Hard, brittle, and fast PRB for more damage?

I had been thinking of a way to get more damage and a faster kill with a PRB. You see this with modern bolt gun ammo... the more explosive the bullet, the more damage to vitals it does and thus a faster death for the game.

I realize we're talking apples and oranges here, but it's something I'd been pondering and wondered if anyone has tried it.

Perhaps using a slightly small ball (and thick patching ) of super hard lead alloy, maybe a smaller caliber like 45, and load it up to the fastest speed possible. I would think that maybe you could get a really hard and brittle ball to break/fragment at impact, causing more damage to vitals due to many more cuts in vital tissue.

Has anyone tried it, thought about it, or have it happen unintentionally?

So if you use a "hard" alloy, you are going to likely blow a nice, clean hole right through your prey. Hard lead bullets = penetration. Soft lead bullets = deformation. You want hard lead bullets on very large, dangerous game, to reach the vitals, especially since it tends to be safer to shoot them farther away. However you trade deformation and an expanding wound channel for that penetration. On the other hand if you up the velocity quite high on pure lead, the deformation will happen faster than at a moderate impact speed, boosting friction and actually slowing down the projectile faster.

When you say "explosive" modern bullet, IF you mean it fragments then no that's not desired. IF you are taking hydrostatic shock, and the "explosive effects upon impact" that's a bit different. It's NOT from the bullet design. (Modern bullet designs want massive deformation but no fragmentation, to give the hunter the largest permanent wound cavity.) Hydrostatic results are from the random chance that the impact of the bullet at very high velocity coincides with the heart-beat of the animal. If the bullet impacts when the heart is at full contraction, you get the best chance at hydrostatic impact effect. And if not, then you lessen the chance. You're not going to get those velocities from black powder.

THAT is why the calibers are large and the bullets very heavy. You are relying on inertia at impact to overcome the friction of the animal's body.

If you're not getting a fast kill with the PRB, then you may be defeating yourself. I've had many more BANG-FLOP situations where the deer dropped in its tracks or dropped so fast that the animal was within 20 yards of where it was standing when hit. I've also had to track a lot of deer hit with modern ammo large distances.


Broadside there is the double lung shot, thus



Some go for the heart too with this, and aim lower, but I like to eat the heart, so I only go for lungs. The objective to be to hole both lungs and exit the opposite side, deflating the lungs in an instant and having a good blood trail if needed. I've only had to track one deer hit thus, and he was jazzed having just run over to the farm where I was because across the road they were having a fox-hunt. (Horns, and hounds, and mounted hunters, and what a racket!) So this is a good choice but..., sometimes adrenalin doesn't make it the best choice.

IF the deer quarters toward you, the shoulder shot has the best chance of dropping the animal where it stands.



This smashes bone in the shoulder and very often the ball deflects into the spine.

There are other shots of course for very competent marksmen, but with only one shot I prefer either of the above.

The only other possibility, is there have been instances where folks have tried to duplicate the velocity of the modern rifles, and that's not how this tech works. Very high impact velocities will cause massive ball deformation and the friction may actually prevent proper penetration due to the deformation.

Historically the folks that depended on flintlocks and caplocks for food, quite often only worked up an accurate load that "cracked" when fired, and stopped experimenting there. That crack meant the ball was going supersonic (they didn't know that, they just knew the results were better when the load made the ball "crack" going down range) So a patched round ball only doing 1100 fps is pretty much guaranteed not to be supersonic at impact. It seems counter-intuitive, but it does work.

LD

please take everything i write as it is meant, as a discussion, not an attack.
ballisticians have been striving for centuries to design the perfect projectile.
The PRB ain't it!
that said what a prb does supply is a projectile that if sufficiently propelled will upset and many times will increase its size (while traveling through vitals) half again. I have recovered .50's that expanded into .75's. I have recovered .54 rb that expanded to .877 inch.
I am not the brightest bulb in the lamp, but seams to me if a victim has a three quarter inch hole leaking under pressure, vast tissue damage is not needed. I have a varmint rifle that squirts a 35g explosive bullet right at 4025 fps. thin skinned recipients of this scooter tend to vaporize.
I once loaded some 40g frangible in a old standard 30-06 using sabots. one out of 3 vaporized 15 feet from the muzzle. chrono'ed them at 4600+ fps. contact with these created a red mist.
My old mentor worked in development for Roy Weatherby. My buddy hunted with a CVA .50 mountain rifle (which i still have) and never needed more that one .50 prb to make his kills. Largest animal he, (and I) have taken was Moose. the 1/2 inch hole looked like a garden hose on my moose.
when the oil pressure drops to zero, the brain throws a rod and that's it.
I used a .30 cal 165g Combined Technology in a .308 one time. it was designed to fragment like a grenade. it did. where that buck usually had a heart, lungs, diaphragm , and liver, was a cavity full of jelly. only used it once. there is a long distance between dead, and destroyed.
When a PRB starts its wound channel out at say, .50, and exits with a .75 inch channel, to me thats meat on the table.
I too have been infected with the Magnumitis bug, but have recovered. mostly. wanna see pictures of a nice pre64 model 70 375 H&H?

No disrespect intended whatsoever here. This is not an attack on you.

Everybody to their own thang. I’ve been reloading modern ammo for over 30 years. I have used the type of bullets you are seeking a lot, a whole lot in fact on deer and elk.

With that said, for our traditional muzzleloaders, I aim to keep things as they had oughtta, as granny Clampett used to say. I much prefer a big ole, solid chunk of lead for my traditional ML. That’s the way it was since way back when and should still be today. Anything other should be relegated to those Gawd awful type of new fandango ML.

You can take this to the bank. A big old solid chunk of lead (whether it be a patch and round ball or conical) will darn sure put a critter down. We just have to do our part correctly.

In all actuality, we want the softer lead to expand. Indeed, I have killed a fair amount of deer and elk with hard cast .50 caliber maxi Balls. Those big ole solid chunks of lead traveling at those speeds flat out work even though they don’t expand. I discontinued using them due to them being hard on the riflings. However, it is most conducive for a ML projectile to expand if possible.

Please refer to the thread in this section about recovered ML projectiles. The pics speak for themselves.

There is nothing at all wrong with a large caliber soft lead ball and it has done the job for hundreds of years. Soft lead allows the patch to grip it and guide it down the bore. As noted above, deformation and expansion upon impact creates a larger than bore size wound. Much depends on placement and the animal. I've had several instant drops and some that I had to track. The OP sounds a bit like trying to reproduce modern centerfire terminal ballistics with ancient technology.

First look at the title and I thought it was going to be about Commie-la, hard, brittle and fast with much damage.

ETipp said:

No disrespect intended whatsoever here. This is not an attack on you.

Everybody to their own thang. I’ve been reloading modern ammo for over 30 years. I have used the type of bullets you are seeking a lot, a whole lot in fact on deer and elk.

With that said, for our traditional muzzleloaders, I aim to keep things as they had oughtta, as granny Clampett used to say. I much prefer a big ole, solid chunk of lead for my traditional ML. That’s the way it was since way back when and should still be today. Anything other should be relegated to those Gawd awful type of new fandango ML.

You can take this to the bank. A big old solid chunk of lead (whether it be a patch and round ball or conical) will darn sure put a critter down. We just have to do our part correctly.

In all actuality, we want the softer lead to expand. Indeed, I have killed a fair amount of deer and elk with hard cast .50 caliber maxi Balls. Those big ole solid chunks of lead traveling at those speeds flat out work even though they don’t expand. I discontinued using them due to them being hard on the riflings. However, it is most conducive for a ML projectile to expand if possible.

Please refer to the thread in this section about recovered ML projectiles. The pics speak for themselves.

Click to expand...

Well, said.

I've had big Minnesota bucks (dressed over 200#) that went down in 20-30 yards with a .530 PRB broadside or quartering away through both lungs. How much faster is needed?

I had one .530 RB fragment severely on a doe with the forward angle shoulder shot in Dave's picture, except it was also a down angle from a treestand. It was a good sized doe and she ran about 80 yards. What a mess to clean with fragments of lead all over in the meat. I had to discard much of that front quarter.

Fragmentation is not desirable IMO.

To be clear, I'm not attempting to turn a PRB into something like a modern jacketed bullet at high speed. I have merely wondered if you were to shoot a deer or elk broadside going for double lung, with a high speed ball that is brittle and would fragment, if it would produce a faster kill than a ball that expands 50% or maybe to 100% it's original size.

It's highly likely I won't ever try this.

And this is nothing to do with magnum-itis. Quite the opposite. I'm talking about terminal efficiency... Getting the most killing power out of the least lead, powder, and recoil. I have recently decreased caliber for all my other hunting rifles!

It has been shown, that when hunting with a CF cartridge, using a small caliber highly fragmenting bullet will on average produce much faster kills than a larger caliber with a tough bullet that just mushrooms. Speed and bullet design matters, not caliber or cartridge. Even for elk, we're talking about death within 30 yards vs 100 or more.

I'm not attempting to discuss or debate the ballistics of modern cartridges, but just want to explain the reason for what I'm thinking about.

After seeing a couple of the responses.... It's possible that my understanding of the lethal efficiency of a round ball lacking. I've yet to shoot anything with my 58, but I thought that even with the larger balls it still ends up being a decently long tracking job due to death times more similar to archery. Maybe that's not true, at least not with deer. Whitetail die pretty dang easily compared to elk.... To the point that I have a little fear of shooting an elk with a PRB due to possibility of no exit and no blood trail ... That's bad news in the woods I hunt in unless they die within 40 yards.

Unfortunately I don’t have your experience with large game, most of my hunting has been rabbits, hares and foxes and a soft lead ball [.45 or.50] does very little damage on such soft bodies, but I have shot rogue cattle with both and soft lead did an admirable job on them when properly placed.
Only ever had to shoot one charging cow and that was a forehead shot with an 1873. In .455 Webley, very effective.[I’m still here].

There are many variables and I have never shot an elk. However, in white tails, placement may be most significant. An arrow wound from a modern broadhead is a horrendous thing into which I could insert three fingers. I've had them go from a few yards to maybe fifty. A lung shot result in pneumothorax where the lungs collapse and the animal can not breathe. They don't go very far.

HighUintas said:

I had been thinking of a way to get more damage and a faster kill with a PRB.

Click to expand...

Go with a larger caliber lead roundball for more damage on larger game.

HighUintas said:

I would think that maybe you could get a really hard and brittle ball to break/fragment at impact, causing more damage to vitals due to many more cuts in vital tissue.

Click to expand...

Possibility it could be advantageous to have a bullet fragment on small game, though personally see no advantage with a muzzleloader and patched roundballs. For small game up to coyotes size I have had success with 32 caliber roundballs over 12grs to 15grs of 4F or 3F. Coyotes react similarly to being hit with a 22RF hollow point and maybe go 30 to 50 feet before laying down.

I don't mind my slow-moving .54 cal. round ball. It does its job and I appreciate it when I can find, then weigh the round ball to discover it's lost very, very little of its mass. Usually shaped somewhat like a quarter. I don't like fragmentation. It's a bonus for me to have a deer just drop on the spot. I expect to have to do a little tracking---it's part of the hunt to be proficient at.

Caterpillar Hunter said:

I don't mind my slow-moving .54 cal. round ball. It does its job and I appreciate it when I can find, then weigh the round ball to discover it's lost very, very little of its mass. Usually shaped somewhat like a quarter. I don't like fragmentation. It's a bonus for me to have a deer just drop on the spot. I expect to have to do a little tracking---it's part of the hunt to be proficient at.

Click to expand...

I really enjoy the tracking aspect of it too, when there is a blood trail to follow! Tracking elk without a blood trail or fresh snow is not fun and very gut-wrenching

I’m not an elk hunter, but if I were worried about tracking I’d hit them thru the shoulders. I’m not saying they won’t try to run, but they won’t be going far or be hard to find.

I've always used wheel weights for the deep penetration. Considering the diameter of a hunting round ball, consider them pre-expanded. If you make a wound channel through the lights under 1.5", the wound will bleed freely, to cleanse the wound. A wound over that diameter, the tissue contracts to stem the flow of blood. You want them to bleed as fast as possible.
If you shoot a deer, elk, or moose through the heart or lungs, they are going to die. The big ones just take a bit longer to realize they are dead. The old timers were smart enough to know if you want more killing power, go to a larger bore. I definitely do NOT want a round ball to fragment, or any other bullet, for that matter. The only reasonable use for a frangible bullet is for critters like coyotes when you are hide hunting and want the bullet to not have full penetration to save the hide.

I've never cast a ball hard enough to shatter. The hex bullets I cast for my Whitworth are super hard Linotype and will break and shatter when hitting rocks or thick steel. The interior of the bullet is very grainy and crystalline in appearance. Pure lead is super soft and it doesn't take much for them to mushroom making a bigger wound channel at the expense of penetration. YMMV.

I'm shooting a PRB 50. cal 42" barrel and getting 1700 fps. I would love to slow it down, but I'm not confident it would do the job. From what I'm reading slower may be better, Just how slow can I go? I'm not shooting over 50 yds as a rule.

Whitworth said:

I've never cast a ball hard enough to shatter. The hex bullets I cast for my Whitworth are super hard Linotype and will break and shatter when hitting rocks or thick steel. The interior of the bullet is very grainy and crystalline in appearance. Pure lead is super soft and it doesn't take much for them to mushroom making a bigger wound channel at the expense of penetration. YMMV.

Click to expand...

Please educate me. Why are you using linotype for your bullets? There are cheaper ways to make your bullets harder.

flatcreek said:

I'm shooting a PRB 50. cal 42" barrel and getting 1700 fps. I would love to slow it down, but I'm not confident it would do the job. From what I'm reading slower may be better, Just how slow can I go? I'm not shooting over 50 yds as a rule.

Click to expand...

What is your goal? In general, slower speed means more penetration, less projectile deformation inside the animal, and a smaller wound channel, But you might be more likely to get an exit. Higher speed is just the opposite, except then you can extend your range out further. Since you're not shooting over 50 yd, you can probably get away with a pretty slow ball