It is always a special treat then, when processing a game animal to find a bullet within the body of the animal and be able to inspect the terminal performance of the bullet used and evaluate it based upon the shot taken and the path through the animal’s body. This year I uncovered such a treasure while butchering the cow elk that my friend had shot with his muzzleloader.
The load was a .45 caliber 250gr Hornady XTP.MAG over three pellets of Triple 7 powder. By all estimates his was achieving velocities in the neighborhood of 2000 feet per second (fps). The Hornady XTP-MAG is a fairly rugged jacketed hollow-point bullet designed to function optimally at velocities between 1200 and 2000fps. The jacket is scored slightly to facilitate the jacket peeling back in a uniform manner.
The bullet was located deep within the opposite hind quarter of the cow elk. It does not appear have hit any hard structure or bone. The mushrooming of the bullet is excellent, expanding to more than twice the original diameter. I cleaned and weighed the bullet to get a feel for how well the bullet retained its original weight. The bullet weighed 221gr so that ends up being 89% weight retention. For a lead core bullet that is really high and can probably be attributed to the bullet not hitting any bone or other hard tissue.
The most interesting thing to me was looking at the base of the bullet. The copper jacket peeled back in perfect uniform petals and actually folded back at the base of the bullet in a neat overlapping pattern.
I would say that the performance of this bullet on this particular shot was absolutely textbook and is the kind of stuff that bullet manufacturers put up on their websites
.jpg)