Recovered . 243Win. bullet

[RedRaider3]

I took my younger brother hunting, he shot the pictured south Tx. whitetail buck at about 90 yards with a Winchester factory loaded 95 grain combined technology ballistic tip. While gutting the deer I recovered the bullet, it had a retained weight of 54.5 grains. This is the first time I have recovered a bullet, does this look typical for the CT ballistic tip? I looked at Nosler's website and it appeared to have done what it should have. The bullet broke the front
Eft shoulder, nicked the heart and came to rest under the skin on the deer's right side.

 

[RedRaider3]

Here's the buck.

 

[rcmodel]

Yes.

I would say if you found the bullet in a dead deer, it did what it was supposed to do.

rc

 

[Flintknapper]

I don't have experience with using the C/T in that weight or velocity, but I have recovered several shot from a 7mm-08 (140 gr.) and a .458 SOCOM (300 gr.)

Both of those loads show very similar performance (to yours) in terms of expansion, retained weight (percent) was different for the two, but each maintained a solid base.

 

[RedRaider3]

Thank you Flintknapper, that is exactly what I was wondering.

 

[nathan]

That is cool ...

 

[WestKentucky]

Yep, looks good...great actually. The ballistic tip is designed for massive expansion and the base is simply weight to push the front harder giving it momentum to penetrate deeply. Most bullets are designed to have basically a 50-50 ratio (give or take a lot depending on design) of expanding portion and driving portion, so when that front bit hits and swells naturally small bits will peel off and you lose some weight and the bits that stay connected keep pushing further into the animal making a wound channel. So 95 grain bullet gives us about 47 grains expanding portion and 48 grains driving portion...you have 6 grains of expanding portion left attached which is pretty low of a percentage but the bullet still looks to have performed properly. I would expect more like 65 or 70 grains retained weight but still you got great expansion and great penetration. A light retained weight may simply be a normal thing for this design.

As for finding the bullet just under the hide on the back side, this supports both sides of the argument on energy killing the deer or not. You got maximum penetration meaning the largest possible wound channel, but you also stopped the bullet in the deer delivering full energy to your target.

 

[gspn]

I'd say it looks pretty good. I've shot a lot of balistic tip ammo at whitetail through my 7mag (all double lung shots). Over the years I've recovered around 10 bullets and the recovered slugs average around 35% weight retention. These deer were all shot between 50 and 300 yards.

 

[H&Hhunter]

About as perfect performance as one can ask for especially in a BT..

 

[41 Mag]

It looks a lot better than the couple I recovered. I don't know if the combined technology have a different jacket structure or what, but the ones I recovered were mostly just pieces of empty jacket and specks of lead we found while eatin supper.

I cannot argue with their effectiveness though every deer I shot using the standard BT, which was only a couple, was either DRT or in only a few yards.

That is a great buck congrats to your brother.

 

[RedRaider3]

Yes I load 150 grain Nosler BT in .284 for my Sendero SF II in 7mm Rem Mag and have never had anything walk away from it. Has anyone ever shot any Nosler E-tips?

 

[ironworkerwill]

No E-tips but I did shoot Barnes Tipped TSX and never recovered one from a deer. All clean through.