Originally Posted by
MacIntosh
makes sense to me. copper bullets work differently than lead a bit, they are quite good but different--if you keep that in mind you'll be happy with them. Generally with copper you can go down in bullet-weight from what you might have used in lead and achieve good results, because 1) the copper bullet is longer for a given weight and will sometimes need a faster twist to stabilize a heavier bullet for best accuracy, and 2) because copper needs a higher impact velocity than lead to reliably expand. You want your impact velocity to be an absolute minimum of 2200-2300fps to get decent expansion--I've never had to approach that so I cant cite nuanced personal experience, but word from folks thathave shot a lot of these culling and researching terminal ballistics for military is that below that threshold they will expand considerably less than most people want. Apparently if you impact below this or even at the manufacturers recommended minimum velocity, the tip will barely expand to bore diameter--those are 99% of the "bullet didnt expand, never again" horror stories you hear about copper; and 3) because they retain nearly 100% of their initial weight (although at your crazy high velocity they might shed petals??) they will penetrate better than a heavier lead bullet, even a bonded bullet like the interbond or an accubond. I dont really know what else is out there designed for this application, but your crazy high velocity gun seems perfect for a copper bullet to me, since it is far more likely to hold togther, and you are worried about having a too-big wound cavity with that cartridge. The benefit you will see with copper on that gun is actually the reason some people dont like copper--because it expands very slightly slower and narrower than lead, the cavity around the wound channel is not as large--i.e. you wont get as much of a "blown out" cavity that is larger than the expanded bullet, it will tend to be a longer, deeper, but narrower wound channel, almost always a pass-through even at lower velocities. For people shooting a standard-size caliber this means the animal may take a few seconds longer to bleed out and it is slightly less likely to be a bang/flop due to the temporary wound cavity disrupting CNS system on the animal. It's just as dead, it's the folks looking for a bang/flop kill on an elk because they dont want it to run into the woods or into a canyon even 50 or 100 yards that complain about copper. Hard to say what you will find at 3400fps, but for hogs and crossing over into deer I think you will probably get a good combo of plenty of penetration for the hogs, while minimizing excessive damage to deer, all with the same cartridge.
Personally I shoot copper almost entirely for the past couple years for the reduced meat damage if I hit a shoulder. Have now shot or been involved with field dressing 4 antelope, 2 deer and 2 elk shot with copper and all of them went down within feet of impact. Just keep the minimum velocity in mind--use a ballistics app and plug in bullet weight, BC, muzzle velocity and it will tell you range at which velocity goes below--and keep shots inside that range, if you absolutely need it down "right there" hit a shoulder (it'll go through, and those bullets wont lose nearly as much meat to bloodshot), and you should have good results. I plugged that weatherby 127gr LRX load (which is a Barnes copper bullet) into my app, and it looks to me like the ballistics table on their website is for higher elevation (i.e. my data for 1000ft elevation is a bit slower than what their website says at range) but certainly that load should stay above 2300fps for good expansion out to 550yds if not a bit further. If you need more range the interlock or accubond will get you a lot more, at the cost of meat damage at closer range.
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