.223, 6mm, and 6.5 failures on big game

[The Guide]

Not directed at you, just generally speaking. It got comical.

I believe you and your friend. I feel that there are failures in anything mechanical. We will see failure from all sizes of bullets at some time. The value I see from smaller cartridges, is that you can see your impact easier and if you have a failure or a miss your ability to get back on target and send an additional shot. Where I hunt we preach for people to keep shooting until your animal is on the ground not moving or out of sight. I can do it with a 300WM but I'm way better with a 6.5CM and stupid fast with a 243.

Jay

 

[kevingm1987]

Not if hand loading lol. My 21" PRC sends the 143 at 2930

Of course, you can do much more with handloading. I bet if you had a 26" 6.5CM you could run it pretty hot as well. Probably not 2930 hot but still get moving.

My point was more that, a 6.5mm bullet is a 6.5mm bullet. Both 6.5cm and 6.5PRC are the same in a way, one just has more horsepower. Some people will jump on the bandwagon and say you can't kill and elk with a 24" 6.5cm factory 143 but a 20" 6.5prc shooting at 143 will smash the elk. A 6.5prc doesn't make an 143eldm a better bullet, a 6.5cm shooting the same bullet will do the same damage at the same velocity.

Know your bullet, know your velocities. Figure out your kill ranges.

 

[Hnthrdr]

My 24" 6.5CM with the 147 ELDM is 2599 fps and my 22" 6.5 PRC with the 147 ELDM is 2830 fps. Even if I lost 100 fps going from 22" to 20", I'd still be 130 fps faster than the 24" 6.5CM. This is with factory Hornady ammo. With handloads, you can push the 6.5 PRC far harder than the 6.5CM.

Jay

True. I had a S20 sako in 6.5 prc I sold, kind i regret, just such a well made rifle, but it wasn’t giving me super impressive results with factory ammo

 

[The Guide]

True. I had a S20 sako in 6.5 prc I sold, kind i regret, just such a well made rifle, but it wasn’t giving me super impressive results with factory ammo

This might be worth your time. $575 after rebate.

Jay

TIKKA JRTXGSL319 T3X SUPERLITE 65PRC ODGRN

www.familyfirearms.com

 

[mlevimadden]

I've only had 3 bullets fail to reach vitals that I can think of from my hunting experience, and none were suprising failures given the bullets used and impact velocities and locations on the animal.

1. 180 factory Core-Lokt from a 300 WM. Shot an average sized black bear sow at 17 yards, so impact velocity should have been right around 3k fps. Hit was high and back. Broke spine but bullet "splashed" on impact and left about an 8" (grapefruit sized) crater in the side of the bear. Wound was 6" deep and 6-8" wide. Bear ran into thick brush only 10 yds away, we didn't want to deal with a wounded bear in that brush, came back in the morning and found her dead right where she had entered the brush.
2. 145 ELDX factory precision hunter from a 270 Win. Mule deer buck at 20 yds. First shot at 60 yds was a liver shot and buck headed into the scrub oak. I later found that the rifle had lost zero. When I caught up to him, he was at 20 yds facing straight away. Shot him right at the top ball joint of the femur. Bullet entered 2" and rapidly expanded leaving a 6" mess of broken femur bone shards and muscle tissue destruction. Buck dropped at the shot but bullet failed to penetrate past the leg muscle, so I had to put another finishing shot in the vitals.
3. 147 ELDM from 6.5 PRC. Cow elk at 430 yds. Poor wind call and hit the elk in the middle of the femur. Bullet broke femur completely in half and penetrated another couple inches of leg muscle but failed to penetrate beyond the onside leg muscle. Second shot was directly behind the shoulder, she traveled 20 yds downhill and crashed.

Based on my experiences, If 6.5 and .277 match projectiles can completely break a mule deer and cow elk femur in half and penetrate a couple inches after that, there is no logical explanation to a shoulder blade stopping these bullets except for a failure in construction of the bullet or very extreme impact velocities (3500+ fps) outside the normal use case the bullets are designed for.

 

[Hnthrdr]

This might be worth your time. $575 after rebate.

Jay

TIKKA JRTXGSL319 T3X SUPERLITE 65PRC ODGRN

www.familyfirearms.com

Man that’s a good deal, I have 4 tikkas right now and one that’s getting rebarreled to 6cm, a .223, 6.5, and a .308 so I’m set for a bit. Thanks for the heads up though

 

[Hnthrdr]

I've only had 3 bullets fail to reach vitals that I can think of from my hunting experience, and none were suprising failures given the bullets used and impact velocities and locations on the animal.

1. 180 factory Core-Lokt from a 300 WM. Shot an average sized black bear sow at 17 yards, so impact velocity should have been right around 3k fps. Hit was high and back. Broke spine but bullet "splashed" on impact and left about an 8" (grapefruit sized) crater in the side of the bear. Wound was 6" deep and 6-8" wide. Bear ran into thick brush only 10 yds away, we didn't want to deal with a wounded bear in that brush, came back in the morning and found her dead right where she had entered the brush.
2. 145 ELDX factory precision hunter from a 270 Win. Mule deer buck at 20 yds. First shot at 60 yds was a liver shot and buck headed into the scrub oak. I later found that the rifle had lost zero. When I caught up to him, he was at 20 yds facing straight away. Shot him right at the top ball joint of the femur. Bullet entered 2" and rapidly expanded leaving a 6" mess of broken femur bone shards and muscle tissue destruction. Buck dropped at the shot but bullet failed to penetrate past the leg muscle, so I had to put another finishing shot in the vitals.
3. 147 ELDM from 6.5 PRC. Cow elk at 430 yds. Poor wind call and hit the elk in the middle of the femur. Bullet broke femur completely in half and penetrated another couple inches of leg muscle but failed to penetrate beyond the onside leg muscle. Second shot was directly behind the shoulder, she traveled 20 yds downhill and crashed.

Based on my experiences, If 6.5 and .277 match projectiles can completely break a mule deer and cow elk femur in half and penetrate a couple inches after that, there is no logical explanation to a shoulder blade stopping these bullets except for a failure in construction of the bullet or very extreme impact velocities (3500+ fps) outside the normal use case the bullets are designed for.

Thanks this was the best write up so far… even if there weren’t pictures haha

 

[mlevimadden]

Thanks this was the best write up so far… even if there weren’t pictures haha

I really need to get better about taking pictures while breaking down animals, but it's usually pretty low on the list of priorities with an animal on the ground and bloody hands to think about pulling my phone out of my pocket. I'm not glad about having the data from the femur shots, as obviously it means something went sideways during the kill, but I feel that it's useful data to share.

It's not gun-related but I did have a broadhead fail to penetrate an elk shoulder. It was the old-style 3 blade 125 gr ramcat. It was a raghorn bull at 33 yds and a medium weight (530 gr) arrow out of a 72# bow. The bull was standing over a log and the impact sounded so solid, I thought I missed low and hit the log. It actually popped the nock out the back of the arrow at impact, and when the bull whirled, the arrow was only sticking a couple inches into the shoulder. Never found my arrow or the bull and there was only a few drops of muscle-looking blood at the shot location.

 

[Hnthrdr]

I really need to get better about taking pictures while breaking down animals, but it's usually pretty low on the list of priorities with an animal on the ground and bloody hands to think about pulling my phone out of my pocket. I'm not glad about having the data from the femur shots, as obviously it means something went sideways during the kill, but I feel that it's useful data to share.

It's not gun-related but I did have a broadhead fail to penetrate an elk shoulder. It was the old-style 3 blade 125 gr ramcat. It was a raghorn bull at 33 yds and a medium weight (530 gr) arrow out of a 72# bow. The bull was standing over a log and the impact sounded so solid, I thought I missed low and hit the log. It actually popped the nock out the back of the arrow at impact, and when the bull whirled, the arrow was only sticking a couple inches into the shoulder. Never found my arrow or the bull and there was only a few drops of muscle-looking blood at the shot location.

I’m with you man, I’m 100% of the time focused on cutting my animal up and getting ready for haul out, not playing forensic scientist, but it is good knowledge for sure. Your observations were very believable in a physics sort of way and I appreciate that not just cause it reinforced a bias, but I do think we often are really bad at spotting hits or remembering what happened. I totally think you could have a broadhead fail if you hit near the knuckle, especially if it’s not a super solid head, arrows can do weirder things than bullets sometimes IMO. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Macintosh]

When you all say “shoulder” do you mean a joint like where the top of a humerus ie “leg bone” meets the scapula, or are you referring to a scapula itself ie “shoulder blade”?

Seems like those are very different thickness bones, so just wondering.

 

[mlevimadden]

I’m with you man, I’m 100% of the time focused on cutting my animal up and getting ready for haul out, not playing forensic scientist, but it is good knowledge for sure. Your observations were very believable in a physics sort of way and I appreciate that not just cause it reinforced a bias, but I do think we often are really bad at spotting hits or remembering what happened. I totally think you could have a broadhead fail if you hit near the knuckle, especially if it’s not a super solid head, arrows can do weirder things than bullets sometimes IMO. Thanks for sharing!

Glad you were able to get some information from it. I have an engineering background and am naturally a pretty logical and emotionless person (much to the dismay of my wife), so I try to stick to the data and facts most of the time.

 

[Ozarkansas]

So do we have any real hard evidence? We have eld-X shoulder guy’s friend and then some weird metric of full pass through vs no pass through then lots of talk of marginal shots or no animal or what not…. Seems like we don’t have a growing body of evidence for these failures…

It hasn’t gotten talked about much on this thread but the .223 kill thread has lots of discussion regarding non-tipped match bullets failing to expand. My uncle had this happen multiple times with his AR on pigs as well. So at least thats a type of bullet failure that we all seem to agree does happen.

 

[Hnthrdr]

Good post I kind of took for granted that shooting the non tipped match in .223 at game wasn’t a great idea, I thought it was kind of a known thing. Only ever used 75 grn blacks on coyotes .223 isn’t legal in Co for big game and its worked fine

 

[Trackselk]

Since there seem to be no failures I might as well go off topic...
I only made it half way through and then skipped to the end. But, I think it's worth mentioning that it sure looks like the 77tmk's kill things quicker than old fashioned high weight retention bullets. In my experience blood trails are hard to see, especially at night, so a quicker death may be more advantageous than a blood trail. I don't like atomized lead in my meat or the scavengers so I shoot warp speed 22CM monos that shed petals, and they seem to travel about 100 yards and die pretty fast. I guess if they were getting lost in thick vegetation I'd go up in caliber. FWIW