Bertram bullet availability

[Fester]

A reason the cheaper ballistic tips may work so well for us could simply be that 90% of our game and pests are only medium-sized at best.

Sambar Deer would be the exception, and look how many of them are not recovered, even said to be hit well with .270s and such.

If I were to hunt the big cows or buff, even horses, camels, and such-sized animals, I wouldn't be using BTs, or even Game Kings.
I would be going for a properly designed bullet for big game, and using nothing smaller than a 30-06 or 9.2 type cal to sling the heavy penetrating pill that expands as well as gets through to the middle vitals or more.

I often wonder about Game Kings, as I don't shoot enough animals to make concrete judgements, and just about any projectile kills medium-sized game if placed well.
Even with Super roo .223s, blokes say one penetrated near the length of the deer.
I think to myself, did it pencil or expand?

[bigrich]

A reason the cheaper ballistic tips may work so well for us could simply be that 90% of our game and pests are only medium-sized at best.

Sambar Deer would be the exception, and look how many of them are not recovered, even said to be hit well with .270s and such.

If I were to hunt the big cows or buff, even horses, camels, and such-sized animals, I wouldn't be using BTs, or even Game Kings.
I would be going for a properly designed bullet for big game, and using nothing smaller than a 30-06 or 9.2 type cal to sling the heavy penetrating pill that expands as well as gets through to the middle vitals or more.

I often wonder about Game Kings, as I don't shoot enough animals to make concrete judgements, and just about any projectile kills medium-sized game if placed well.
Even with Super roo .223s, blokes say one penetrated near the length of the deer.
I think to myself, did it pencil or expand?

your right in that most game in oz that people hunt is medium to smaller game and that most ballistic tips perform well on them. up north a lot of people seem to have a preference for barnes or Woodleigh for bigger stuff . from my experience on pigs and goats , sst's of appropriate weight for calibre exit on cross body shots, dump energy and pass through . quick consistent results . the sst's are my "go to" bullet in a lot of cals . 200sst out of my 338-06 are freaking awesome . game kings in general dump all their energy and don't seem to exit from my limited experience with them . 150gn sierra pro hunters behave like a speer hot cor out of a 308 in my use. they pass through without dumping a lot of energy which can result in "dead runs" . nosler BT's seem erratic , in some cals their awesome , in others i've had poor results. nosler accubonds (expensive), dump energy with the tip and the base punches through . these work well . nosler partitions ? who can afford them .

speer seem consistent , 165gn boat tail spitzers are dynamite out of a 30-06, good performance at 308 velocity . so much choice these days , it's actually hard sometimes to make a choice . that's the reason i post a lot of the stuff i do on ballistics , to share the knowledge of my experience , which may be limited compared to some on here who live rural and shoot more than i do. what your saying about 223 super roos is pencilling from what you describe. sounds odd, i would've expected bullet blow up and a horribly injured deer bolting off to die in the bush . but i had a odd experience with 165gn nosler bt's out of a 30-06 . close range they'd pencil , longer range they'd do the ballistic tip thing and smack stuff silly . only thing i could think of was the high velocity at close range was somehow holding the copper jacket together . sounds weird , but only logical thing i can think of . decent size pigs i was shooting too. cheers

[Fester]

I appreciate the info, Rich, as I will never shoot enough to get conclusions, so get info from blokes that do shoot heaps.

I am not into mathematics at all, but ballistics and bullet performance interest me for some reason.
Shooting longer ranges and all the stuff we need to learn to do it well, I guess.

The range of the shot is a big thing, and the love, and hate for using ELDm projies for longer-range hunting is a case on the subject.
It seems that they work fine at hundreds of yards, but close-range shots can pencil through.
You can see why they do it, those blokes into shooting goats at way too long a range would be looking at the fact that you can't kill an animal if you can't even hit it.
Accubonds would be about the only projectile that I know of that could be accurate enough, and work on animals out past the silly type ranges some are shooting.

The Game King thing started on me when I watched that old-school yank (The Real Gunsmith) preaching about using projectiles that are designed to kill game; again, they have bigger animals than us, in general.
He made mention of thin jackets and big boat tails that make full jacket separation occur.
It did make sense.

Back to reality, and normal hunting distances, also different shooting applications: a deer hunter only using a few bullets/ blokes shooting mobs of pigs. The humble .308 and factory ammo become effective and economical.
The NSW NPWS have got storerooms full of the stuff, and their chopper bombers have been busted just peppering the ground with it.
When they actually shoot animals like the horses, they use a magazine full per horse.
All good practice, according to the relevant government ministers.

[Wapiti]

A reason the cheaper ballistic tips may work so well for us could simply be that 90% of our game and pests are only medium-sized at best.

There is a bit of difference Fester.
You can have medium sized animals that are really tough, like a mature boar that's lived in country like ours here. He will be rock hard, tough, solid muscle around the neck and have a 50mm thick cartilage shoulder shield.
A plastic tipped varmint bullet, what those popular cheap plastic tipped things are, might do a spectacular kill one shot from a .30cal, the next the fragile thing hits on the solid shouklder joint at 90' and blows up.
Rich is obsessed with his SST's, but he gets good results cos he uses a large cartridge (for the game he hunts) and the things are basically bigger and have more lead hence more penetration - if all goes well that is. Pull the tip out of one of those and what do you see?
Rich, mate, you should start a thread on SST's in .338 so you can get this off your chest finally!
A .30 Gameking will crap all over a BT or whatever other fancy pants tipped bullet someone's using, when results are averaged on medium game. Pull the tip out with pliers and have a look what these tipped things really are - a hollow-point with a HUGE hole in the front. A faster rifle will get a bonded bullet of average-for-calibre weight expanding nicely.
The original Gameking is a softpoint (yes I know now there are tipped ones, and now they are using the name on HP's too, don't be confused), and that will expand at a slower rate than what's basically a hollow-point with a plastic tip driving back into it to make it expand even faster.

Still on "medium game" you could have a fallow deer that is soft and lightly built, the same height as the pig.
Then... you could have someone way out of their depth pull off a lucky rear-end shot where the projectile from the pea-gun 223 goes the whole length of this little deer without hilling a bone at all. All arse - that doesn't make the 223 adequate for deer whatsoever.
Even yet, side-on, fallow deer are easy to kill with regular bullets - cup and core all-the-rage tipped projectile. I shoot them all the time for meat with 135gn Sierra HP's, but on a pig like described above you have to put the bullet behind the ear to be sure. They blow up on thick shoulder-shields.

One bloke pulls off an arsey shot with a small cartridge, and suddenly it's the ducks guts. That's utter bullsh*t. If someone's saying that to me ever, I write them off.

People go apesh*t about what the hole in the bang-flop-dead animal has... a huge blowhole tells me that the bullet is blowing up in there and on the next shot, hitting big bone, it will fail. The same animal, dead on the spot with a thumb-size hole in it, hit in exactly the same place, tells me that this is what I want for those bone-smashing hits next time.

And I don't see what this fantasy is over sambar deer needing an RPG to kill them. Wapiti (Elk to the plebs) are markedly bigger - the biggest round-horned deer in the world and the most popular cartridge on average from the real hardcore hunters in the US where they come from used to be 30-06 - until people discovered the 300WM/180gn bonded/copper/soft-point. At least, that's what the game managers and breeders we have spoke to overseas have said to us. Even in Alaska.
I'm sure someone with an iphone videoing himself on youtube behind blue neon lights will say something different. I don't listen to them.

To finish, the only reason I'm jumping up and down about trying Woodleighs (which are bonded, and have a harder point) is not in a smaller, slower case but ones that have up to 70-80gns or powder, up to my RUM which runs 105gns, and the bullets are going superfast for their diameter.
I have mentioned before that how even bonded bullets too light (normal even heavy in an average 308/30-06) blow up before getting through a big pigs shoulder shield when going so fast, and the only way to stop that is to go way heavier, which slows them down. Even then overall, the energy dump is spectacular because it's so unlike a larger bore going slower, with similar energy.
That's why it's so fun to shoot.

[bigrich]

A reason the cheaper ballistic tips may work so well for us could simply be that 90% of our game and pests are only medium-sized at best.

There is a bit of difference Fester.
You can have medium sized animals that are really tough, like a mature boar that's lived in country like ours here. He will be rock hard, tough, solid muscle around the neck and have a 50mm thick cartilage shoulder shield.
A plastic tipped varmint bullet, what those popular cheap plastic tipped things are, might do a spectacular kill one shot from a .30cal, the next the fragile thing hits on the solid shouklder joint at 90' and blows up.
Rich is obsessed with his SST's, but he gets good results cos he uses a large cartridge (for the game he hunts) and the things are basically bigger and have more lead hence more penetration - if all goes well that is. Pull the tip out of one of those and what do you see?
Rich, mate, you should start a thread on SST's in .338 so you can get this off your chest finally!
A .30 Gameking will crap all over a BT or whatever other fancy pants tipped bullet someone's using, when results are averaged on medium game. Pull the tip out with pliers and have a look what these tipped things really are - a hollow-point with a HUGE hole in the front. A faster rifle will get a bonded bullet of average-for-calibre weight expanding nicely.
The original Gameking is a softpoint (yes I know now there are tipped ones, and now they are using the name on HP's too, don't be confused), and that will expand at a slower rate than what's basically a hollow-point with a plastic tip driving back into it to make it expand even faster.

Still on "medium game" you could have a fallow deer that is soft and lightly built, the same height as the pig.
Then... you could have someone way out of their depth pull off a lucky rear-end shot where the projectile from the pea-gun 223 goes the whole length of this little deer without hilling a bone at all. All arse - that doesn't make the 223 adequate for deer whatsoever.
Even yet, side-on, fallow deer are easy to kill with regular bullets - cup and core all-the-rage tipped projectile. I shoot them all the time for meat with 135gn Sierra HP's, but on a pig like described above you have to put the bullet behind the ear to be sure. They blow up on thick shoulder-shields.

One bloke pulls off an arsey shot with a small cartridge, and suddenly it's the ducks guts. That's utter bullsh*t. If someone's saying that to me ever, I write them off.

People go apesh*t about what the hole in the bang-flop-dead animal has... a huge blowhole tells me that the bullet is blowing up in there and on the next shot, hitting big bone, it will fail. The same animal, dead on the spot with a thumb-size hole in it, hit in exactly the same place, tells me that this is what I want for those bone-smashing hits next time.

And I don't see what this fantasy is over sambar deer needing an RPG to kill them. Wapiti (Elk to the plebs) are markedly bigger - the biggest round-horned deer in the world and the most popular cartridge on average from the real hardcore hunters in the US where they come from used to be 30-06 - until people discovered the 300WM/180gn bonded/copper/soft-point. At least, that's what the game managers and breeders we have spoke to overseas have said to us. Even in Alaska.
I'm sure someone with an iphone videoing himself on youtube behind blue neon lights will say something different. I don't listen to them.

To finish, the only reason I'm jumping up and down about trying Woodleighs (which are bonded, and have a harder point) is not in a smaller, slower case but ones that have up to 70-80gns or powder, up to my RUM which runs 105gns, and the bullets are going superfast for their diameter.
I have mentioned before that how even bonded bullets too light (normal even heavy in an average 308/30-06) blow up before getting through a big pigs shoulder shield when going so fast, and the only way to stop that is to go way heavier, which slows them down. Even then overall, the energy dump is spectacular because it's so unlike a larger bore going slower, with similar energy.
That's why it's so fun to shoot.

well mate , i've been drifting of topic , but fester did pose a question i could answer i'm a big fan of the 150 sst out of my 308 cause they've reliably worked time and time again . big pigs , small pigs , goats . they're not the most accurate bullet , 3/4" @ 100 , 150 sierra GK shoot like a target bullet , .2" on a good day . if i get sick of the 200sst out of my 338-06 i can always step up to 225gn sst actually i have some speer 225gn boat tails in 338 , supposed to be a reasonably soft bullet . wonder what they'd be like........

[Wapiti]

Yeah Rich, Fester was wondering about the SGK (Sierra Game King) and how it went, I thought I'd try and describe it against the plastic-tipped hollow-points, which is basically what they are.
Not sure why, but a lot of people especially the newer shooters apparently, sidestep the SGK's in any cal for the plastic tipped of any maker.
Hey, Barnes even did it from pressure, even though the designs they had already with a machined copper tip mono construction worked so well. The design needs a hollow point to insert the tip into.

I have a load that shoots really small groups, day after day, in a 338 Lapua Mag using a 250gn Sierra Matchking. I saw these 250gn SGK's in the gunshop, and wondered if they'd be a good substitution up to 500m across gullies and ridges here to what larger game like pigs when they were pulled up, digging their damn holes.
They absolutely were, in every respect in that rifle, spot on at all ranges I'd had recorded "Dope" on, and shot the same touching 5-shot clusters at 100.
Then I hiked out where the pigs were digging up tree roots and set up the TRG on it's Sako bipod, and whacked a 3/4 boar just behind the shoulder bone from that same distance I'd had a gong sitting and had practiced on with the SMK's earlier and gotten that "dope".
The result was an instant kill, with a wound that resembled a 150 SGK in a 308 at 100m in a similar pig. Dead is dead, instant despatch.
Then I tried it on a billy goat out there, same result.
Then I stopped doing that, because a goat decided to walk off just as I broke the trigger, and one out at about 750m, from memory. I don't do it anymore now for my own ethics reasons.

I use the SGK in 165 in the 300WM too, it's a super accurate bullet. I don't use it much anymore, because since the Covid clusterf*ck I found it very difficult to get them, and found the Atomic 29 bullets made here.
And since you donated me those Bertram 150's, I have really gotten on the Aussie Made trip, so I asked others what they thought by making this thread.

I write all this in defence of the SGK, because it's a typically very accurate bullet as all Sierras DNA seems to be, and it works absolutely great on the game/feral animals I have here, which would cover most of Aus. In my experience using them, they are superior to any tipped bullet for consistency there. IMHO, tipped bullets are fancy hollow-points with tips that probably melt off before they get to the targets anyway.
You can't fight fashion, or marketing BS, it seems.
Except for the larger stuff of course, which I'd consider to be lean muscley scrub cattle and upwards.

So, that brings me back to the thread, Woodleighs.