.54 lee R.E.A.L bullets

[Mr Hawken]

has anyone tried these bullets on game. i am thinking of buying a mold and giving them a try.i shoot a t/c renegade i am more interested on actual game performance then accuracy. thanks

 

[paulvallandigham]

They are totally unnecessary when hunting White Tail Deer. They do work on Elk, Large Mule Deer, and on Black Bear, and large wild boar. The extra weigh allows the R.E.A.L. slug to penetrate through heavy tissues and bone.

 

[akbrownbear]

I shoot them in my .54 Hawken up here in Alaska. They are good accuracy-wise, and excellent for the bears and moose-sized game. They are too much for the average white-tail, but do work. I shot a blacktail on Kodiak with one a few years ago and the bloodshot damage was extensive around the entry and exit wounds, plus it tore a HUGE hole in the deer. Killed it dead right there, tho......

 

[longcruise]

REAL bullets were not very accurate in my .50 or .54. Tight at 50 yards then hard to find at 100. Probably some trick I'm missing in shooting them.

I may still have a REAL mold or two around and would sell them cheap if there are takers.

 

[Mr Hawken]

i am thinking more of a elk or moose load rather than deer. i only shot 1 animal so far being a w/t doe with my .50 and r/b and worked perfect. now a larger animal i don't know if my .54 r/b would do the trick

 

[paulvallandigham]

A 230 grain round ball will kill both
Elk and Moose in reasonable ranges. Some of the men here are shooting 100 grains and more of FFFg powder behind their PRB. And, to deal with heavy bones in those two species, some men are casting their bullets from Wheelweights, to have a harder, alloy ball that will not expand as fast as pure lead one will.

You are shooting more than 1/2 oz. of lead with that RB. It is more than enough to kill an Elk or Moose. Just learn the anatomy of the animals, and in particular where the heart is located( different from a deer) so that you can pick and place your shot. Inside 100 yards, you should have no trouble bagging either animal with a .54.

 

[Mr Hawken]

i know you say should but i know 50 yrds is a lot different than 100yrds. now put in a angled shot on a bull you just called in would that same r/b be the right choice for the shot.i agree the r/b is good for close ranges and on big game if the shot is perfect but i can't say that's going to happen.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Well, then, do your own penetration tests shooting both round balls and the Lee Precision, R.E.A.L. bullet.

Get some one inch lumber, and make a box that spaces the panels one inch apart. You will need at least 12 boards. Shoot your best load at 50 and 100 yds. See how much penetration you get. Try this with both pure lead and Wheelweight balls.

Then do the same test with the Lee slug. Make your choice on what you learn, not what you hear, or " think ".

I did the penetration tests years ago with my .50, and I know what my .50 will do. It will kill Elk inside 100 yards, and probably Moose, too. I would prefer to use a .54, or larger caliber RB than my .50, because I know that the weight of the ball is going to determine the depth of penetration, much more so than velocity. Once you get over 1/2 ounce in weight, you get incredible penetration on any living flesh with a round ball. And, the added benefit is that the ball expands in tissue, causing internal shock to the vital organs to put the animal down quickly. A slug will penetrate further, but is much less likely to expand.

The decision you make is based on competing concerns. Are you likely to be shooting through massive bones, or Gristle that required deeper penetration, or are you shooting into softer tissue that requires expansion? A moose is huge, but its a relatively easy animal to kill. Its no bear, for sure. If you were talking about hunting bear, I would not hesitate to recommend that you consider only the Lee Slug. You are handicapped enough by using a single shot firearm when hunting bear. You need all the whomp and stomp you can get when hunting a animal that might just fight back!

 

[Idaho Ron]

If a guy needs "whomp n stomp" for a bear why not use it for Moose, elk and even deer? Heck I use Lee R.E.A.L's for rabbits. My deer and elk load are bigger yet. Ron

 

[Stumpkiller]

I have a .50 mold that throws one each - round ball and R.E.A.L. I tried for months to find an accurate load and finally settled on 90 gr FFg and a .50 Maxi-Hunter. ;-)

Never could get the R.E.A.L.s to shoot in my New Englander.

I've weaned myself entirely of conicals and shoot round balls exclusively now. For my ranges and on whitetail a .54 roundball is plenty.

 

[longcruise]

Per our PM's, I found one real mold. It's a .50 cal 320 grain and not in very good shape. Once I got to looking at it I remembered somehow getting some plastic melted onto the cavities. One of my dumb bullet casting tricks. It'll probably work ok though. It's a 2 cavity.

I'm pretty much a round ball only guy any more, but still might use a conical in my .50's if it were for a moose, for example. OTOH, I'd feel confident with my .54 and a round ball on a moose given the right set up and not a very long shot.

Anyway, enough rambling. My main reason for this post is to suggest that you take a look at the Lyman mold for their .50 and .54 conical. It has a nice large flat meplat for a good wound channel. The maxi ball by TC and the REAL both have a bit of a point nose to them and it's really the flat frontal area of the conical that does the work. At the velocities you can expect with a .54 cal and conicals in the range of 400 to 450 grains, you cannot expect much expansion if any :shocked2: . Your starting velocities will be in the 1250 to 1350 fps range and will fall off by 100 yards to a point where there will not be enough speed left to expand a conical. Therefore, best to start out with one that already has a big flat nose to begin with.

Anyway, that's my way of looking at it but there are always differing views worth considering.

 

[Deadeye]

These are 500 gr. bullets shot into soft loose dirt at 230 yds. They did expand, I think the REAL
bullet will also. in the last 15 yrs. there has been at least 40 or 50 Deer and Elk killed with this bullet, no bullet has ever been recovered,
they do penetrate. Never seen any bloodshot meat even on smaller mule deer. I suggest you try the R.E.A.L. bullets. I think you'll like them.

 

[longcruise]

Those 500 grain bullets are not real bullets though. I have some bullets that look like that after being shot into dirt including some tc maxi bullets. Dirt and animal flesh and bone are way different.

If the REALs were expanding like the bullets in the pic, you would be recovering them from the animal IMO.

The same TC maxi ball that looks all flateened out from hitting the berm at 100 yards went clean through a bull elk and stopped under the skin on the other side with barely a smear to the lead nose portion. Elk stayed on it's feet for a full minute before falling over dead. Luckily he was preoccupied with trying to figure out what was going on. If he had run he would have made the thick black timber and probably would have covered a 1/4 mile.

I don't doubt you guys are killing deer and elk with real bullets for one minute. Just stating my own experience with that type of nose design and my own druthers.

To each his own!

 

[paulvallandigham]

Guys: How soon an animal dies from a gunshot wound unless hit in the central nervous system depends almost entirely on when the last breathe was taken which oxygenated its blood. Its is the absense of oxygen in the brain that causes the animal to pass out. That is caused by a combination of loss of blood pressure due to hemmorhaging, ( Oxygenated blood cannot get to the brain) and interruption of the pumping mechanism( damage to the heart and arteries, either those directly connected to the heart, or those connected to the lungs, or failure of the lungs because they have collapsed as a result of the wound.) Unless you have a way-more- powerful scope on your rifle than I have ever seen, I doubt that anyone is going to be able to time their shot so that they hit the deer just before it was going to take another breath!

What I am saying is that the amount of time it takes for an animal to die is outside your control, and no bullet short of a cannon ball , or a shocking interruption to the central nervous system by any sized ball or bullet, is going to " Knock " it down. Since a spinal cord shot is very difficult to pull off reliably, being a much smaller target, and cannons are not allowed for deer hunting, You are going to see all kinds of different reactions by animals to being hit by any given projectile. The same observations have been made on battlefields about men hit with various sized projectiles. I had a friend who survived being hit in the heart with a NVA bullet when he was a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam. It penetrated the floor of the helicopter, the back of his seat, and his vest before entering his back and lodging in his heart.

 

[bigbore442001]

I can see an advantage to using such a bullet for hunting some public lands. It does happen now and then that a deer shot and is able to run off a bit may be claimed by someone else close by.

 

[Blizzard of '93]

a good place to put a shot on an animal is base of skull/neck junction or about 1/3rd way down on the torso/neck junction. mass of nerves/spinal column is there. this of course if you have the time to take that shot. any moving shot is likely to be a chest/shoulder shot where lung/heart area is the target. they may go aways with a hole thru the heart/lung blood vessel area. I shot one back and high (running shot in brush I nearly did not take it)thru both lungs that went 1/4 mile in thicket spraying blood after it went about 100 yards. snow on the ground aided in tracking. taking a shot in brush is a tough decision 4 me. I'm loathe to do it again. :hmm:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Actually, using a PRB that will remain inside the carcass is the best way to get the game thieves arrested and convicted. My first deer was shot more than a mile from my car and gear for cleaning the deer. I also needed help getting it up out of a ravine. I put my business card under her tongue before leaving the kill site, and marked it with a red bandana attached to a tree over the carcass. I decided against gutting the deer before going back to my car for my other stuff, and to see if I could find someone to help. That way, any thief would have to do some work before stealing the carcass! I found a man to help me, and he thought it was pretty smart of me to put my business card under the doe's tongue. He said he would never have thought to look there, either.I learned two lessons that day. In spite of it being a public area, my deer was too far back in the woods for other hunters to be wandering around to find. :hmm: And, either shoot the little ones, or shoot them close to camp! :shocked2: :thumbsup: Damn! That was back-breaking work getting that deer up and then down off the hill that separated me from my car. :bow: :grin:

 

[longcruise]

Guess I'm lucky and have never had to hunt in areas where others claiming my animal was a problem. I did meet a hunter in a restraunt as he waited for the local game warden to file a complaint against two guys who took his bull elk. He shot it at two hundred yards across a clear cut and by the time he walked to the animal two guys had come out of the woods and not only claimed his elk, but did it at gunpoint!! :shocked2:

Friends of mine who hunt in Viginia do a trick similar to what Paul did. They put their animal tag inside a spent cartridge case and then surgically implant the case into the field dressed deer!

Paul, I agree with what you are saying but an not sure I buy the last breath theory of the animal staying on their feet though. Everything I ever killed that died fast had both lungs and sometimes part of the heart punctured with a good sized wound channel that is large enough to reduce blood pressure immediately. I'm not sold on the ability of a pointy shaped non-expanding bullet to create an adequate wound channel.

It's hard to convince the inexperienced that a round ball will dispatch even a large animal quickly as long as it punches through the vitals. So many hunters are hung up on the kinetic energy thing that they can't see beyond it.

One of the things I remember from my high school biology class is how blood coagulates and what causes it. The way it works is there is a component in the blood called a platelet. When it is disrupted, it coagulated the blood. The more it is disrupted, the faster it coagulates. I think that explains why an animal hit in only one lung with a high velocity modern bullet can last so long. The extreme disruption causes immediate coagulation and a sealing of the wound that allows the animal to retain blood pressure.

Our round balls though have less shock but yet create a wound channel that, as they say, *lets the air out of em*. The perfect example is the bowhunters razor sharp broadhead that cuts with minimum disruption and minimum coagulation. All with very little kinetic energy.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Actually, I think the bow and arrow tends to support my explanation very well. The broadhead is required to be at least 1 inch wide by law, and if the hunter uses a 3 or 4 bladed head, he cuts tremendous amount of tissue as the arrow penetrates the body. The Primary wound channel is as wide as those blades, and hemorrhaging is extensive and quick, causing that drop in blood pressure. Only if the central nervous system is struck will the deer drop in its tracks. With a double lung shot, or heart shot, deer have still been seen to run 50 yards and more, depending on how long they can go before oxygen starvation causes them to become unconscious. Remember that the affect of adrenalin is to cause all the blood vessels to constrict, and the heart muscle to increase its speed of pumping contractions, all of which combats that drop in blood pressure that occurs from hemorrhaging and pushes the remaining oxygenated blood to the brain. Its only because the lungs can no longer do their job, or because damage to the heart is so extensive that it quits, or when blood pressure drops in spite of the andrenalin rush, that the animal weakens, and then becomes unconscious, falls, and dies.

 

[gmww]

I've not have very good luck with the accuracy on this conical. Not sure why but all my guns so far don't like it. With that said, I've seen other posters here and elsewhere who have had good accuracy and down range results on animals with them.

I have a new .54 cal fast twist barrel that I'm going to set with these to see if it will shoot with this conical.