Ballistic Tip Failures......

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letting animals out to shoot them for sport isn't my cup of tea.

letting birds out and shooting them right out of the box isn't hunting IMO, and it isn't a sport for a civilized world IMO. why would it be okey with birds and not bigger animals?

realising birds to bolster or create a new population is another thing and perfectly okey, as is breeding animals on a big game farm or something
 
Jarheadhunter, the problem is you were shooting super deer. A deer that can vertical jump 10 ft has super natural abilities and is thus bullet proof.
On a serious note, the leveroution bullets dont fail in the .30-30. It does not have the velocity to destroy them. A well placed shot would easily kill a deer even if the bullet failed to expand.
 
I shoot p-dogs and rock chucks because they are there and I have a gun. Its a blast blowing them apart. What can I say? I do use the excuse that I'm helping protect the ground, but basically, its fun. I must be demented.

Like Brian said, losing a deer does happen occasionally. There were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of deer shot in this country this fall and I'll bet that the ones that were lost and got away make up about 1/4 of 1 percent. With that small percentage it is completely useless to make a law requiring dogs.

Besides that, your dogs are going to run right thru where somebody is sitting and waiting for a deer. Then guess what happens?? Your dogs are going to be shot. Your going to be out a dog, you'll both end up in an expensive court and you still wont have a deer.
 
At pheasant release hunting sites the birds are released a day or two before the hunt. They don't flush like wild birds, but they are not in a box.

My personal ethics require me to search for wounded game until I find it, or determine I won't be able to. This takes hours of searching. I have spent up to 4 hours searching for an elk someone else shot poorly. We determined it survived. A month later I saw that same elk, another hunter harvested it. We each have to set our own limit for "reasonable effort".
 
Man I'm glad to know that BT's dont work,Ive been using them for years & my freezer is full off deer & hogs.Been using hornady SST's in 25-06 & 270 Ill tell ya Coyotes,bobcat,and alot of other critters dont like them either. Guess thats just Me.:confused::D
 
I have had excellent results,no fails,with Nosler 115 gr Ballistic Tips on antelope .I know 165 gr Ballistic Tips work just fine on elk with a 308.By Ballistic Tip,I mean Nosler.

I suspect that little chunk of riblike bone came off the top of the withers,at the peak of the shoulders,There are some rib like bones that stick up there.

I believe you may have shot high.

There is a lot more to how a bullet performs than how it looks.How thick and hard the jacket is,etc.Pretty hard to make a bullet that works in a 300 Savage,30-40 Krag,etc,yet can hold together from a 300 magnum.

The 30-30 will kill a deer stone dead with a cast leadbullet if you hit him in the heart lung area.It will do it with the original 150 and 170 gr rd nose 30-30 bullets.I know a guy eats plenty of venison and he uses the Leverlution bullets in his Marlin 336.Groups about 1 1/2 at 100 yds.If those do not work,you missed.

I have no comment on Zombie bullets.I have not encoutered Zombies.Drones,yes,Zombies,no.Are they intended for big game?If not,you failed the deer by using the wrong bullet.

Does your 30-30 have a tube magazine under the barrel?

Hornady made their points out of rubber for a reason.Pointy rubber tips won't set off the primer of the round in front in the tube during recoil.Its bad to use pointy bullets in a tubemag.Even hard plastic ones Its a roman candle thing.

For deer hunting with a 30-30I suggest you use one of the following:

Traditional 30-30 150 and 170 round nose bullets

Hornady Leverlution.

If those do not work,you missed.Practice more.The 30-30 hs been working for a really long time on millions of deer.
 
I've had extremely good luck with LeverEvolution in .30-30. I can't say anything about the Zombie Max, but then I've never gone Zombie hunting - because, you know, zombies are imaginary.
Even if it somehow failed to expand it's still going to be a bullet, and should still do the job if it's in the right spot, so I'm going to have to agree with the consensus that you probably missed - groups on paper are always better than you can expect in the field.
The same thing actually happened to one of my hunting buddies this year - deer jumped, blood and hair on the brush behind him, but off it ran. Only difference is, we spent the rest of the day tracking it. IMHO that's the difference between "hunting" and "shooting at animals". But, the perception's probably different hunting up north where you might only see a couple deer in a day.
 
The problems mentioned sound like placement was bad. Your indifference in tracking wounded game leads me to belive you have other careless habits also. Did you bench and sight with those new bullets before hunting?
I use Nosler BTs in my 30-06. Their expansion and retention have been perfect at ranges from 5 yards to much longer ranges. Deer dropped where they stood and there was minimal meat loss. My experience indicates, to me, they BTs are basically Partitions with plastic tips.
 
Ok let me clear a few thign up. I didnt post to hear everyones opinions on my ethics and habitts, and blah blah blah i was asking abotu the ammo. with that I was not using the leverevolution that day. it was teh z-max(xombie max). I bench fired the rifle the day before at 100 yards. If you read through all of the post. I admit that it was partial human error. I have been hunting for 16 years now and killed many deer with a 30-30 this just happened to be a new one with a scope and not opened sights. The first shot most likely was low. After i shot it i waited in the blind 30-45 minutes then was walking back to camp to get my friend who is a 60+yr old man with hunting experience all over the Us to help me track my wounded animal. when i saw the second deer and decided that i would try my luck again, but did take my time moved down into the prone, controled my breathing, took a slow steady squeez and hit the next deer who was standing 100% broad side to me. I do not have a tracking dog and think that is one of the most rediculous things I have ever heard.

After my second shot we grabbed my truck went to the place she was standing and began tracking becasue after i walked by where the first one was there was no sign except for the hair and little bit of meat. the second was the most promising to track and recover and they actually both ran into the same area of the property so if a trail crossed then we would find one and look for the other after. I found bone with taht shot and mor hair and more meat and nto too far away we found a blood trail and followed it to the extent and continued looking for close to an hour. so you can blow that smoke some where else. Making the acusations that there was no effort when you have a fragment of a story makes you sound you come on here to make yourself sound smarter and more experienced than teh next guy. that is not what this is for. i will be taking the rifle to the range this weekend to see where i am hitting and if my shot placement was off i will gladly admit it. i am human and erorro is always possible. with taht I am an 11 yr Marine SSgt who qualifies on the rifle range yearly up to 500 yds on the range and i will not even get into weapon experience on multiple deployments. I have a lot of muscle memory from the time i put that weapon into my shoulder to pulling the trigger to follow through of my shot and keeping an eye on my target i know the sound of a round impacting target and missing target. That is why I have the most trouble with the second shot. when i sighted in the rifle i was comfortable with my group enough to take out on a hunt the next day. i woudl not have done so if i was not because i am not going out to maime or wound animals. I use as much of the animal as i can when i comes time to proccess it. I have an easy yet strict set of ethics when i hunt that i follow. I dont take rediculous shots, and If i am not comfortable with the shot i do not take it. I also make every effort to track and locate an animal that may have been wounded. I dont like well fed coyotes. I am not placing all of the blame on the rounds. So lets get that straight also. There seems to be a mixed opinion abotu them and I was just trying to see if anyone else had the same problem so i know if i should continue the use of the ammo or not. I wasnt asking for critique once again. I knwo this post is now all over the place and i am finished with my rant. so lets keep this otu of the "i know more than you so i will try an make you look lesser than me bracket". Thank you and I now look forward to what you all have to say. I appologize for the typos but i was on a roll and dont really feel liek going back and correcting them.
 
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For those that do not know, many of the Zombie bullets are just yellow V-max. However, the 30-30 is simply leverevolution repackaged as the zombie bullets. They are identical save for the color. The FTX bullet also has construction similar to the SST in that there is a innerlocking core. This is similar to other Hornady offerings. The tip assures expansion. I've killed many deer with my 30-30 and 308 Marlin, and all have been quick, convincing deaths. The majority of these have passed through the animal.

Many folks rail against these offerings from Hornady, but the fact remains that they work well for most of us.
 
I'd bet a month pay you never thought this thread would garner so much attention. Holy Mackerel you got comments from the other side of the world!! Even the Staff his taken a hit for yaw. I'm not gonna Gee Gaw Yaw any longer. I figure if your old enough to pull the trigger you know whats going on. Semper Fi Brother. lol

S/S
 
Thank you for that information. That is another thing I was hoping to find out was the difference between the 2. I didnt buy the Z-max because of the zombie appeal, but becasue it seemed to be the same thign as the leverevolution and the z-max was actually cheeper when and where I purchased them.
 
Yep, folks gut shoot game animals; no doubt about that. Many of those same folks blame the bullet even though the bullet is seldom at fault. Yep, i've gut shot game animals too. Went through a rash of that in 2008 when i gutshot several hogs and two deer. After long tracking and dragging jobs all were recovered.

Even if the bullet fails to expand, a double lunged deer will very seldom travel more than 150 yards after being hit. Decades ago i hunted with .30 caliber US Army ball ammo: Killed dozens of deer with the stuff. When properly placed that ball ammo killed deer just as dead as those hit with soft point bullets.

Last deer/elk season i tracked and recovered 14 deer and three elk for other hunters. Three hunters fessed up to making bad shots. Several hunters claimed they "double lunged" their animals and the bullet failed to expand. The coyotes beat us to five deer. Not one intact animal was "double lunged" and most intact animals were gutshot. Longest tracking job was about 2.5 kilometers.

IMO: Most hunters cannot track wounded animals. Some blood trails last season were glaringly obvious to the most casual of observers. But the dog and i had fun: Also got a lot of good elk meat.
 
The Zombie rounds are AMax bullets, which Hornady specifically states are not for game use. Hornady SSTs are game busters. The Leverloution line has been getting good reviews, also. You also never mentioned the caliber you were using.
 
I'm not sure of that GeauxTide.
From what I've heard Hornady is starting to think of A-max as hunting bullets. Like I say, thats what I've heard. I could be wrong. But I think its what the Long Range Pursute guys are using.

I know the couple A-max bullets I've seen used on elk performed like an absolute perfect hunting bullet.
 
Marlin 30-30 336. Scope rings and mounts were tight. It was about 130-140 yd shot each time. Looking into it now they do have a disclaimer on the z-max and I am almost sure that I read that before and thought it was more a "joke" marketing scheme. When you look at the 160 grain z-max compared to the 160 grain FTX the ballistics are identical. I am goign to go with what was said earlier that its just a different colored tip. It looks like I have 12 hog rounds left, and a box of 160 grain plain old levereveolutoin that I am still skeptical about using so I better make it 32 hog rounds.
 
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Once again,it can be important,that fine Marlin has a tube magazine.The rubber pointy bullets are OK ,but other pointy bullets with hard tips,even plastic,are a bad idea in the tube.The pointy end finds the primer of the next round in the tube during recoil,it gets unhappy.

You probably know that,but with the bullets we are talking about,wanted to make sure.
 
Whoa there,,, I said whoa..

Quote: I don't eat 95% of the deer I kill.
Why? Are you saying you like to kill deer just to kill deer?:rolleyes:
I kill animals, because I need to eat and feed my family. If they weren't suitable to eat, then I would never kill them.:rolleyes:


Quote: My experience indicates, to me, they BT are basically Partitions with plastic tips.
Wrong.. Your experience indicates to everyone now that you have no knowledge of Ballistic Tips Or Partitions.......;)

Bottom line here is that Jarhead, had a bad day in the field and shared with us his dismay for certain types of bullets.... It Happens!!:)

And many of us here are guilty of bad shots and thats why practice is Paramount....... Paramount........;)
 
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