De Shootinest Gent’man strikes again (and again, and again)

Matt, thanks for sending me the pix and telling your tale. That is one heck of a boar.

I guess one of the things I should have done here is to speak up for Matt’s background. He’s not your average weekend warrior who hunts five to eight days a year on a good year. He’s an experienced guide with many kills under his belt, both his own and his clients’. He’s been around a while and knows his stuff.

With that in mind, while I often look askance at anyone’s claims of “poor bullet performance”, whether lead or copper, I am fairly confident that shot placement and tracking skills are not issues in this case.

I’m also gonna get back on my “it’s NOT all about shot placement” bandwagon for a moment.

In an ideal scenario, perfect shot placement will always seal the deal. No question about it. And as ethical sportsmen, we should always strive to make a perfect shot, and we should have the wherewithal to resist taking low-percentage shots…choosing instead to wait for a better opportunity.

But we all know, far too well, that perfect shot placement is a rarity in the field. Anything can, and does, happen… an animal takes a step at the last moment, an unseen branch deflects the bullet flight, or heck, even an ill-timed heartbeat during the trigger pull can move a bullet a couple inches from the desired location.

This is the reason that we demand high performance from our guns and our ammunition (and one of the reasons I like using a “big” gun for hogs and elk). We need something that will grant a reasonable margin of error for those times when the shot is not perfectly placed. We need bullets that will penetrate to the vitals, then upset enough there to create devastating wound channels and exit to leave a good blood trail.

So far, what I have seen from the Barnes and the Winchester/Nosler ETips has proven at least the first couple of factors… they penetrate like nothing else I’ve ever shot, and they do plenty of damage inside the vitals (without blowing up the meat). They also exit almost every time, which is more than I can say for most of the lead bullets I used to shoot.

But, every animal I’ve killed or seen killed with this ammo has gone right down (I’ve been on-hand, directly or indirectly on over 50 kills so far this year). I have yet to have to track a deer or hog shot with copper, so I can’t speak for the blood trail (or lack of same). I know the bullet doesn’t make a huge exit wound, especially through the thick fat of a hog’s side. I can see where that might be an issue.

Anyway, the point of this ramble is to say, I don’t want to be too quick to write off the negative experiences of other hunters using this ammo as simple mistakes (even though they sometimes are). If there’s a trend going on, or if the properties of this ammo are causing lost animals, then I’d like to figure out why and maybe help spread the word of how to avoid it… and yeah, that may include recommending different shot placement, or different bullets and loads.

Here’s what I do know, and what I practice.

First, to achieve the best performance from a Barnes bullet, step down in bullet weight and up in speed. For example, a lot of hog and elk hunters use 180gr bullets in 30-06, or 200gr in the .300 magnums. With Barnes, drop that off by 15 or 20 grains…. so the -06 should be shooting 165gr and the .300 should be shooting 180. This is all straight from Barnes, by the way… not making it up.

Second, I’ve got three main shots I prefer to take, regardless of what kind of ammo I’m shooting.

Whenever possible, my first choice is a neck shot on hogs or deer. That requires a comfortable rest and a relatively steady target at a reasonable range (100 yards or less, usually). I keep the shot away from the head (don’t want to shoot a jaw off), and only take it if I’m completely confident.

If I’m not confident in the neck, I’ll go high shoulder or spine. Put a bullet through the top of the lungs, and the animal will go down fast if not immediately. Break the spine above the shoulder, and it goes down even faster… although as I saw with that fallow deer, it may not die as quickly as I’d like. It requires some level of precision to make this shot perfectly, but that’s mitigated by the fact that if you go high, it’s a clean miss, and if you go low, you’ve got shoulder, lungs, and heart. Win-win!

Finally, if I can’t get comfortable with any other shot, or if it’s a fairly long poke, I’ll shoot through the shoulders. I’d rather risk the loss of some meat than the loss of the animal, and if you break the animal down at the shoulders it’s not going far. The nice thing about the copper bullets is that meat damage is pretty limited, even when major bones are broken.

But always… stuff happens, regardless of bullet type. I’ve done a lot of tracking over my hunting career, and I’ve lost a couple of animals in the process. I’ve seen weird stuff, from bullets that stop just under the skin, to devastating wounds, to animals that appeared to be bulletproof.