your work.

jd


p.s. I'm glad the drugstore found your film .... they normally either lose mine or abuse it.

[Moon Tree]

I get so much great information from this site, it's a joy to be able to contribute a little every once in awhile. And I know how we all love pictures

[Ranch Dog]

RD, I measured the metplat of this Keith bullet. Best I can determine holding a pointy caliper to rounding then flat surface is it's between .2586 and .260. That gets it in the 72% range. The mould is a copy of the old Ideal mould.

That should do it! Just needs a little more steam behind it. A SAAMI spec load will push the bullet about 100 FPS out the end of the barrel, might sound silly, but when using this cartridge for big game that is an important 100 FPS I believe.

I'm still thinking of buying Ranch Dog mould from NOE with a gas check. SC359-175-RF 4 cavity GS. But, I won't have time to get it in and play with it before my hog hunt Dec. 6th. I think I'll play with pushing the max. published load a little bit.

New molds are great but why not try to push the current bullet a little bit harder. Not sure what alloy you are using. Even if it meant an increased cleaning schedule the extra punch might be worth it.

[triggerpull]

My initial thoughts on the large meplat RFN was it would "part" the skin/tissue more than the SWC would. Now I'm starting to think maybe the large meplat would actually mushroom better.

Morning Moon Tree, I started this yesterday morning but had a bunch of hunters here so ended having to save it as a draft as they kept me out all day.

If I remember right, a Keith style SWC uses a 70% meplat which is fairly flat point but my belief is that a hard cast bullet at high velocity must be used to take advantage of the "cookie cutting" potential the nose profile might offer.

My experience with pushing lead through well over a thousand big game animals in the last decade and half, is that any energy penetration robbed from an alloy mushrooming (failing) as it meets the resistance of hide, is not worth the magic of the hole a large meplat is capable of cutting.

The math behind the cut is well tested but only valid if the meplat is maintained through penetration.

(Velocity X meplat Diameter in inches)/400 = permanent wound channel

Here is what that would look like with your bullet at 80 yards. I took you 1700 FPS muzzle velocity and estimated the actual velocity at 80 yards.

Keith_SWC_WoundChannel.jpg

The cutting "authority" of the meplat is only maintained by meplat diameter and velocity. As resistance is met; hide, bone, and organs, the wound channel is reduced. As alloy fails (mushrooms) wound channel is reduced.

My feral hog hunting affords me an unbelievable opportunity and as I got into casting I used this opportunity to test everything under the sun. At the time, cutting a custom mold was cheap so it was easy to test nose diameters to see if wound channel theory held water. I tested bullets from a pointed nose to trash cans and alloys from pure lead to lino & monotype. What I found is that a meplat of approximately 72% was "King" for maintaining energy through a cut thus maximizing the hole cut through a critter. As far as alloys, I found that a water quenched Lyman #2 (straight or clone) with a bit of lead shot added was the "King" of home melts as far as delivering an alloy that could maintain the meplat as it passed through a big game animal.

I personally have never seen a "mushroomed" bullet, I've tested soft alloys, equal the hole cut through a critter with meplat and velocity. I have seen soft alloys not make it through a critter and in my thorn country that is a mortal sin. No blood trail equals a lost critter here. That is why I like meplat, the "shock" value of the meplat coupled with velocity is huge but cutting a one inch hole through a critter leaves an unbelievable blood trail.

Why don't you like hollow pointed lead bullets for big game hunting? I do think it would require A LOT of experimentation to find the perfect combination of hardness, toughness and speed to have a good bullet that would penetrate without fragmenting. And, that's just not even achievable in a cast bullet.

This has been my experience but more so that not they don't make it through a critter and that goes back to the blood trail thing.

Personally I don't shoot plain base cast bullets from a rifle. Too much fiddling to get them figured out and maximum velocity for the cartridge is always compromised. In that all of my shooting only steers me to hunting, I would probably go back to jacket bullets if I couldn't shoot gas checked bullets.

I'm kinda new to cast bullets and was wondering what you thought about these--just rolled a batch last night.

They are Cast Performance 255 gr WFNGC driven by 'lil gun for my 41 mag blackhawk. The bullets seem very well made and present a fearsome face.

[Ranch Dog]

The bullets were pass-throughs. And there was a small amount of blood for trailing. The 2 shots through the rib cage, both did about an inch worth of damage around the wound channel, through both lungs. It would not have been the easiest of tracking jobs to have found him if my first shot had not hit his spine.

Despite my previous posting, this topic has just stuck with me this last week. My mind gets kind of wandering while hunting and after my last post this morning, I went back through this entire topic.

Based on what I see in the forensic data and based on the bullet description you provided, I would just keep shooting what you are shooting. I realize a lot of dynamics are in play at the shot but I think it a mistake to judge the bullets performance based on the the first hit. It was a disabling hit but simply did not shut down the heart/lung function.



The later part of the your quote above interests me more. I missed the details in your description of the chest cavity hits. I realize that the holes were made very near the muzzle but there is very little difference in the size of the hole cut by meplat over the range of the load's usable distance.



Simply put, I would like to see a similar shot with the same load but with the POI lower and a bit aft. My thoughts are that the result are going to be different in that deer might skiddattle but it will leave a heavy blood trail behind.

As far as the double entry wound goes, is there any chance that the small hole is a exit wound? The bullet is punching through so much bone it the area of the hit that something might have been blown out the entry side. Same for the exit. I wouldn't assume the bullet was tumbling but would assume it was pushing a lot of material out ahead of it.

The only explanation for the double entry wound would be if there was a thin object immediately in front of the animal, something that would split the bullet. Sounds far fetched and I would have thought so had I not witnessed it myself. Steelbanger and his son Mike were hunting hogs on my place. Mike had borrowed my Marlin 1895MR, the 450 Marlin rifle, and was shooting my "nilgai" load with my 425-grain bullet. I was starting a cooking fire and heard Mike shoot. That shot was followed by a mobile call with Mike saying, "I hope I didn't screw up, there are hogs laying everywhere!" I laughed but his description was very accurate. The hogs had entered a barbed wire feeder pen, fenced to keep the cattle away from the feeder, and at the shot three hogs that where not lined up went down. One piece of bullet looked like it had been sawed down the longitudinal axis. I went back out to the pen and found where the bullet had hit the lower strand of barbed wire. It must of have hit it just right and split the bullet three ways!

I saw some interesting yesterday while I was out it the pasture hunting. I saw a cardinal fly into a stand of a barbed wire fence. Not only did it hit the wire but he flew smack into a barb, face first. Killed him instantly. Put simply, his time on earth had run out.

How about giving your load and bullet another chance on your up coming hog hunt?

[Ranch Dog]

I'm kinda new to cast bullets and was wondering what you thought about these--just rolled a batch last night.

They are Cast Performance 255 gr WFNGC driven by 'lil gun for my 41 mag blackhawk. The bullets seem very well made and present a fearsome face.

I think they are going to knock the shot out of whatever you hit with them.

You might want to start watching this page: Lee Precision Custom Factory Crimp Dies
Lee makes special runs of their collet FCDs (rifle style) for the 41 Mag. There are none listed this morning but they have them up there several times a year. The die provide a neater crimp than possible with other dies.

[triggerpull]

I have almost a dozen Lee factory crimp dies in other calibers and do like them--but don't you think for a wheel gun a heavy roll is the way to go?