MeatEater’s Gear Talk PodcastJanis and Jordan talk with MeatEater's own Garrett Long about everything that makes a great hunting bullet. They talk caliber, design, materials, and the performance we can (or can't) expect from our modern projectiles. They also discuss the nuances of copper, bonded, and cup and core. Additional topics include: why pinching a chainsaw is a real bummer, Jordan's plans to hunt Hawaii, and why a 7 Mickey Mouse used to get you laughed at.
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Welcome back to gear Talk everyone. Jordan here, and I've got Yannis Talis on with me, and we also have Garrett long on what's going on. Some could say our fearless leader.
Some could say that most wouldn't.
I think what Jordan means is that Garrett is uh manages the content production team, so it's more like corraling a bunch of cats, which is good because Garrett's Garrett's a little bit of a cowboy, so he's good at coraling and doing that sort of stuff.
Yeah, doing a little roping on the on the weekdays.
Roping on the weekdays. He even wears wranglers and the cowboy hat sometimes to do That's right.
Oh man.
Yeah, So you guys did not too long ago, about six months ago, you guys did a video it's called Copper versus Lead. It's on the Meater channel, and in that you broke down a few different types of bullets and you shot them at different distances. And we're just going to dig into that talk a little bit about that. I guess what would you call that experiment if you will.
Yeah, experiment test. We're not we didn't do it by any real scientific parameters, but we did the best we could, you know, gave each bullet one chance at performance. But we'll get into that in just a second. First couple announcements, we'll do a little catch up with Jordan, myself and Garrett. Feel free to jump in during the catch up section or the announcement section here up top. If you have anything to add, please do. But we've launched giveaway. This is a meat Eater wide giveaway. It's a chance to win three thousand dollars in awesome hunting gear from all of our brands, along with a personalized outfitting session with yours truly, and that means all of our brands, not just f HF, First Light Phelps, but also the brands that we carry in the media store. So it is a full on Meet Eater shopping spree. And I will get on the phone or zoom whatever you like so you want it to be so we can look at each other. We can do it over Zoom or Google meets, and I will help you dial in your your hunting gear and the gear you might want for your upcoming hunting adventures.
It's super fun.
I did one of these about a year ago for another giveaway winner, and it was great to help the guy out. He had a few questions and we helped, you know, dial in the specific system that he wanted for. I think we did it for first Light, we did it for some optic stuff. He ended up with a cooler as well. He was definitely one stoked meat Eater listener and reader. So go to metia dot com and uh, I don't know what do you gotta type in Garrett giveaway.
I don't have that information here in front of me.
Yeah, the meeater dot com slash will We'll get you there. There's also like some pop ups if you go to the home pages of any of the sites, that should get hit with a pop up for it too.
Okay, so giveaway runs from now through May twenty first, so you actually don't have that much time left. I think all all we really want out of it is your email. So go and enter, and then the winner will be randomly picked and contacted on May twenty second. Jordan, how would you like to win that three thousand bucks an awesome hunt gear and then out to help you pick everything out?
Yeah, that would be pretty sweet, especially everything on the store, Like there's going to be quite a quite a selection on there. I saw there spearfishing stuff on there last week.
That's right.
If you live living near the coast or kind can manage flying from somewhere in the middle part of the country out to the coast and do some spearfishing, there's that year is available for you.
I just don't know. Sorry to chime in here, but I just don't know if I would utilize Yanni for spearfishing gear recommendations. Like I think you got to kind of play into your hand there a little bit with shooting equipment and like being a tactician in the mountains.
Oh hundred percent. If you if you win this shopping spree and you're a spear fisherman, I will make sure that we can and you want spearfishing gear, I'll make sure that we can get Rinella on the line for at least five or ten minutes to help us dial that in.
You're you're one hundred percent right, Garrett. All right, on to our.
Daily podcasts or I guess we're bi weekly podcast, but we do it on every podcast. Jordan, I catch up a little bit, Jordan. I see in our notes here you're heading to Hawaii.
Yeah, going to Uh, we're gonna go to Lnai and shoot a couple access to her coming up, So big trip. Never been to Hawaii. We're as we record this, we're about a week out from the trip, a little bit over and uh, I'm still in Nebraska, not even in Idaho where all my stuff is. So it's gonna be a fun week of smash packing and making sure everything's dialed. But yeah, super looking forward to that. We're gonna stay a couple extra days and hang out like see Pearl Harbor and go do some stuff like that in Hawaii. So pretty pumped for it.
What what sort of what weapon are you carrying? I'm going to take a rifle. I'm going to take am Actually, you guys saw it. The sig did a nice little I don't know if you want to call it a birthday gift or something, but they kind of made me a sweet little cross with a carbon fiber barrel and a sweet colorway.
It's orange, orange and black. So I'm that's what I'm gonna take. Super pumped.
Nice save me a steak, would you. That's one animal I keep hearing about and I've yet to have a chunk of axis, So if you could bring me a steak back.
For sure.
Yeah, I have had it, and it is is really it's really good. It's like a got almost like maybe a little bit of a sweetness to it, I would say. And it's super tender the piece that I had anyway, So yeah, super excited about it. But other than that, we're just we're wrapping up turkey season right now in Nebraska. I'm go go pull out blinds and then head back to Idaho in a couple of days. But have you been out for turkeys yet?
I have.
You were just telling me before we started recording that the turkeys are really starting to go off and hammer and you're done with clients, and you guys are.
And we're done.
You guys are pulling out at the height the peak, the peak of Goblin. I've been pretty fortunate lately because I've got well, we're down to one as of yesterday, and he might have. We had two toms and four hens right here at the house a couple of evenings. They actually roost right off our little ridge, and so it's nice. I always when I if I know they roosted here, I open up my windows I can listen to him talking in the morning. But yesterday, driving home, I saw one strutting not far off the side of the road, and then as when I was at the house five minutes later, I heard what I thought was a shotgun blast. And then there was only one time that came back with the four ten. So I think someone might have uh what's the word for that when you just swipe them off the road?
Mmmm?
Form of post.
Garrett, you're Almoca, Montana boy. I've known you and I know you've participated at some point in your life and that kind of activity.
I uh, you just talk it. I mean we called it road hunting growing up. We didn't know there's.
Anything oh yeah, but road hunting, all right, road hunting.
Actually, Jordan, you've probably done it just as much as uh as Garrett, because I know in Nebraska at least it was when I hunted back there ten years ago.
Uh.
As long as you're not on the county road, I believe if you're on a for service road you can actually shoot out of your vehicle.
Is that still true?
I didn't think that. I didn't think that it was public lands that you could do it on. But you can on private as long as your vehicle is stopped. It doesn't even have to be shut off park at least the last time the game warden explained it to us. Yeah, but on private land, as long as you're stopped, you can shoot out of the vehicle.
So fun fact, I suppose unbelievable. I've told this story before, I'll tell it again. Brody Henderson and I were there hunting one time, hunt public ground, and we had just stuffed a buck into the back of the truck and we didn't want really anybody to see it because we didn't want to, you know, kind of say, hey, this is a good spot to hunt. And right as we got a tailgate shut and cracked a beer, here comes a red suburban down this bumpy dirt road kind of down into this canyon that we were in, And I kid you not, every window had a gun barrel pointed out it. Even the driver's window I had a gun barrel pointing out of it. I thought, Holy col here's something I've never seen before. They pull up, friendly as can be. Well, every single crotch there was four four crotches in this vehicle, four gun barrels, four crotches. Every crotch had a I don't know if it was a bush light or what but it was some sort of adult beverage light beer in there, and that was their program, rolling around red suburban gum barrels out the window bush lights. I don't condone that one bit, but it was eye opening to say the least.
Yeah, I can imagine.
All right, I happen to doing some turkey hunting. Steve and I just did our annual TRCP Raffle Sweep Steaks hunt in Michigan. And that's a hunt that we raffle off every Usually the raffle happens in April, so the raffles already ended this year for next year's hunt. But next April April twenty twenty four, you'll be able to apply, buy some raffle tickets and then hopefully win and come and hunt with Steve and I in twenty twenty five. I know, you really got to be thinking ahead for this, but that's how it goes. Everything's a year out. But we just hunted with the They actually weren't the winners from last year.
A friend of this guy won it.
And it was interesting to me because this guy, I was like, well, why did he even apply if he didn't want to go on this hunt? And their answer was, well, he's into shooting sports, he's into fishing, and he's into conservation, and so he supports RCP and I thought, oh, all right, that's cool. And so when he won, he called up his buddy and said, hey, I just won this trip. I'm not going I'm not interested in it. Do you want to go?
In him?
And the guy was beside himself. And so we had two really awesome dudes from Illinois. They met us up in Michigan and we had great hunting. I think within three days we killed five gobblers and that included a couple misses. So yeah, it's a great place for a turkey hunt, great place to hang out, uh, great place to make some new friends. So yeah, Steve and I just got done with that. A few days prior to that, I rolled into Wisconsin first to do some habitat improvement slash management on my Wisconsin property.
That and with my dad, and holy cow, did we work.
I worked. The old guys they worked too, just not quite in this at the same rate and pace and length of day that I did.
They're they're you know.
They're all they're retired or partially retired, so they're they're not out there trying to bust their asses.
But we put in a little did they were they good at instructing at least Janni. They kind of help you out when you needed a little bit of advice.
Totally hundred percent, Like when we dug a little pond and I rented the miniacs, and I've messed with the Miniacs enough that I figured I could get this job done. Luckily, my neighbor from the north rolls in. He was just going to stop in and help, maybe run a saarro or whatever. Well, he rolls in with his dad, who.
Runs a.
Runs a Cranberry bog and basically runs Mini X every single day. So after watching me flounder for five or ten minutes, he's like, what do you want done?
And let me get in.
There, you know, And so in an hour he got done what I would would have at least taken me the whole day. And I don't even know if I would have finished, because it's just it's awkward, you know. I mean, even though the controls are there and you just scoop and move and whatnot, and you just I can do it. It's just I'm doing it at ten percent of the speed as which the season pro doesn't. So yeah, And when we were doing that, everybody was watching. Everybody's giving advice on depth and with and YadA YadA should dos. Yeah, what you should do is this.
So I did.
When he was done, I to get in and I just drove out down through the woods a little ways and just dug my own hole, just so I could say that when I rented this miniac, I dug a hole for no good reason. I'm just gonna see. Maybe it'll collect some water, We'll see. And then I did learn the proper technique form moving. We cut a lot of trees and brushed around this pond, and so instead of trying to pick it up and move it, I learned how to just push with the uh, you know, with the bucket and got a lot of that stuff moved out of the way. So besides that, I did a whole bunch of hack and squirt on the maples in our woods where we're getting ready to cut. And so basically that you're you're poisoning the uh the maples so that when the oaks are cut, you don't have this crazy maple regeneration.
We're gonna have it anyways, but you're basically trying.
To give the oaks a better shot and less competition by doing that. The one thing that I where I I put some the most amount of effort and work was we have a ridge top that I wanted to knock down some trees to let more sunlight to the ridge top. And I gotta say, it's a hard thing to do depending on how you were raised, but I definitely had more liberal parents and came up with, you know, don't hurt trees, don't cut trees. Don't use paper bags because you cut trees to use paper bags. Now a paper bag user, because those plastic bags are the devil's product. But yeah, it's a hard thing to do just to go and cut trees down.
What's that?
Oh, I just said that ideas kind of flipped of the paper bags and plastic bags.
Yeah, exactly, And the idea in my head has kind of flipped about cutting trees. Right, the more I learned about all this stuff and habitat management. If these forests are much more than ten years old, nothing happened in there. Happened as in fire or trees getting cut down or whatever. It might be some kind of disturbance that once all that stuff grows out of you know, above.
The reach of any kind of animal.
Then they can't feed on it, and there's really not much value to it, and it becomes what they call it a close canopy forest, which we have a lot of where I'm at in Wisconsin, but generally across the Midwest. It looks beautiful. You go in there, you can see two three hundred yards, you know, big oaks and whatever. But if you start to look at the forest floor, there's nothing there. There's no cover, there's no food other than when the acorns dropped for a month out of the year, but otherwise there's no brows in there to eat. So anyways, plant was knocked down a bunch of trees and get some sunlight to it, and holy cow, run it a chainsaw for three straight days. I mean I was not quite broken, but pretty close. Definitely walking around like an old guy. And I can tell you that all my cuts started kind of rising up the tree, so I didn't have to bend over it as far, and I was my stumps were getting taller. But yeah, my dad and I chipped in and got new steel. I think it's the two sixty one and uh, perfect size for doing that kind of work, not too heavy to lug around in the woods. I used my first light transfer pack. Mark did not like this when I showed him that I had bar oil and gasoline in my in my inn, the same pack that I used to hunt white tails.
I'm like, dude, this is I just cover.
Yeah, I haven't heard of white tails being spooked of bar oil yet or gasoline. I mean they hang out next to the road all the time. What's the problem, dude.
I'm telling you multiple people, I've been starting to make a lot of phone calls in that area to talk to other people that you know, manage their land intensively like this, and they multiple people have said that those deer here that chainsaw and they are waiting two hundred yards away for you to leave, and they're gonna come in there and start feeding because they know that you're bringing down trees.
They're going to first feed.
On the the tops of the trees, all the buds that are, you know whatever, eighty feet out of reach for them. Now they're on the forest floor, they can feed on them. And then a week later there's gonna be new growth because of the sunlight that's now being allowed to hit the ridge top. And so as soon as I did this and kind of finished up, I said, I put three cameras up on this ridge, and the first night deer were in there using the trails that I'd created, or not trails, but these sort of kind of tunnels between all the stuff that I had dropped, and just like I said, feeding on the on the tops. And now since I've been gone for a week, there's been more and more use. So so far it seems to be doing the trick. I gotta say one thing I wish I would have done before I went to try to fell. I bet you I fell somewhere between I don't know, three hundred to five hundred trees. Now, A lot of these are little mape A lot of these are little maples, you know, and just stuff that's small, right, a couple of inches in diameter, all the way up to big jack pines and white pines that were I don't know, not quite two feet probably, Well, a lot of trees went down, and I thought, I knew I'd been trained by a professional arborist on how to fell a tree, but I think I had forgotten just a couple of things, especially about the angles of the wedge that you cut out to fell a tree and instead of so, when I got home, I started doing some YouTube and on fell in a tree and came upon an awesome website.
It is called.
Website YouTube channel called Guilty of Treason at east Side Tree Works. Yeah, and man, these guys, I'm telling you they people must love trees get getting felled because they've got quite the following. A lot of their videos have a lot of views, and they're absolute masters at what they do. And they've got a great video out there, what's it called the World's Best Tree Felling Tutorial Eight Ways to Fell a Tree, And they do eight different types of cuts, which is basically you're gonna cut out the wedge on one side of the tree, which is where it's gonna fall, and then you have a back cut that you know, releases the holding wood. And the way they had this perfect property where the where there's ten of these giant uh, I don't know, I didn't know if they were ponderosis or what, some kind of really nice tall straight pines, and so they do a different cut on each one, and I mean they're giants, and some of them are even leaning towards this house and they could easily hit land on the house and they're like, oh yeah, just do this and then you know, make your hinge woods. It's just it's fascinating and their pros and I wish I would have watched it before I went into the woods and did this. So if you're thinking about going out and doing doing some tinder timber stand improvement, highly recommend YouTube Guilty of Trees and and uh watch what they cheat teach about felling trees because it's, uh it's fascinating and very educational and you'll be probably safer.
I tell you.
One thing you'll have less less pinched saw blades. One thing I didn't have with me was a wedge and an axe, and uh, I pinched my saw I don't know half dozen times, which isn't that many for cutting three hundred trees down, but still it's a pain in the butt because then you got to start get another saw and it gets dangerous.
So yeah, man, that's like always my biggest concern when I'm out trying to act like I know what I'm doing, when I like do something like that once every three years, is getting the sauce stuck, because there's nothing more embarrassing and nothing that makes you look more like an amateur when you step back from your saw and have to shut it off and you stare up at this tree not really knowing what to do next, and then you know, typically it leads to laughing and poking fun at the person that has left set saw in the tree.
Oh yeah, there's there's there's also a moment before you step away and look up at the tree where you just step away and put both your hands on the tree and think, oh, I'll just push it a little bit, to push it and then remove my saw, and then you realize that, oh no, these trees are heavy.
Yeah yeah, yeah, total, So I'm making light of it.
Now my electric wall is going to tackle that job.
Well, actually I was using it when I would pinch sure my saw. I was getting my dad's little electric steel and then coming back and basically, you know, then felling the tree the way that it wanted to go, and just leaving my saw pinched until I got rid of the tree, and then and then taking mine out.
So yeah, it would it would get it would take care of that.
But the proper way would be if you've got one of those leaners and it ain't going the way you wanted to go. Is you get some wedges and you start your cut and then you basically back in the the wedges coming behind your saw blade, and uh that pushes the tree over. So again, I'm no expert, but I did watch the YouTube video called the World's Best Tree Felling Tutorial, so go check it out.
All right, I think we're caught. We're caught up there now, you know.
Oh last, but not least, since I'm sitting here scratching my belly because if freaking itches, because I cannot go turkey honey anywhere where there's poison oak or poison ivy without coming back with some Luckily, it's a mild case for what I've dealt with in the past, and it seems to already be receding.
But got lye. It just loves me miserable.
Yeah. Man, that's like something I've like never had to Like. It was eye opening when I went down to Texas and ran into a briar patch down there, which to me, briar patch is like where the bunny rabbits go on cartoons. Right, I've never had to deal with them in Montana, and the reality of like poison oak a lot. We have poison ivy up here, but as you know, like not everywhere, it's like pretty tough to find. And then briar's just like all the stuff that you got to look out for when you're not in Montana is amazing that people still go out there and want to hunt all the time. Those briar patches, like did not make sense that you'd ever want to go in there and hunt in that.
Well, you don't go in, you don't go through them, you go around them.
Yeah, yeah, maybe that was my problem.
Yeah, we've got grizzly bears.
But the the flora around here doesn't really seem to want to scratch you up too bad. Where that that those kind of briar patches you're talking about, it'll destroy a set.
Of clothes in a heartbeat. Mm hmmm hmm.
All right, let's get onto what we all got here to uh to do, and that's to talk about bullets. I'm hoping we're gonna actually get in some arguing about what's the best bullet, and but before that, we're gonna kind of tackle a it's a follow up listener question. We're in a previous episode, we discussed uh the best hunting caliber. But then Patrick Kirby wrote in via gear talk at themea dot com, so you have a question right into gear talk at the Mediator dot com and he asked how to determine if you are under a gunt? And I'm guessing that's that came from me. I think I said something about, hey, you just got to have the minimum of caliber to get the job done. So some of that is is objective, but there are like while joining you explain there are minimums.
Yeah, yeah, there are minimums.
I think like a decent place to start or something that you should at least look at, because I think some folks don't know that it's even a thing. Is a lot of states that you're hunting, they have minimum caliber requirements. So I think like here in Nebraska for deer, it's like a two forty. It might be twenty two to fifty and up or something like that. But that is, there are minimum calibers. But you can also get on like a ballistic calculator. I tend to like the sig sour one just because I've been around it a lot. Garrett can speak to this a little bit. There might be some more even ones that are just online and on an app. And basically what you just need to do is enter your bullet weight and your muzzle velocity that is coming out of that barrel when you're shooting it, and that will give you your energy, and a lot of apps will mark it out to distances as well. So if you're, what two thousand foot pounds coming out at the bar or at the muzzle, then at two hundred three hundred yards, it'll show you, like what you what your muzzle or your foot pounds of energy should be out to that far. A common threshold that I found throughout a couple of websites, game and fish websites for an ELK is fifteen hundred foot pounds. So you can run your bullet data through and you can say, all right, well, I'm definitely okay at the muzzle for my velocity, but out to let's say I only to meet that minimum, I can I should only shoot out to like four hundred yards or something that's theoretical, but yeah, yeah.
And SIGs binos. I think there's a setting in there, Jordan crist me if I'm wrong, where you can have it like flash at you when you're beyond your energy threshold that you want to shoot at or something. There's like a limitter there where you can see through the I think the ten k's like, am I beyond that threshold I want to be at? For energy? The other thing that I would like add to that too is, you know, energy is a big deal. I can't remember what minimum thresholds if people like to be at are, but velocity I would say per bullet that you're shooting. I know Yanni and I will probably get into it talking about this experiment, But a lot of these bullets, they they perform differently at different speeds, whether you're shooting copper or like a cup and core, and they need minimum velocities to perform and expand. So that's maybe just as important as energy is looking at the bullet that you're shooting and how fast it needs to go to open up and do the thing that it needs to do.
Yeah, I think most of them hover around eighteen hundred feet a second. Is somewhere in that range is going to be minimum for most bullets to work.
And a bullet will tell you that like a manufacturer, like on the box will they tell you that, or at least on their website. Yeah, all right, we are diving into the main section of this podcast with Garrett. We are going to talk about this video that you and Yanni did six months ago talking about different types of bullets, because so, can you give us an rundown of, like, what was the idea behind this copper versus led video and why you wanted to do it?
You want to tackle Garrett?
Yeah, man, So Janny and I were kind of talking about this for a while, but really where the stem from is we've seen ballistic gel tests done on like comparing bullets, Like you can type in ballistic gel tests and get a lot of results. What we hadn't seen is testing the different types of bullets at variable ranges and through different mediums, meaning like a clear gel versus gel with bone in it. We'd like we could find tests where people were going like cup and core versus a bonded bullet, but they were all at like one hundred yard tests, and so we thought the market was lacking in a test at other hunting ranges. There's some of us that liked to poke out around five hundred yards and stuff, and what's the difference in bullet performance out at that range? Versus one hundred yards. So we kind of put this together as a hey, choose your bullet based off of how you're hunting and what you're hunting, not just like what the optimal performance is at one hundred yards through a clear ballistic Joe.
Can you explain you talked about you guys use a copper bullet, a cup and corp bullet, and a bonded lad bullet. Can you talk about those three different types of bullets and kind of what they're what the idea is behind them.
Yeohanni, you want me to hit that or are you going to take that one?
Uh?
Yeah, we can tag team for sure. Start off with your favorite, Garrett, the cup and core. We'll cut to the chase. I know what your favorite is?
Yeah, well, but full disclosure man during that video. We have video proof of it. I was a huge bonded fan like that bullet expanded. It was just like it was a picture perfect expansion every time at every range, from five hundred yards out all the way into one hundred. It looked like a commercial for that bullet. It was exceptional and through the gel it was hard not to pick it as the winner. It was the most consistent Uh, it created quite a lot of shock in the gel while you know, we weighted afterwards and we were getting like ninety nine zero point nine percent weight retention. When we consider lead bullets and environmental factors, that's a big deal too, as well as meat loss. So it was great. I've since changed my mind because of some of the intangibles that I don't think we captured in those in that gel test. And that's after a season of using bonded slash. You know, I used like the eldx's a lot this year, which is it has a lot of bonded properties. In terms of weight retention, I'd say it's like a better expanding or a more rapid expanding bonded bullet, but it still retains weight really well. And everything that got shot died. I want to preface that they all died. They did not die in the way that I hoped that they would or at the rate And so I had this year, everything that I was testing bonded bullets with was out of a six or five PRC and everything that got hit ran like and ran fast, and they might only go fifty yards, but they they didn't have that classic stop in their tracks that when you're hunting some timber if you don't have a lot of snow on the ground, like the things that I like to see in bullet performance. And then the only two animals that were killed with in full disclosure, like straight up match Ammo, like did the full on you know, hashtag dirt nap kind of thing right where they just and they were all at sub five hundred but between four and five hundred yards like stopped right there. And that's what you get out of a you know, a rapid expansion or sometimes exploding cup and core bullet.
All right, you got off track a little bit and.
What that means.
But Yanni was going to course correct me here. I feel like I did get off track because I got excited.
Well, yeah, you just had to explain what the cup and core bullet is and then also explain what match grade is.
Okay, Well, so cup and core is like you're very basic AMMO type that most of us grew up shooting, where it's literally a core lead piece with a cup of copper like molded around it, but they're not attached.
The best known cup and core is probably the Remington core locked.
Yeah, I mean it's frankly it's what everybody shot up until not very long ago. And then when I talk match Amo, it's when you when you think of like some Burger targets, Sierra match kings, those type of bullets Hornity has like an E L d M. Generally those are associated with like their primary UH purpose is creating very repeatable, perfect bullet shapes. Generally they have a softer face or a thinner cup, and because of that they blow up when they hit right like they have a lot of expansion when they hit whatever it is that they're going to hit. If you can balance that, I've just found if you can balance that with speed, people's base concern is penetration. If you can balance out with speed, I feel like you still get the penetration that you're looking for, even on an exploding bullet. But that's the basic design of.
A cup and core I got it for bullet performance.
Like on an animal, are you looking for, like you know, two holes or do you want that bullet to explode? What's what's your take on that?
I like all of the energy shedding in the animal. Frankly, based off of this last hunting season, two holes are great for blood tracking. Turns out though if they die standing there, you don't really have to blood track them very much. So I I do. Like when a bullet goes in there, it goes from twenty five hundred feet per second to zero and it all stops right there.
Okay, before we get too much more into performance, let's cover off on bonded and then the copper bullet, which is the two others that we tested. So the bonded is similar to that cup and core in that there is a core within an outside shell or jacket as they call it, but the two have been chemically bonded together so that they just retain weight better and they hold together better, and you don't get that crazy rapid expansion and explosion in air quotes type effect where the bullet shatters into a bunch of little pieces. The bonded bullet is made to stay together better longer, not lose any of its front end. You get high weight retention and probably better penniture, should get better penetration. And then finally the third one was the copper bullet, which some of them are not one hundred percent copper. They call them what's the term garrett when it's like a blend, but it's a copper bullet, it's an amalgam.
Yeah, it's escaping me right now.
All right, look it up. But some of the all copper bullets are actually not one hundred percent uh uh copper, you know, they're blended with some other things. Barnes has been doing that long long time.
Uh.
I'm not one hundred percent sure on this, but I think the Barnes was doing that. The reasoning was because they felt like those all copper projectiles were just were better across a lot of different performance standards than other bullets, which is why they started making them. Then came along the hey, let's not shoot lead deal, and so people were looking more for copper bullets and they were in the right place at.
The right time.
I I when I first found out about Barnes, it was because I watched a guy shoot and I big five point bull and he dirt napped him and I said, WHOA, what's that bullet?
Right?
We've we recovered it. It was just in the far side of the hide and I looked at it and I said, wow, that's cool. And he goes, oh, yeah, you know, I've been reloading these for years, great success, YadA YadA.
YadA.
So but again the copper, uh usually because it's a little bit lighter than lead, so it's a longer profile. So it gives you a little bit of a higher BC, higher sexual density, and uh maybe a little bit less fouling in your barrel.
And I think a correction there, Yanni, though, is sectional density I think is lower?
Is it?
Because the sectional density of copper is less than lead. That's why your bullet has to be longer to achieve the same weight, and that's generally why speed and twist can be a little bit more of an shoot with copper.
Okay, my understanding, So I stay corrected, less sexual density but sometimes higher BC's right.
Yeah, yeah, And I think you're right too that that Barns I think was like the iconic copper bullet that before the don't shoot lead kind of stuff started. I think they were mainly looking for penetration out at distance, right. They needed a bullet that would stay together and punch through an elk shoulder, you know, at five hundred.
Yards, well, I think at any at any I mean that was because they were probably making those before they were making bonded bullets even and so I think they just needed at any distance. They needed a bullet that had a you know, super high structural integrity. And whether it's an elk or if you're going to Africa to shoot some big game. You know that a lot of this bullet discussion can be around or can be sort of guided by you know, what are you going to be shooting it at? And then and then at what range you're going to be shooting it at? Because no one's going to go shoot a cup and core bullet at a dangerous game animal. I can tell you that much, right right, Yep, maybe some maybe a thin skinned cat, but I would expect they wouldn't mess around with that thing either, with that bullet. So anyways, there's a three different types. Those are three different types that we tested. And uh, yeah, I don't know, Jordan, do you want to go into, uh like what we actually did in the test and what we saw in the test?
Yeah, I mean I think that would be super helpful and maybe you know, we can cliff note it just a little bit, but I think you know, going through the test and how you guys did it'd be super beneficial.
Sure, well, Gary, you pretty much explained what the test was to but just to recap quickly. Five hundred three hundred and I think one hundred and fifty yards ish was the last distance we shot six to five creed more the uh, let me see. The three that we tested was one hundred and twenty grain Federal Trophy copper, one hundred and thirty five grain Federal Burger Hybrid hunter, which was the cup and core, and then the the one hundred and thirty grain Federal Terminal ascent, which was the bonded bullet, and we had each one up. We shot at two different gels at each of those distances, one gel with no scalpula in it and then one gel with a deer scalpula in it. Going into it, I thought that we would see the crazy like short range, short range within the gel destruction from the cup and core, and then we would see you know, better penetration, you know, longer penetration with the other two bullets. That's sort of what I was expecting. And I didn't think that it was going to change too much whether you hit the scapula or not, would you think, Garrett.
Uh, Yeah, Going into it, I thought the scapula would actually change it a lot, right, Like I thought at five hundred yards, we would see the cup and core struggle with penetration, and that it would perform the best at kind of like that mid range, and that at longer distance we would see the copper really outperform the others because of the penetration factor, like it would just out. We would see like the result of a copper or even the bonded bullet getting that penetration at range, regardless of scapula or not.
Yeah, I think too.
It's it's the fact that it was only a deer scapula, which is just you know, if you've ever actually butchered, if you've butchered your own deer and taken a part of deer's shoulder, that deer scalpula ways, I don't know, four to six maybe four to eight ounces. I mean I doubt it weighs a half a pound. I mean, it's a pretty light small bone, and sure it's a little bit harder than say gel or meat, but uh, it's definitely not an elk scapula or a moose scapula, right.
Right right, Yeah, I think if we had to redo it, I would like go down to the local butcher shop and grab some like cow scapulas, right, yeah, and really try to do something because I I would say it was almost a non factor, right, Like it increased the results of the bullets, Like it was just a little bit more drastic, but it was so minimal that without dissecting it with slow mo and the camera setups that we had, it like, it'd be very hard to tell the difference. Yeah.
Yeah, So general results of what we saw was, uh, I guess we can start. We can start for whatever we shot from far, and then we went closer and at distance the cup and core, because of its you know, lesser structural integrity, it still you know, expanded and did its thing at that distance, while the bonded and the copper did a little bit less. The bonded still mushroomed pretty dang good, and the copper was at that distance you would say, eh, like that's not the best, you know, like I'm sure it would still kill an animal, but it's just the holes not as big, the pedals weren't as big, so you're just not getting that, you know, the spinning giant pedals going through the animal, you know, when those petals open up off that bullet, And yeah, I think that that would be the one time you'd say, yeah, I don't know if that copper was perfect for that. Like I said, it's still probably, but it just didn't have enough energy.
Yeah, I mean shot placement is king. But I would tell folks that'll go look at that video that that copper bullet at the five hundred yard distance, it looked like it was just wearing a little hat right, like those petals barely trimmed back. If I the cup and core, it actually didn't do as much as I thought it would at five hundred but that if you watch that video, the tip of that bullet ripped off and it created like a ton of yaw in it, so it still ended up almost like tumbling through the gel, which when you watch the slow mo still create like that. You know, whether you want to call it hydrostatic shock or whatever, it's created like a lot of shockwaves to the gel just from that bullet tumbling. But I would say the most the prettiest one out of the five hundred yard was definitely the bonded like it. I was surprised how well it expanded.
Yeah, yeah, it did the trick, and again not too much difference, you know between scapula and no scapula. Like you said, it caused the bullets to do a little bit more expanding, but not that much. And then distance wise, I can't remember as far as actual penetration that did at that distance, I'm guessing the bond in the coppers still outperformed the cup and core right as far as just straight penetration goes.
Yeah, I think they just barely made it out of that eighteen inch block right into the secondary block. And then I think the cup and core, if I remember right, stopped like right. Well, it actually in one are the ways you can see it. I think it barely came out of the gel at a point where it like laid down next to it, like the on the plywood like behind it. It just like barely poked out and flopped down right, so it stopped there. I like something we didn't get to talk about in the video. With the bonded bullet, it performed really well. Man, it was hard to hit that little block with that bonded bullet. I just don't think that I saw the consistency in terms of accuracy out of that. Now, all guns shoot bullets differently, but I do know bondeds are inherently. Typically they're less accurate because of that chemical process creating inconsistency. So, for whatever it's worth, it was it was the one that was most nervous about hitting, you know, really like a minute of angle sized target and not even a minute of angle because that scapula righty, he was like three and a half inches four inches across, right, and we're trying to center punch it. That made me the most nervous, considering that the heat that we were dealing with, trying to get stuff going before wind. It was tough with that bonded bullet.
Yeah, all right, moving into three hundred yards, Uh, what do we see, Garrett? About the same.
Yeah, I'd say it was just like more of it, right, the copper bullet, instead of just having like a little hat on top of it, seemed to peel back a little more. I was still disappointed in it, man, Like, I still felt like I would have liked to see copper expand more than what it did. The bonded expanded as it did at five hundred, just even more so. And then I think that's where we did start seeing that cup and core come apart more.
Yea, And.
Yeah, so I think it was just it was similar results comparing him to each other. It was just more draft astick bullet to bullet.
Yeah, and definitely the scapula seemed to take more energy and almost explode, and a lot of times we had the scapula actually fragments of it leaving the gel when those bullets would hit it would kind of blow it out of there.
Yeah.
It is something to note on that too that we saw at all the ranges, but I think three hundred was the best example. Both the copper and bonded expanded fast.
Man.
If you remember, right, the cup and core kind of left this like little tiny hole in the scapula and then came apart almost after that, almost like center mass of the gel, and that those bonded and copper bullets they were like full expansion mode going into the scapula and those scapulas were gone.
Yeah, and that was a real big surprise, not what you'd expect to see the cup and core actually make it through what was it like four or five inches of gel and then the scapula, yeah, right, and then it would it would start to you know, expand and it and actually the one that had just the gel, it was similar, right, it made it four or five inches and then started to do its thing, where again the bonded in the copper, UH started to do its thing right right off the bat, which you know, it could be just the amount of design and engineering that goes into each one of these bullets, right, That's what you get when you pay for more of a premium bullet. Is somebody's you know, there's an engineer that made the bullet to start expanding as soon as it hits anything, right.
Yep, Garrett, have you heard those cup and Corr bullets that are like the burger At closer distances, I would say within three hundred that folks will just get like two pinholes through the animal, especially if they don't hit a bone.
I've heard that. I haven't witnessed it personally, like I've shot a lot of critters or witnessed it with a lot of critters with a burger, and I've never once seen them pinhole. And I think, as Yanni brings up this kind of one hundred and forty yard shot, something I was going to point out across the spectrum, we saw nearly the same amount of penetration from these bullets at one hundred, three hundred and five hundred yards. It was just that they were expanding more so they couldn't go as far, but they had more speed, and it's almost like they just balanced out perfectly. Like Cup and Core almost always stayed in the first jel, regardless of five hundred or one hundred and forty or one hundred and ten, whatever it was, Yanni, and I think the same was said for Copper and bonded. They all had like the same amount of penetration. It's just that since they expanded more at the shorter distances, it had a harder time pushing through the jail.
Got it.
Yeah, If anything, Jordan, I've heard and I actually remember, it was a you know, it was a nozzler ACU bond out of a three hundred weather be I'm guessing it was a one eighty. It might have been a two hundred grainer. But a buddy of mine shot at Elkott was forty or fifty yards close for that gun, and you would think that it would just bowl that thing over right. It killed him. I can't remember exactly what the shot placement was. This was twenty years ago. He probably shot him right behind the shoulder. But that bullet could not take that that extreme amount of energy speed velocity at that short distance, because I'm guessing it was coming out of there.
I don't know.
Would you guess three hundred weather be one hundred and eighty grainer Garrett, mean that's thirty one? Yeah, I was going to say thirty one, even like it's it's cooking. And that bullet did not go through, didn't go to the far side. It went in halfway and had it expanded like crazy and sort of came apart like a like a cup and core. But the bull ran off and died right fifty yards later. Now, I'm sure if he would have shot it right on the shoulder, probably would have dirt napped it right there. Again, depends on where you shoot him. But it seems to me like at those close, super close ranges, it's super hot speeds that instead of pencil holding, you're going to see more of the opposite where the bullet it just hits with such speed that the the structure can't take it and so it blows up versus pinholing through.
Mm hmm yep.
But let's let's talk a little bit about that garret, because I want to come back to your last Fall hunting season and all the Cup, Match Grade, Cup and Core killing that you did. What was the shot placement and what were you aiming for? And then what what what ended up being a shot placement and did you try different ones?
Yeah, so I did. I did some killing with match Grade, Cup and Core, but that's mostly what I've shot in the past. This year, I spent more time on Bonded or e l d x's again, like there's gonna be some gun nerds out there that are gonna be like Bonded and eld x's are different. They kind of go after the same traits though in terms of trying to like that weight retention type bullet the on the match great, ammo. It was all like very typical behind the shoulder type shot placements. I've never been like a real big shoulder like high shoulder shooter. I know there's guys that like to go for that for that kind of classic stopping their tracks, highlight reel shot. But I mean, I've got video of and I sent this video I think to both of you guys, but that mule deer I shot this year with a six to five pretty more at five hundred and twenty five yards with one hundred and thirty grand Cup and Core Burger. That bullet hit two inches behind the front shoulder, did not exit, and it was about as like, you know, violent of a put down that you could have right, and that happened on both him and another mule. Dear that that little creed more shot this year with match am I mean that is straight up burger match, Ammo. Did you want to go into the eld x is one, Yanni?
Well yeah, yeah, yeah, mostly So that's my question was where were you shooting him? And so you were shooting him actually behind the shoulder. That was your your goat, go to shot placement.
Yeah, and the reason for that we talked about this in the video. But I don't think cup and core bullets need help expanding, right. I think shoulder shot placement helps a bullet like maybe a copper rip open a little bit more. But the biggest concern you have when shooting Cup and Core is meat loss. And as you know, Yanni, you creep up into that shoulder with a Cup and Core and you're going to have that conversation with your buddy on whether or not it's worth packing out that shoulder right, because it's usually going to be pretty well destroyed.
Yep, yep. I shot my prom horn last year long range for me. Think it was five sixty and it was that it was it was a croco that he pronounced that soroco sorocco.
Yeah.
Anyways, we all know how the prong horn has that perfect where it's white belly fur rides up onto its side right behind its shoulder and it makes there's a nice corner and then it streaks across it's belly going you know, horizontally in that white corner. You can't ask for a better aiming point. And my bullet hit exactly there, which I thought was going to be a little bit behind the shoulder, and I mean it barely clipped both shoulders, and it might I think he might have been quartering one way or the other little bit. So it went through the other shoulder just by a couple of inches and man on both shoulders. We were having that conversation like I trimmed out a solid thirty percent of me and just left it in the field, and uh, yeah, it's a bummer, but you're gonna you're gonna lose some shoulder.
Hard not to.
It's like, I mean, we can get into this, but there's no perfect bullet, right, and we talked about it in the video. Depending on the bullet you're shooting, you really got to pay attention to shot placement because nobody goes out there to leave, you know, one or two of the four quarters or like cutting them up and you know, trying to make burger dog treats out of a bunch of gelatinous meat. That's not why we're out there.
No, no, Yeah, it's a bummer. And I will say that's always been one of the reasons I like shooting the copper because I feel like I've had even punching them straight in the scapular or busting the humorous, it just seems like that zone hole, you know, the area around the hole is smaller where you have that purple bloodshot meat, and you just end up doing a lot less, a lot less trimming your yields a little bit higher.
Yeah, yeah, and uh, I guess to kind of dive into shot placement then for the bonded bullets that I was hunting with this year, I crept a little bit more into that shoulder understanding the weight retention aspects of it, man, I'll just get into I know I already like jumped the gun and started talking about this. But in every case that six or five PRC like, the bullet placements were awesome and I can't claim all of them. Dan used it for two animals, my wife used my rifle for a couple of animals. A buddy of mine used my rifle for an animal. The shot placements were all pretty good, and all the animals ended up dying. They just all ran off the ways and not like I got hit by a bullet and now I'm gonna run, but just like, look at your buddy and go did you hit it? And in one case, I think, what's scared? And I know this is a this is one data point. But what had me transition over to the cup and core again was a friend of mine with my PRC shot a cow elk not extreme range. I think she was at like right around four to twenty five or something like. For that gun and bullet set up is very achievable. When he shot her, the that cow immediately went behind a tree to where we couldn't see her anymore. We waited a long time. Which bullet was the hunting a long time. This was the eld X. She went behind a tree. We could tell she was standing, but the other cows are just kind of staring at her right like then know what to do? I think it was the lead cow waited long enough where I told my buddy like, listen, I'm going I've got an elk tag as well, give me my rifle. I'm going to shoot another elk and then it should get him to come out onto that hillside where shooting suppressed and at that range, like they didn't really know where the shot came from, things like that, And I was like, that other elk is going to come out, I'll hand you back the rifle, and you know if you hit her. We literally didn't know at that point, but if you hit her, you'll at least regardless field to take a follow up shot. So I did shot a cow typical thing. She took off running right and my buddy I kind of yells, He's like, I don't know if you hit it, and he was on glass when I shot. She ended up running about fifty yards and toppled over. At that point, the cow that he originally shot handed him back to the rifle came running out and I yelled, do him. There's a blood spot on the top of that cow elk's shoulder, and he could see it through the scope. The first one that he shot shot her, and that one was perfect placement behind the shoulder, about halfway up. I mean, it was just like right where you want to be. The way that she went down, though we didn't know where that bullet placement was, it looked like kind of like a high like backbone type shot. The way that she fell down, we all know, like that kind of classic like ass first leg, you know, kind of thing. So we hustled. I'm like, I think you hit her high. Let's get up there. Got up there, and she was dead when we started gutting her out pulling back hide. Two things that were strange to me. One, that first bullet was where like if you were an archery hunter, everybody gets nervous, right, it's in that kind of high shoulder void. However, the back was broke, but it wasn't from the second bullet. And the only way we can figure it is that that when he hit her with that second bullet, that that spine must have already been fractured or compromised a little bit. And then the shock of that second bullet hitting like broke it all the way right, But it didn't on that first shot, And we were talking about it on the mountain and we both like, in my opinion, if that first shot would have been a cup and core, that elk would have went straight down. Even if it would have just been a spine like high spine shot, I think it would have blown up enough where it would have created terminal damage.
What if he had crept too far forward and punched the humorous or the bottom of the scapula, do you think then that it would a cup and cor it'll go right down.
I still think it would have created enough damage that it would have stopped it right. And I think that was my biggest complaint on the Bonded and Eldx's is that regardless of where they got hit, it seemed like they just took off and they didn't get present any other follow up opportunities. And I think, like, look, we always want to have perfect shot placement, but if you've been hunting long enough, everyone agrees it doesn't always happen. And I think that that a cup and core would have at least created enough shock inside that critter where it would have just stopped there.
Interesting, yeah, because I still get a little bit nervous about that cup and core that. You know, even if you did it ten times in a row, right and it blows up, it stops and they don't go anywhere. What if it blows up and you have that crazy ball up where it just all goes diagonally back towards the liver right and into the into the guts, right, then you're going to have the same same results as you did with the with the bonded back there.
Yeah. I mean, I think we all agreed in that video that cup and core was less predictable, yeah, than the bonded in copper. Like bonded and copper kept a pretty straight line. The only predictable thing about cup and core is it generally created a lot of damage and shock within the gel. And what was reassuring as I went back and watched that video through hunting season is, yeah, the amount of yaw or you know, whatever you want to call it from that cup and core coming apart, not in a very concentric way, like it kind of just went all over the place. It's still got decent amount of penetration regardless of distance because it just it didn't. It came apart more or less depending on the distance, and so we were still seeing. I mean, eighteen inches of penetration is more than enough to hit the stuff that we need to hit.
Yeah, we'll have to do it again and shoot it through a little bit heavier duty medium.
Yeah, agreed. Yeah, I think, like you know, the hide, I would love to do it again with the hide on the front to start the expansion process a little earlier. I would like to see what a cup and core does there versus a bonded and then a thicker like plan, Like let's look at worst case scenarios, Yanni, and do like a big cow scapula or humorous right, like we're trying to shoot through massive bone. Because I haven't witnessed it, I've heard about it. I've never witnessed the cup and core exploding on the outside of a scapula, but we've all heard about it. Right Where like zero penetration catastrophic to the hunter anyways, just like nothing bad getting hit, like as far as vitals.
Yeah, Jordan, you ever had any major like misses or failures from bullets of any kind on Big Game?
Man?
The only thing that really, I hit a bull one time with a burger with a one forty.
It's just a one forty burger. I'm pretty sure.
Just so everybody's clear, that burger one forty is which style of bullet.
Cup and corkay yep. So uh yeah, it was. So I was shooting six five four, I was riding that five hundred yard mark, and I just I was dialed. I think I was just dial a click high and uh I he dumped right in his tracks and I looked for him for two days. Never found any blood, but I watched him dumping his tracks, and then he kind of rolled out of a little opening, and I was running around the hillside trying to get another opening where I could see him. And then by the time I got over there, he was he was gone and I couldn't I could and find him. And then another one that was with h It wasn't it wasn't the match King, but it was a Sierra bullet and we shot at Leah shot deer last year about three hundred yards with the thirty out six, and the weirdest thing happened. Man, She hit him perfect, like behind the shoulder, midway up, like you were saying right where you want to be.
That bullet went.
In, hit one one long, and then the only thing I could see, there's a bullet going straight up through his spine, Like the bullet hit something and deflected straight up, and so we got one lung and a spine and it dropped him and he rolled down the hill out of sight. Well we go over to him. I mean, I thought the deer was dead on the spot, and he wasn't, and we just had to put another one in him.
But that was a weird thing.
That I saw that I can't really explain other than just things happen sometimes too that you can't explain.
You know, another thing too, We'll have to test, because it definitely brings it up when you have this conversation because so many of us like to shoot these lighter calibers. They're more pleasurable to shoot. We think they get the job done. But you gotta wonder, hey, if I had a three thirty caliber magnum, would all of these animals that Garrett saw, you know, run off fifty yards and still die? Would those have just dirt n apped with that same shot placement If it was the same bullet but in a thirty caliber magnum, and it would have been they would have been moving whatever, two three, one hundred feet faster a second.
Maybe, Yeah, I think that's man that I thought about that a lot this year, especially since one of my hunting buddies the whole time was ragging on me for shooting a six or five anything. But what I fall back to, Yanni, was the year before that, I used my little sick Cross because it was my competition rifle, right, and I was so comfortable with it. I used it for everything. It killed everything except for my moose slash two years ago. So mountain go, multiple elk, multiple deer, multiple antelope, right, all of them did what I would hope would happen when a bullet hits them, right, Like, they pretty much didn't take another step. Maybe they took a couple of steps, but like very labored. And so when I went to a six or five PRC, same diameter. But you know, we all know that the velocity and energy difference is in a PRC versus a creepy I was, okay, a PRC is just is a faster right, Like when you break it down, it's a faster six or five bullet coming out of the tube right, so we know we can create more energy more rapid. I think it would. You can go onto any forum if you want a good afternoon, type in elk hunting with a six to five creed more and watch folks yell at each other for a long time. Six five PRC is considered a little bit more of your like big game hunting cartridge, or people are more comfortable with it. I was expecting to see more drastic results in the creed more because of that, But by changing the bullets that I was shooting, I saw less drastic kills than I saw my creed more. So that begs the question, Yanni, I mean, what are you shooting this fall?
This year, I'm gonna shoot the seven Mickey mouse for the first time ever. The reason that I called the seven seven Mickey mouse, it's the seven millimeter Remington Magnum is the actual name of the cartridge, but it was said to be so in our elk camp when I was coming up in I think I started guiding in two thousand ninety nine or two thousand and it was just known like if a guy showed up with a seven milimeter rembag, everybody was like I don't want to got him that Elk's gonna get away, That Elk's gonna get away. I mean, it was just known, and it was pure coincidence that there had been, you know, more failures with that gun than others, and the guides there were just anti the seven millimeters, so they called it the seven mickey mouse because it just wasn't enough gun, right, everybody wanted to be if in that camp at that time, if if the client said, hey, I'm gonna buy any rifle, all the guides would have said, well, come with a three hundred weather be with one hundred and eighty grainers or two hundred grainers loaded for it.
That was like the preferred Elk rifle. And you can't argue with it.
It's it's great, but I feel like these days so I had never ever messed with a seven millimeter and this year got a couple of new rifles and decided to get them both in that cartridge and just really get some personal experience with that cartridge. And I think that with today's you know, that was twenty years ago, so the bullets were getting better, you know.
I think that.
Noazaor's partition was around the Acubon was just showing up around then. But there's still plenty of core locks coming through the camp. So now you know I can I'm sure I can shoot a bunch of quality bullets with that set of meal meter and I'll have great success. The nice thing now that I think a big change in what we're doing and how we're shooting these guns and what's going to come a factor that's going to come into play more and more. Is that a reason that nobody wanted to shoot with the three hundred weather be back in the day, or a three hundred win mag whatever pick your poison was because it was punishing. Nobody wanted to sit at the bench and dial it in. And then you know, half the people wound up with scope marks between their eyes when they did shoot an elk with it. But now with suppressors becoming more and more available or people at least getting them, they still seem like it's a pain in the butt to get one. It's taken eight or nine months, maybe more, but that's a it's a completely different experience now to shoot a magnum rifle when you can suppress it and it's not you know, it just doesn't beat you up anymore, So why not pound them if you're not pounding yourself.
That's what I say.
Yeah, I feel like your listener question at the beginning of this of like the perfect caliber or what speed do I need to shoot? I would say, like, start with the gun that you can shoot right, Like you put somebody behind a suppressed or muzzle break six or five creed more and they're gonna end up being a good shot. They're not afraid of it. They can watch first round, which is a big deal in the field. Like we've learned, we've translated the comp world to hunting. Calling your own impact is a big thing. And then work your way to that happy medium of something that has the knockdown right, but you're not afraid to shoot it. And I think like that's where some of these prcs are taking off or seven people are coming back to a seven RAM or to eighty aclee right where they have that knockdown. But because of modern tech and the fact that we're not trying to build six pound guns all the time, like you're you're fine sitting behind it and taking to the range and dumping a bunch of ammo.
Yep.
So knowing Yan knowing that. Uh, we're like, you know, we're gonna be working with SICK this year as far as bullet tight because we don't know the names of all the bullets yet, but as far as bullet type, what are you going to be shooting?
Uh?
Well, we did hear through the grapevine that there's a strong possibility that they're going to be loading up some barns under the SIG brand, So I will probably shoot that as well as whatever their bonded bullet is. Yeah, well, I gotta go with I don't know, maybe maybe I'll have all three. Maybe I should just say I'll do I'll try all three and and uh yeah, because I have a pretty good mule deer tag that that's probably the most high pressure uh you know hunt of the year with a rifle at least, and uh, I probably go go bond it there. I don't know, but I like, again, for me, in my personal experience, I've had uh, great luck with copper barnes, usually some of the trophy copper from Federal, but great luck with those bullets. Over the years, I have noticed that at distance, does the animal flip right over at three point fifty?
Nope?
You know, even I think I shot a bull out quartering away with the probably a three hundred short MAGS, but I was shooting at that time. I was probably gone down to a one to sixty five copper and it slowed him down to where I pretty much could walk up to within fifty yards of him and then shoot him again. But he was certainly not dead at that first shot three and fifty yards with that copper bullet. So yes, just got to keep that kind of stuff in mind. But yeah, I've got confidence in all those bullets. I've actually trying to think I've ever had a full on failure with a bullet, any kind of bullet, and like not recovered the animal one doesn't come to mind. I feel like they missed.
It's rare. Yeah, yeah, I feel like that's rare. Man, Like they stick out in our minds because they're always like the biggest elkor gear you've ever seen in your life. But I think it's especially today, like it's pretty rare. And I think that you're like I saw your post the other day. I think you're doing it right on testing accuracy out of your gun too, because I think like that should maybe be one of the first steps in choosing your bullet is what does your gun like? You know, like there's realities on when you get into tangent its can't like bullet shapes right, and like what does your gun want to shoot? We all know, like the burger match stuff that like the classic. I think it's the secant like the burger shape bullet is more susceptible to seating depth issues and accuracy issues. However, it's usually higher BC's and if you're loading you can get a lot of accuracy out of them. But if you're buying amo off the shelf, that like tangent style bullet like out of the box is usually going to do pretty dang good. But like starting with the accuracy and what your gun likes, and then if it's all things the same, then start playing around with the type of bullet you're gonna shoot.
Yeah exactly, because yeah, as you've discussed, we're kind of beating a dead horse at this point. But I would if I even if I just had three different types, and but one is shooting an inch and the other ones are shooting two inch, I'm probably gonna go with the one that's shooting the inch, because I just I'm just gonna be confident with that when I pull the trigger, the bullet's going right where I'm aiming. And you said earlier shot placement is king.
Yeah. Yeah, they're all gonna kill it if you double lung an elk right, Yeah, gonna die.
Yeah.
And I'm you know, just speaking a shot placement. I am definitely not. The more and more I you know, I did those videos with the ranch Ferry where we dissected the nil guy and the hogs, and man, the more you do that kind of stuff, you realize how far forward those vitals are. And when you actually go say you look at that crease to the shoulder and then say, oh, I'm gonna shoot two ribs back or three ribs back. Man, on a lot of animals, you are clipping the back of the lungs on that shot. You are not center punching the lungs if you're two or three ribs back.
I don't think so.
And so when I'm teaching, now mine oldest is going to try to kill her first year. This year, it's gonna be straight up the leg. Obviously, this is perfectly broadside. You know, it changes if it's quartering away or two. But if it's perfectly broadside. It's gonna be straight up the leg. I'm gonna literally have her use you know, line up your your vertical cross hair with that front leg and and then go center mask with the horizontal cross hair. But I'd rather punch that shoulder and I have a confidence again and if I'm shooting, you know, the two bullets, two types of bullets, I like to shoot that that's going to go right through there and uh and get the job done. Yeah, I just feel like creeping back there. You're I don't know, kind of kind of asking for it.
Yeah, you're on the spectrum for sure. I think for that bullet placement, I only get to come on your podcast. Well was the first time, so I have a lot of a gender items please, But I would say I would say like as far as that bullet placement goes, like, there's a couple of things I would stress you hit it and I'm just gonna say it again, like finding a bullet that your gun likes. But when you're testing AMMO, A couple of things that that people should really consider is standard deviation in that AMMO in terms of velocity. Right, So if you have access to a chronograph of some kind, whether it's a lab radar or what's the one that hooks on the end of your barrel, is a meg speed or something like that?
Did you better explain you better explain that the standard deviation thing?
Yeah. So basically what standard deviation is is like looking at how much variation there is in your speed from bullet or from cartridge to cartridge. Right, so if I grab a box of AMMO, what's that that range and you're going to hear people tell you like different tolerances or the other way to look at is extreme spread. But what they think is good or not I would say, like a standard deviation sub Some people will say sub twenty. I'd say, like sub fifteen is okay. I feel like in match stuff, we're looking for sub ten a big shot out I mean the out of the box SIGs match AMMO is like running like I'm getting an average of seven and eight feet per second standard deviation, which is insane. So test that if you don't have access to a chronograph. The best way to do it, like, because I know that when people think accuracy, they shoot one hundred yard groups like you did the other day, Yannie, and then they're like, oh, that's my bullet. Push it out a little further, put paper out further at a range where you're comfortable and you're competent in I'm not saying like eight hundred yards, but something where you feel like as a shooter, you can give it a good test, say three hundred yards and test those groups, because if you don't have access to a chronograph, that's going to tell you a lot more than what one hundred yards is, right, Like, you're going to see that string start changing when you test those bullets. Go buy as many as you can afford with the same lot number stamped on the back of it. So if you went to Sportsman's Warehouse and bought some bullets, like, go back there that day and buy as many as you can afford that have that same lot stamp on there. So you're getting the same consistent well everything in terms of like neck tension, feet per second. They're using the same brass, Like not all brass is created equal, but then you're just getting going to have a more consistent load when you go out into the field year over year.
Do you feel like there's a minimum a distance where kind of all this stuff that you just said starting with you know, anything beyond just shooting a nice three shot group at one hundred yards. Well, like if I'm like, well, you know what, Garrett, I only shoot three hundred yards completely max, because just that's where I just don't shoot. Or the gun that I'm using, you know it won't perform past that because it would you say, you know what, then don't worry about that if that's it? Or is there like a minimum distance where you'd say, hey, if you're gonna shoot this far or farther, then you should start worrying about this stuff.
I think you should worry about it regardless. Man. But Adam, whatever you like, we've done this drill before, Yanni, whatever, you think your max range is right, start testing those group size Like you're not going to see a huge change in placement with standard deviations inside three hundred yards, right, like you're gonna hit a pie plate size thing or you know, the vitals inside three hundred yards. But it's still like we've harped on shot placements so much like let's take okay, let's let's say that you, because of AMMO choice, you've got a gun that is shooting a two minute group at range right, like at three hundred yards, so that's a six inch group in which most people would be like, oh, that's the lungs of a deer, all right, But now you have a little bit of wind, or you misranged it a little bit right, or the environmentals are a little different, like and all of a sudden that starts to expand outside of a perfect medium you're hunting. Your heart rate is up, Like I think, even if you're shooting inside three hundred yards, you should pay attention to be like the most lethal you can on shot placement because there's so many external factors.
Yeah, that's a good that's a very very good point. I'd add to that that it's it's not gonna hurt you to go shoot some more. That's one benefit of messing around with all this stuff. Even if you end up in the exact same place you're at right now, the same load, same bullet, same whatever. If you go on this journey and shoot a couple hundred rounds between now and hunting season and mess around different stuff, try it that time on your rifle, on your trigger, it's gonna be nothing but beneficial. And too many of us take you know, we sput so much time into shooting their bows all the time, and then we're like, I'll just pick up the rifle and go crack something. Well, it's that's a stupid way to look at it. Man.
A lot of.
Opportunities are missed because people don't put enough effort into practicing with their rifles.
Yeah, and man, I'd say, like a gamer thing to do for folks that are buying AMMO off the shelf. This like shout out to my buddy Benny Cooley who gave me insight into this. I can't do it on the match side of things, as I you say that I'm shooting factory Ammo. But if you're a hunter, buy that Ammo. If you have access to a reloading press, bump it by a thousandth throw all your AMMO through early reloading press and bump it by a thousandth and what you're going to avoid. And sometimes what is like the worst case for extreme spread in velocities is getting what's called a cold weld, right, And if so that AMMO is sat around for any period of time, there's likelihood that a couple of those projectiles sitting in the case for that long has created a cold weld, so you're going to have a pressure spike, and that's where you like sometimes in you're shooting factory AMMO, you'll have like one that hits eighty feet per second more than all the others and then it kind of settles back down. That's usually a cold weld. So even if you have a buddy that just likes to to reload, or you have a loading press yourself, find that lot that works well with your gun, bring it all in and bump it by a thousandth before going out into the field, and you're likely going to see a drastic improvement in accuracy and extreme spread and velocities.
Yeah, just talking about the standard deviation. Garret was talking about a post that I made on the old Instagram that's Yiannis underscore pu tell us where we tested through that seven mickey mouse. We tested the barns. I think it wasn't a Barnes. I think it was wasn't it. I think it was just a federal trophy copper, wasn't it?
Garrett?
Yeah, these are all federal loaded rounds. When was there trophy bonded and one was the acubond loaded in there and the trophy bonded had the highest standard deviation of twenty three feet. The accubonts were next at twenty one, and then the copper was the least at thirteen. So yeah, quite the difference. And you know, twenty three feet a second seems like a lot, yeah, man.
And I think like neck tension is one of your biggest things you're dealing with there, and it to your point earlier, inside three hundred yards, you're gonna notice it. Probably not, but you start reaching out and it shows itself, and we don't want it to show itself when we're out trying to kill critters. And then the other thing i'd say is when you find that round, oh man, Yanni. We do this a lot when we go to the range, Like, don't make your max range theoretical at that point because if you're if you're shooting a copper bullet or a bonded bullet, well all of them where you're like, you're relying on hitting that spot based off the bullets design and how it's going to react. Go to the range and cold shoot like the longest distance you would well, you'd ever shoot and lay down and do it like first round. If you don't hit a first round impact. You need to like drastically reassess what that max range is regardless of what your ballistic.
She says, Yep, yeah, you're yeah if you if you can't, you can't. Yeah, not enough of us do that for sure. I mean, because you only get one chance that well, that's not true. I mean, I guess you could sit around for twenty minutes and let those let those barrels cool cool down. But it's hard to replicate it, right because because even if you wait twenty minutes and shoot again, then you've sort of gotten comfortable, right, you're more in the in the shooting mindset. But that you know, practicing those cold board first shots and seeing what you can do with that, that should definitely be your your lit miss as to how far you can shoot.
Yeah, I mean it's like wind calls, right, your second shot at that target, you've likely gained the wind a little bit or you understand this last match we went through, there was a stage I was happy to see. We got to lay down and shoot targets because they usually through NRL Hunter like you're doing a lot of tripod off rocks and stuff, and came around the corner running up the hill for this stage and got to lay down these There was four targets out there between i'd say like five fifty and four hundred yards. I missed all of them but one, and I thought that I would at that point become the world's worst shooter. I watched my friend Benny Cooley shoot after that, who is a great shooter. He did the exact same thing. And it's a reset for you, right, because we had very variable winds going through there. The heat was picking up, it was pushing up the hillside, and you had a series I got to walk a series of you know, half a dozen really good shooters come in there and miss a four hundred yard target repeatedly because we couldn't get the environmentals dialed in even after missing shots next to that steal. So I think it's a reset on you're shooting across three canyons or a couple of koolies, and you're in the field and you have a ten mile an hour, you know, ten o'clock wind. That changes the game a lot.
Yeah, a whole bunch, all right.
Anything we didn't cover off on that you still want to plug in that you have on your little agenda sheet Garrett.
No, man, that was that was about? You know, I was going to talk a little bit about like bullet selection in terms of the different types of ojives, But you know, I feel like that could be like a totally different podcast.
Yeah, we can save ojives and cats for for another episode. Yeah, all right, Well, thanks for listening to everybody. I hope it was educational to you and entertaining as well. Don't forget sign up for a chance to win three thousand bucks an awesome hunting gear, and I'll help you pick it out if you're the winner. Ends May twenty first. If you're the winner, you'll find out May twenty second. Send your questions to gear talk at themedia dot com. You can always DM Jordan and I on our respective Instagram handles, although I tell you it's a lot harder for me. I only get in there once a week, so don't expect a quick reply there. I prefer gear talk at the medeater dot com. Join anything else you want to add.
No, man, this one this was great. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for hopping on, Garrett.
Yeah, thank you.
Well, check in after the fall and see see how everybody's performance.
How are their Bullets performed This Fall again. Sound good, yeah, I love it.
