No More Varmageddon For Me

Jhop

LSB Active Member
SUS VENATOR CLUB
Now, if you wanted to use a bullet intended for varmits for neck or ear hole shots, it'll work good. Especially if you don't want a missed shot or pass though to ricochet. A quickly fragmenting bullet would be ideal like a Varmageddon, vmax, or Sierra blitzking type bullet's.
 

Wildfowler

Mis'sippi
SUS VENATOR CLUB
Now, if you wanted to use a bullet intended for varmits for neck or ear hole shots, it'll work good. Especially if you don't want a missed shot or pass though to ricochet. A quickly fragmenting bullet would be ideal like a Varmageddon, vmax, or Sierra blitzking type bullet's.

I will see if I can locate some of my recovered TNT bullets from deer and hogs.

I use that bullet exclusively in black out and in 30 Herrett, my blackout rifles have muzzle velocity of 2200, 2400 out of my bolt action, and 2600 from the herrett.

I shot a doe lengthwise from the brisket with my 300 blackout SBR with muzzle velocity of 2200 ft./s and that bullet did not expand at all, other than losing its jacket the lead slug was complete and only deformed.

Jump up the velocity to 24 or 2600 and that bullet expands nicely. In fact I’ve got a perfectly mushroomed jacket still intact bullet recovered from a hog that I shot with my 30 herrett. I found that bullet lodged under the hide.

You may remember the Remington core-lokt commercials in field and stream magazines from the 80s, their slogan was the deadliest mushroom in the woods in the bullet that I recovered looks just like the bullet they used in that illustration.

If I’m not mistaken that recovered bullet weighed in the 90 or so grain range so it did lose some of its weight. But it performed beautifully and dropped a hog in its tracks from a shot to the vitals at a quartering angle shot.

Incidentally, my 165 grain SST‘s that I use in my 308 at 2700 ft./s tend to lose a similar percentage of their mass in bullets that I’ve recovered.

In my experience, varmint bullets when fired from cartridges that start out with slower muzzle velocity‘s tend to act more like big game bullets.

Speer TNT being my favorite but I’ve also had good results with the Sierra 110 grain hollowpoint and the Sierra 125 grain varmint bullet, whose name currently escapes. Being my favorite but I’ve also had good results with the Sierra 110 grain hollowpoint and the Sierra 125 grain format bullet, whose name currently escapes me.

I’m not saying everyone should do what I do or that these are a good choice for anyone else and I’ve got no experience with the caliber Brian uses or the bullet he’s referring to but for what I do with my varmint bullets I wouldn’t dream of changing anything.

I really enjoy and appreciate all the testing Brian does. Most of the time I don’t even want to touch these hogs.
 

Wildfowler

Mis'sippi
SUS VENATOR CLUB
I don’t know if anyone cares about this at this point in time, but here’s TNT I recovered from a hog. These pics are of a 125 grain bullet fired with a muzzle velocity of 2600 ft./sec. I weighed the bullet again and must have remembered it wrong or else I just deducted some arbitrary amount in my mind to account for any debris trapped within the expanded bullet.

74538568-554C-4B5C-8672-7C471A557693.jpeg


6078C64B-2CDC-413F-A83E-8A857EDC44DD.jpeg

I couldn’t find the TNT from my 10” blackout AR that didn’t mushroom but traveled some 20” lengthwise through a doe. It had lost its jacket completely and was somewhat flattened looking.
 

Brian Shaffer

Hog Hunter
SUS VENATOR CLUB
LoneStarBoars Supporter
That is interesting that you recovered TNTs in that sort of shape. At 2800 fps from my grendel, the biggest pieces I usually find are little disks that were the base of the bullet. The rest are little fragments. I think I have found one that resembled your top picture. According to Speer...
Speer® TNT® gives predator and varmint hunters what they want most—pinpoint long-range accuracy and maximum destruction on impact. Its thin precision jacket features internal fluting to ensure complete bullet disruption, ...

I have noticed, similarly, that the slower 129 gr. SST from a Grendel tends to expand and stay together much more than the faster and lighter 123 gr. SST fired from 20" and 22" barrels that tends to fragment and have cup/core separation. Slower SST 123 gr. from my 16" will sometimes mushroom and sometimes come apart.

I have also noticed that the exact same bullet model in different calibers doesn't always perform the same way between the calibers. I don't know if that is a velocity difference, construction difference, or what. From what I have seen is that for all bullets, there is a threshold where they will come apart. In some cases, it is well beyond their loaded velocities. In other cases, it isn't.
 

Wildfowler

Mis'sippi
SUS VENATOR CLUB
I’m kind of thinking my bullet in particular works as well as it does is because

(only my assumption)

it may be intended for 308/30-06 size cartridges that typically have much higher starting velocity.

Whatever it is, it works well for me.
 

Wildfowler

Mis'sippi
SUS VENATOR CLUB
I found an older picture of the flatten bullet from my 300 blackout 10 inch SBR with muzzle velocity of 2000 ft./s. This is a bullet that traveled from the brisket all the way to the memory gland of a doe I shot one time.

This bullet was more flattened looking than anything else and going from memory I doubt it expanded beyond its original diameter.

I couldn’t find the bullet to actually weigh it today unfortunately. You can see there’s a huge difference in the performance. Neither one of them totally fragment although I will admit I have found bullets in deer on the other side just under the hood that when I cut them out and looked at them they were not the entire bullet.

For the most part they seem to hold up pretty good and I’m thinking that hitting a bone or something may cause them to fragment even more.



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Wildfowler

Mis'sippi
SUS VENATOR CLUB
I’ve been meaning to put this up which is where I have come up with my opinion of varmint bullets being more suitable as bigger game bullets when fired from rifles with lower muzzle velocity’s.

I didn’t dream that concept up on my own, I read it in my Sierra reloading manual along time ago and factored into my thinking ever since.

I’m not sure if this holds true across manufacturers line to manufacture line but I believe it could be a dynamic of the bullet construction in general?

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