hornady swagged round ball

[jim m]

shot a deer with a .54,no heavy bone hit and the ball fragmented. anyone ever had this happen with a hornady :shocked2:

 

[George Holton]

Just for giggles, weigh the balls in a batch of hornadaay swaged, you may be supprised at the difference in grain weight. Bob

 

[J.D.]

I have been shooting both Hornady and Speer balls for many years and have never seen the fragmentation you report. My experience is the ball passes through intact.

Really old Bob is right about the variation in Hornaday balls. In my experience, Speer balls have less variations in weight.

IMHO, target shooters should weigh every ball they shoot, whether cast or swaged. IMHO, the weight variations don't appreciably effect hunters and fun shooters. Minute of squirrel at 30 yards is good enough for me. :v
J.D.

 

[jim m]

have shot several deer with the hornady and this is the first time it's happened. I probably loaded with the only ball out of a box of a hundred that had a flaw. [murphy's law you know]

 

[roundball]

Used Hornady's for 15+ years, never saw or heard of that but to be honest, 99% of mine are complete passthroughs and I never see the ball

 

[Stumpkiller]

Whatcha pushing it with? As in, how heavy a load or what powder?

Had an weird one years ago with a lead slug. I shot at a deer and leaves flew up all around it and he kicked up and skedaddled, but I never found blood or hair. I even checked the hull to make sure I hadn't just pepperred him with birdshot. In circling I did find a spot between trees about 2/3 of the way towards where he was shanding where there was an ancient strand of barbed wire that was curled up to the trees on either side and had fresh bare metal on the ends. :redface:

 

[Blizzard of '93]

never had that happen, had some flatten out on heavy bone -i.e. shoulder and neck/spine.

 

[jim m]

Mr. stumpkiller, was using 90grns 2f and .018 pillow ticking patch. ball made a small exit hole and when I opened her up and took a good look around found part of the ball still inside. didn't hit any heavy bone. only thing I can think of is there must have been a flaw in that ball

 

[BrownBear]

I've flattened them as they passed through big bone, but never broke one up. Goes for cast balls, too. Never measured or weighted it, but one .54 Hornady recovered under the hide after a neck shot at 60 yards finished up over an inch in diameter, unchanged back of the ball still visible on the back after expansion.

 

[nchawkeye]

Are you sure you didn't buy ballistic tips by mistake??? :rotf:

 

[Stumpkiller]

Mr. Stumpkiller? :rotf:

Don't be wasting respectability on me.

Sensible load. I'd guess it clipped a rib and shaved off a slice of ball.

If you're pickin pieces out of a dead animal it's hard to say it was a case of ball failure. :wink:

 

[trent/OH]

As long as we're discussing the realm of the weird, it's POSSIBLE that the ball struck a hard cyst within the deer, or even an old piece of lead from last year. Hardening of the arteries and clipped one of those???

 

[Stumpkiller]

Well here's one for you. I killed a deer with a bow this fall using a RibTec broadhead (a one piece glue-on 1930's style). I went back the next day as it was not in the carcass and I wanted to keep it for posterity. I got two hits with my metal detector in the gut pile. So, I sliced and poked around . . . nothing. I started seperating the pile into halves and sweeping them with the detector. Then again on the half that read a hit, and so on as I reduced the piles into smaller piles (and it was reading consistantly in the iron/steel low range). I got down to two baseball size "globs" that disappeared when I spread them out. Nothing????

I later found the broadhead head tip down and well camoflaged in the dead leaves along the back-trail 20 yards away. Intact and with 6" of cedar shaft still attached.

So what was I finding in the deer?

I've heard of cattle getting "iron sickness" from eating odd stuff like bolts, pieces of wire and fencing staples. They even feed them magnets to keep such stuff in the upper stomachs where it is less of a problem. But that would not have disappeared altogether.

Concentrations of hemoglobin? That's high in iron. One "hot glob" was the center of the lungs where the air passage branches and the other was the kidneys.

As you say. Just weird.

 

[roundball]

Probably just reading just the tip of a multi-billion dollar iron ore deposit under ground on your property...

 

[BrownBear]

Hmmmph....

When I go back to a gutpile, all I find is bear tracks. Unless I get there too soon, and I find the feet that left them.

Do you suppose Kodiak brown bears are attracted to the mystery metal? It would explain a lot. :hatsoff: