Fragmenting bullets versus controlled expanding bullets

[Thegman]

The Wisconsin report is the one that reported tiny lead fragments traveling through up to 18” of critter. The obvious part is that kind of penetration isn’t possible with a mass that low unless you propel it with a railgun. Lots of people have raised that comment in the scientific literature.

I suspect at this point, an "ecological study", if connected to the University of Wisconsin, is more of a pseudo-scientific ideological treatise.

 

[FredH]

That is the study everyone cites but no one can replicate.

Lead Bullet Fragments in Venison from Rifle-Killed Deer: Potential for Human Dietary Exposure - PMC

Human consumers of wildlife killed with lead ammunition may be exposed to health risks associated with lead ingestion. This hypothesis is based on published studies showing elevated blood lead concentrations in subsistence hunter populations, ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[FredH]

D

I guess it is a matter of desire. Wife and kids were drawn for a whitetail deer damage hunt last year and it started 8/15. Our hunt days were 8/17 and 8/18. It was 97 degrees at last light and they shot 4 does. We couldn't gut them in the field as they wanted to kill as many as possible and didn't want to have gut piles in the fields. In 2 hours I gutted, skinned, debone, and processed 4 deer into boneless primal's and had them on blocked ice in 2 coolers. All I used was a tree, a rope, and my tailgate. Most people don't have the skills to process a whole animal and thats OK. I grew up poor and had to figure out how to live the lifestyle I wanted with little money. I still don't like paying other people to do what I can do myself. Only time I take a truck load of deer to the processor is when I'm donating to the food bank and that is only due to rules and regulations about donating meat.

Jay

Did you get up at 4:30 am, drive for an hour and work 8 standing on your feet in front of a machine, measuring aircraft parts and then drive back home in rush hour traffic. All the deer shot were immediately gutted, it was a 225 mile drive back to the house and we left just after dark which was around 7:30. There were three hunters and all had to be at work in the morning. My desire to stay employed and have the game meat taken care of was met.

 

[FredH]

The Wisconsin report is the one that reported tiny lead fragments traveling through up to 18” of critter. The obvious part is that kind of penetration isn’t possible with a mass that low unless you propel it with a railgun. Lots of people have raised that comment in the scientific literature.

So 18" from entrance wound is what you are saying? Suppose the fragment left the main bullet mass 12 inches into it travel through the animal? I have had exit wounds where it looked like a shotgun blast going out.

 

[ElPollo]

I suspect at this point, an "ecological study", if connected to the University of Wisconsin, is more of a pseudo-scientific ideological treatise.

There are a lot of people at University of WI and elsewhere who do quality research. This just wasn’t it, and it wasn’t because the people doing it weren’t good scientists. They just didn’t have all the right types of scientists involved. Sometimes work that crosses boundaries between multiple scientific fields doesn’t get the kind of thorough reviews it really needs. This one really needed a ballistician and someone like a coroner to review it. Instead it was written and reviewed by biologists and veterinary science people who don’t know jack about how bullets perform in tissue. Honestly, experts on that are not super common, and they don’t tend to run in the same circles as wildlife biologists and veterinarians.

 

[270quest]

I was always a die hard controlled expansion bullet hunter growing up - mainly Partitions and Accubonds because those I learned to hunt with - that's what they used and preached up and down about...Around 7-8 years ago, (due to forum reading, and urging from a few long range hunters I know) I decided to try "fragmenting" bullets. Since that time, I personally have harvested over 20 big game animals and watched my son, daughter, and wife harvest another 10+ - all with scenars and bergers. The scenars - for being a target bullet - are absolute bone crushers. Will wreck the biggest elk/moose critters - had multiple crush thru elk shoulders without incident. And in the rifles I have been apart of, they are more accurate than any partition accubond I hunted with.

I will never go back to a "premium hunting bullet"...I have some 105 berger hybrids loaded in a 6mm to hunt with this fall, and the old reliable 6.5 139 scenars and 7mm 150 scenars for my sons creedmoor and my 7 rem mag.

 

[ElPollo]

So 18" from entrance wound is what you are saying? Suppose the fragment left the main bullet mass 12 inches into it travel through the animal? I have had exit wounds where it looked like a shotgun blast going out.

They were talking about nearly microscopic stuff traveling long distances within the carcass in some of the reports from this work. But that just doesn’t happen with fragments that small. Bigger fragments aren’t much of a concern because no one is likely to eat them and they are not as bioavailable. But yeah, big fragments have more mass and can travel longer distances. That said all of the small stuff that is of concern is going to stay in the temporary stretch cavity zone which is usually 4-8” from the wound channel, not 12-18”. Physics just doesn’t work that way.

I used to use copper monos for years. I went back to lead because I consistently saw narrower wound channels and longer trails with the former. I butcher my own and have no concerns about eating meat from the animals I kill with lead bullets. You are more likely to get an elevated BLL from reloading ammo, shooting, and cleaning your gun. Most lead exposure in shooters comes from primers.

 

[FredH]

They were talking about nearly microscopic stuff traveling long distances within the carcass in some of the reports from this work. But that just doesn’t happen with fragments that small. Bigger fragments aren’t much of a concern because no one is likely to eat them and they are not as bioavailable. But yeah, big fragments have more mass and can travel longer distances. That said all of the small stuff that is of concern is going to stay in the temporary stretch cavity zone which is usually 4-8” from the wound channel, not 12-18”. Physics just doesn’t work that way.

I used to use copper monos for years. I went back to lead because I consistently saw narrower wound channels and longer trails with the former. I butcher my own and have no concerns about eating meat from the animals I kill with lead bullets. You are more likely to get an elevated BLL from reloading ammo, shooting, and cleaning your gun. Most lead exposure in shooters comes from primers.

This is another study. Wonder if Kennedy is going to research this. Hope not. My issues with fragmenting bullets are the ones designed to come completely apart limiting penetration and lead dusting everything inside the animal. I am shooting a Mono for the first time in decades from my 308. It is designed to fragment, or rather it is designed to open at Blackhawk velocities and I am pushing it 3150 fps instead of 2100 fps. The Hornady 110 gr. CX.

Lead Bullet Fragments in Venison from Rifle-Killed Deer: Potential for Human Dietary Exposure - PMC

Human consumers of wildlife killed with lead ammunition may be exposed to health risks associated with lead ingestion. This hypothesis is based on published studies showing elevated blood lead concentrations in subsistence hunter populations, ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[mt terry d]

Well good for you. As for not taking game to processors some of us have to go to work Monday morning and don't feel like staying up all night after three days of getting up before daylight hunting till midnight hopeing a hog will show up. I far prefer to handle my own game but sometimes it is just not possible My hunting must be much different than yours, getting to pick shot angles is not always the case and some deer are shot running. But if you hunt over feeders or on lightly hunted private property then your hunting is both much easier and less interesting than mine.

Yeah, it's been a wonderful 55 years of hunting and never having to go to work on Mondays.
Head shots on running deer is mighty impressive.
Obviously our hunting is, thankfully, very much different.

 

[S-3 ranch]

Yes. That is the talk with the old guard. But it is changing. Check out @Ryan Avery trip over. They fell just as easily.

I used federal fusion and all 9 dropped quite easily

That was a pet giraffe he killed with his 6mm , hell you could see the white bakie/ truck it was standing next to, in the film , I don’t think it matters what you shoot em with caliber or bullets when they are in a penned up area they
Can’t run out of, but yall where shooting stuff in RSA in pens , totally different then Zambia, or Mozambique, Zimbabwe where they can run off a hunting concession.
Real apples compared to wax apples sitting in a bowl as a decorative piece
And I’m not badgering you to be a Troll!
Seriously not
Those federal Fusions are a good light plains game bullet, congrats on using a bonded bullet, what did you take with them ? Caliber and location?

 

[Thegman]

There are a lot of people at University of WI and elsewhere who do quality research. This just wasn’t it, and it wasn’t because the people doing it weren’t good scientists. They just didn’t have all the right types of scientists involved. Sometimes work that crosses boundaries between multiple scientific fields doesn’t get the kind of thorough reviews it really needs. This one really needed a ballistician and someone like a coroner to review it. Instead it was written and reviewed by biologists and veterinary science people who don’t know jack about how bullets perform in tissue. Honestly, experts on that are not super common, and they don’t tend to run in the same circles as wildlife biologists and veterinarians.

Well, I'll take your word for it, and I'm sure that's the case. However, I do know several biologists from UWM, and could easily see all of them missing what you're pointing out in a study like this, precisely due to their biases. I just don't think they'd question the conclusion sufficiently.

IMO, UWM's Aldo Leopold started the entire field of "ecology" based on pseudoscientific axioms that simply aren't recognized by the majority of "ecologists". Part of my opinion is based on the views espoused by of one of my main professors, who studied under Aldo Leopold at UWM. Paraphrasing one of his takes on game management, "We should probably support outlawing mountain lion hunting. They're an apex predator". He was very knowledgeable, but didn't see the ideological basis of certain points he considered "science".

 

[Thegman]

I used to use copper monos for years. I went back to lead because I consistently saw narrower wound channels and longer trails with the former. I butcher my own and have no concerns about eating meat from the animals I kill with lead bullets. You are more likely to get an elevated BLL from reloading ammo, shooting, and cleaning your gun. Most lead exposure in shooters comes from primers.

Some critiques I've read of these studies was that they did not separate the variable of hunters who reload from hunters that don't, nor how much they shoot, nor what they shoot. The hunters who don't reload had BLL very similar to baseline non-hunters. Hunters who reloaded, had much more elevated BLL.

I know I'm sounding like a broken record with the bias of "ecologists", but these studies sure do seem to find the results they're looking for.

 

[Ryan Avery]

That was a pet giraffe he killed with his 6mm , hell you could see the white bakie/ truck it was standing next to, in the film , I don’t think it matters what you shoot em with caliber or bullets when they are in a penned up area they
Can’t run out of, but yall where shooting stuff in RSA in pens , totally different then Zambia, or Mozambique, Zimbabwe where they can run off a hunting concession.
Real apples compared to wax apples sitting in a bowl as a decorative piece
And I’m not badgering you to be a Troll!
Seriously not
Those federal Fusions are a good light plains game bullet, congrats on using a bonded bullet, what did you take with them ? Caliber and location?

Yeah, I bet they also have a different anatomy up there in Zambia, too. You can BS yourself all you want that NR DTAC would put down a "WILD" Giraffe in Mozambique just like this one from SA. It goes on and on with you FUDDs. "My animals are tougher than yours......"

 

[omicron1792]

Yeah, I bet they also have a different anatomy up there in Zambia, too. You can BS yourself all you want that NR DTAC would put down a "WILD" Giraffe in Mozambique just like this one from SA. It goes on and on with you FUDDs. "My animals are tougher than yours......"

Predictable from these folks. Always a “but these animals are DIFFERENT.”

 

[Southern Lights]

Maybe don’t shoot shoulders.

If given the choice, I ONLY shoot animals in the shoulder. I don't want to give them any chance of running. In New Zealand the bush is thick and losing animals is very high if they run and you don't have a dog to help.

But what finally got me to stop using fragmenting bullets was earlier this year I shot a deer behind the shoulder with a 223 and V-Max bullet. The deer slowly walked away, then sat down and died. When I rolled it over you could hear liquid sloshing around inside like an oil drum. I opened it up and couldn't find any bullet fragments. The bullet pulverized into fine powder and half the backsteaks were blood shot. The blood in the body cavity was sloshing all around and the 55 grains of lead were going all over the eye filets, etc. I threw out half the backsteaks and could only take the rear legs.

I just got tired of thinking about it. I switched to monos and I've only shot a handful of deer so far this year with them, but they all went down in the same distance as lead. I have noticed no difference at sensible hunting ranges so far.

 

[Southern Lights]

FWIW. I used fragmenting bullets for many many years after Pat Sinclair (scenarshooter) on another forum suggested I try the 155 Scenar 308 match load I was using for hunting. They are a wrecking ball. Fragmenting bullets work great and they were all I used before just recently going with monos to test them out. Just know that they cause a hell of a big mess on game animals and will spray lead all over the place internally. If you don't care, that's fine. But if you do care, I'd suggest not using them.

 

[Vern400]

I want a bullet that enters like a pencil, breaks one or two ribs on the entry side, two or three ribs on the exit side, and exits the size of a quarter. And no matter what I want an exit. It's a bonus if I can find the bullet in one piece in the dirt. Whitetails and hogs.
I started out with Remington core locks.. baseball size exits. Brutal and they frag.
I settled on 150/165 Sierra game Kings at 2750
For hogs 150/165 Partitions at 2800

I'm testing 165 SSTs for longer shots and lower velocity because they're a little softer. Jury is out on that one.

It's all about impact velocity. Push those SGKs up to 2900 fps impact velocity and it would be a varmint grenade.

 

[ElPollo]

This is another study. Wonder if Kennedy is going to research this. Hope not. My issues with fragmenting bullets are the ones designed to come completely apart limiting penetration and lead dusting everything inside the animal. I am shooting a Mono for the first time in decades from my 308. It is designed to fragment, or rather it is designed to open at Blackhawk velocities and I am pushing it 3150 fps instead of 2100 fps. The Hornady 110 gr. CX.

Lead Bullet Fragments in Venison from Rifle-Killed Deer: Potential for Human Dietary Exposure - PMC

Human consumers of wildlife killed with lead ammunition may be exposed to health risks associated with lead ingestion. This hypothesis is based on published studies showing elevated blood lead concentrations in subsistence hunter populations, ...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Fred,

We’ve discussed that paper in other lead discussions here. The thing to keep in mind is that there aren’t any sources I’ve seen that have documented significant increases BLLs of American hunters compared to nonhunters. There are some outliers, like a paper on subsistence hunters from Greenland who live on seals and and whales that all have high BLL levels before being harvested. But none of the sources account for other lead sources or show that hunters differ from the rest of the population in BLLS. The point of that is that there are lots of ways people can be exposed to lead and have it get into their bloodstream. However eating it in game meat is not a pathway that shows any large scale population level effect on BLLs.

The report you provided is however good evidence for why people may want to butcher their own meat. Doing so gives the consumer the ability to make decisions about what goes into the freezer and the belly and what goes in the trash. I worked at a game processor back when I was younger and saw plenty of things that made me not want to use one for my own meat. The biggest one is that you are not guaranteed to get your own meat back after it’s processed. Burger, sausage, and jerky are all processed in large batches of several hundred pounds at a time. And it’s not even just about the potential to get other people’s lead. I still remember a guy who brought in a mule deer that had been hanging in his shop for weeks and was covered with white mold inside the body cavity. When he brought the deer in, he said “just make it all into jerky because my wife doesn’t like the taste of deer meat”. If you don’t want that guy’s meat, butcher your own.

But in summary, you might not like match bullets for your usage, but lead contamination is not really a reason to consider not using them. There just isn’t any direct evidence showing that game meat is risk for high BLLs. That said if you are a high shoulder shooter, you have other people process your meat, and you’re still concerned, there are a lot of other bullet choices out there.