Copper vs. Lead | The Best Hunting Bullet

[Music] all right with debase been going on as long as guns have been around whether to use a copper bullet a lead bullet and within the lead bullets you're going to use a bonded bullet or like a match grade cup of core type bullet a lot of folks come up with you know very strong opinions about which one is best for what animals at what ranges but if you like really try to dig down into it and search the internet there's not like a definitive answer out there so today I'm out in Townsend Montana with my buddy and colleague Garrett long and we're going to do a little shooting into some ballistics gels and hopefully clear up the debate a little bit [Music] foreign so here's the test we're going to be shooting three different bullets one copper bullet one cup and core lead bullet and one bonded lead bullet for copper we're using the 120 grain trophy copper designed for accuracy and weight retention in a non-toxic projectile for the cup and core we have the 135 grain Burger hybrid Hunter designed for extreme accuracy and fragmentation on impact and lastly for our bonded lead bullet we're using the 130 Grain Terminal Ascent which undergoes a manufacturing process which bonds the jacket to the Lead Core increasing weight retention and structural Integrity while the weights of these three bullets are slightly different they are going to give us the most realistic comparison of what you would be shooting in the field Garrett is going to be shooting his competition rifle in a 6.5 Creedmoor the Creedmoor is a great all-around cartridge and in our opinion has a combination of speed and weight that makes this test applicable to other popular calibers we are going to be shooting ballistic gels that are six inches wide six inches tall and 18 inches deep and to make this test as realistic as possible we have one mold that is purely ballistics gel and the other has been molded around a four inch wide Whitetail scapula synthetic gels don't exactly emulate what a bullet will do when hitting an animal but by using the same medium it should give us consistent results for comparing the three bolts for distances we're going to be shooting at 140 300 and 500 yards these three distances will give us a realistic comparison to what a rifle Hunter would be shooting in the field lastly in order to see what's happening on impact we are filming with a high-speed camera that records at 20 000 frames per second by slowing that footage down we'll be able to see frame by frame what is happening to the bullets on impact today our goal is to shoot each Bullet at both types of gels at all three distances then we'll go back to the lab and review the footage [Music] you're gonna do the shooting not me because you actually shoot you're one of the few people that I know that shoots thousands of rounds annually you actually shoot competitively and that's like even just for an actual competition how many rounds is that over the weekend yeah like 200 rounds yeah I always figure like 200 rounds for shooting and then like another 100 to get ready for it wow yeah okay so a whole bunch of shooting do a bunch of big game hunting too yeah what do you think we're gonna see with our Denver bullets and when we're shooting into this gel yeah man I think I I have some theories we know lead likes to come apart however that comes with some penetration issues right at range right because everybody's heard the one Horror Story of like where it only goes in yeah barely through the hide it explodes and never even reaches the vitals stops on the other end of the scapula or something so what I what I'm thinking we're gonna see is on bone at distance lead is going to have a lot less penetration on bone at distance I think you're going to see copper have still pretty decent penetration decent expansion I think you're going to see something similar out of the bonded the real interesting thing is going to be when we're not shooting bone if that copper will still expand well let's get to shooting it's getting hot already I like it I'm going to jail [Music] I think it's like dead center [Applause] Corey what do you see okay [Music] have to hit on the scapula straight we're in business [Music] got it that time before you're clear to go check it out but I just went right through the middle of that scapula and just exploded the whole thing it's just in pieces it looks like a puzzle man I'll be honest this is kind of opposite of what I thought I would see [Music] all right Garrett and I are done doing the shooting now we're at fhf headquarters in Bozeman Montana and we're hanging out with Kailyn Wojcik who is a pretty much an expert at all things shooting used to be a marine scout sniper now he's the president of modern day sniper but today we're going to look at all the footage that we have we have the gels here to look at in person as well and then we pulled out some of the bullets that we'll be able to inspect Kaelyn wants to tell me what modern day sniper is and kind of what makes you the expert here to talk about sure sure I joined the Marines at a young age and went into the sniper program and I learned a lot obviously about long range shooting and what it takes to intentionally connect a bullet at distance I got out of that and um and started teaching on my own private instruction that eventually led me to work for a company called Magpul which I'm sure everybody knows and I developed their precision rifle training program there and did that for about seven years and then I decided it was time to kind of Branch out and go on my own way which eventually led us to formulate modern day sniper and I'm a partner at modern day sniper with Philip Vallejo modern day sniper is snipers that are training modern day Riflemen it's cool so you've gotten a look at a lot of this stuff over and over and over and seeing what bullets do what they look like Etc all right so let's start off with looking at the uh the comparison of all three on one screen at 500 yards this is the bone-in ballistics gel up top we've got the federal trophy copper which is our monolithic All Copper bullet in the middle we've got the federal terminal Ascent which is the bonded lead bullet and then on the bottom we've got the federal uh Burger hybrid Hunter which is the lead cup and core bullet you guys ready yeah yeah see it oh man that shot placement was great laughs yeah even even at uh 20 000 frames per second um it goes through there pretty quickly yep so this is cool you can go frame by frame and start seeing exactly what each of these individual projectiles starts to do the cup and core the burger effect right it's got an extremely violent expansion and you can see the bullet completely coming apart and then you also see the the terminal Ascent that bullet's born a giant hole through that and you see a lot of the same sort of violent Dynamic of the expansion and the hydrostatic shock and then the trophy copper on the top you see way less hydrostatic shock and that bull is just born a straight hole as well so they're performing very consistent with what I would expect to see at yeah that hybrid Hunter bullet or the cup and core bullet I mean it's really drat like it blows through the bottom of the plywood underneath it too right like it is a very drastic uh expansion but Yani if you go through there I think we can see that bullet start to Tumble yep right there you can see it sideways and it's basically what what's happening in that in that instant is the bullet is lost Dynamic stability so it's no longer nose first and now that's why all of a sudden that bullet is catastrophically failing it's a it's coming apart and that's where you see that massive hydrostatic shock wave which can be deceiving meaning it can be deceiving as to how effective that is at killing an animal yep yeah and I do I like the uh honestly the bonded Bullet at this yardage it has a similar even if it's not as effectively similar shock to the cup and core but like you mentioned earlier it's driving it like doesn't change trajectory hardly at all and um as we'll we can see from the bullet itself either it mushroomed perfectly and it's going to maintain it's going to maintain nose forward flight right it's going to maintain its stability so that way it can continue to do what it's designed to do which is expand increase its surface area while maintaining its weight to penetrate very deeply and create a massive primary wound cabinet you guys want to look at some of the actual gels now of these three to kind of see what happened foreign what's interesting here that you don't see on the footage is how differently each bullet did going through the scapula right where the cup and core just like barely cracks it and and puts like a little hole through it and then the other two bullets the bonded and the copper literally destroyed those scapulas like just blew them up yeah this bonded bullet in particular that scapula is gone and I think what we saw from the footage which is interesting seeing how these scapulas got hit so hard with the copper and bonded is that shock wave was a lot closer to the to the entrance point of the gel right so it's like right at the beginning of the block we see that big balloon effect where as the cup and core bullet goes through that scapula and almost seems like it maintains its form until about halfway through the block and then comes apart where we saw it tumbling there from from my perspective the bullet these two bullets right here the the the copper the solid copper and the bonded bullet they're actually starting their expansion as soon as they impact the medium whereas this bullet hasn't it you can see it really hasn't started much of its expansion until after it makes contact with the density of the bone itself which is then where we see that major catastrophic failure in the bullet starts to come apart and upset itself whereas these guys the bullets already expanding so by the time it does hit that scapula it's increased its surface area already and it's doing the damage that we see the bonded bullet if we grab that bullet itself you honest this bonded bullet that is exactly what you want to see exactly what you want and that's at 500 yards we know this bull is traveling about 1950 2000 feet per second and that is just a very impressive expansion that's textbook that's exactly what you want to see now the copper on the other hand take a look at that yeah I mean we just see this in my opinions is the is the downside of a copper bullet when you lose that amount of speed you don't have as much expansion and that's exactly what we're seeing here right all you're seeing is that is that ballistic tip get shoved back into the the meat of the projectile and it's not allowing those pedals to expand but the other benefit of that is that that bullet is maintaining uh the stability and it's continuing nose first as it penetrates and it's creating a pretty significant primary wound Channel as well but this obviously is the better performer just because of the expansion and that's really where Modern hunting bullets that are bonded are starting this is pretty much the standard because everybody knows now that that's pretty much what we want in in terms of bullet expansion um all right let's look at 500 yards just gel no bone in the gel you guys want to just go frame by frame yeah I think that'd be a good idea to just kind of see exactly what the bullets are barely snuck that one in there but and look at that look at the the burger down here it's doing it it's it's doing its thing right there at just about the same distance yep I think all three of them have just less of that hydrostatic shock yeah you know when you're just what you're seeing in the gel compared to when it hit the bone right sure and on you're right Giannis it almost just seems like the results are the exact same just to a lesser degree when you compare bullet to Bullet so you know pretty dang big hydrostatic shock from the cup and core maybe a little less so but a straighter trajectory and maybe more terminal wound channel from that bonded bullet and then just a a lesser degree of hydrostatic shock in the copper bullet yeah because the comparable it's not increasing surface area hardly at all right as a result yeah so it's interesting how we're always we're always shooting behind the shoulder mostly because that's what a lot of people think like the dead center of the vitals is but it looks like with all three of these bullets they kind of performed better going through going through the bone all right let's move on to 300. 15 9 18 20. [Music] all right so we're on to 300 yards now we got the gels out we got all three gels up on the screen here you guys just want to watch it in regular slow-mo first and then we'll go frame by frame yeah okay so again Federal trophy copper up top the federal terminal scent which is the bonded bullet in the middle and then the federal uh Burger hybrid Hunter which is the cup and core Bullet at the bottom oh that's cool how you can see the actual spiral and you can see both on the bonded and copper bullet just right it will erect that that scapula yeah and you can see the bone fragments coming up out of the gel it is interesting to see though that bonded bullet again it it doesn't seem like it's changed flight path at all yeah yeah where you can clearly see on the uh the bonded bullet where that bullet is maintaining nose forward flight and it's continuing with its center of gravity going forward and tracking and something that's interesting about that is we know that clearly right there right there it looks perfect we know that a heavier copper bullet needs a higher twist than a rifle to spin it correct what's interesting here it seems as though since the Lead Core of the bonded bullet is more Central that maybe that has an effect as it's spinning through the gel and not deviating from course quite as much as the copper you can clearly see too here on the copper projectile yeah I was just gonna see it looks like it's starting to yeah you can see it's it's starting to kind of have a nose High attitude and now it's starting to upset itself and now it's on it's obviously it's on its terminal path so it's largely unpredictable so whatever that bullet's going to do is what it's going to do what is interesting though is at the beginning of the bullets entering the gel it it seems like the copper starts to expand a little bit sooner and when we look at the gel itself that scapula is gone oh it destroys it with the burger bullet we actually got less penetration at 300 yards than we did at five and it just seems as though it has everything to do with it coming apart faster right and into smaller pieces from my personal experience as a hunter shooting animals with all three of these different types of projectiles we're going to see more consistent and reliable performance from a bullet that stays together shooting it through various mediums or different angles through different mediums whereas a bullet that's not designed to stay together is going to be in my personal experience is going to have more propensity to do something weird if you will at that range it's hard to choose between those two but I think because of I don't know what it did to that scapula was really impressive the bond it was closed but then the fact that it kind of starts to Veer off would make me want to go with the bonded I think um yeah Giannis let's maybe pull up the clear ballistic and see how that compares ready yeah again it just seems similar to what happened at five it seems to be the same effects just to a slightly lesser degree but bullet to Bullet to Bullet they're very similar let's go frame by frame you honest and see what we can see where bonded in Copper performing the same we can see already start to see that the that the hybrid is upsetting it's losing its stability and it's coming apart even in gel without any any bone yep making contact with it this time with just the gel and no uh bone the copper definitely kept a straighter trajectory yeah I know it's I know people are going to see they see this the performance of that Lead Core copper jacket bullet that big violent expansion but I think it's deceiving I think it's deceiving in terms of you know what damage is actually occurring inside the Critter and how often is that going to work under a wide variety of different circumstances versus how often is are we going to get this performance from the bullets that hold their shape and hold their weight the bonded and the copper are just getting more consistent I agree that's my that's my personal position okay let's go to 100 now foreign look at that let's watch the uh watch the footage same thing except at 140 yards now a lot of similarities here I will say out of all of them though I think the copper is the most violent at this at this yardage especially what it does I mean yeah when it does to the Bone I mean look there's just bone fragments flying everywhere let's take it frame by frame sure yeah still you can see the cup and core projectile still it comes apart about two-thirds of the way through I think it's also safe to say that that at a hundred yards shooting an animal with any three of these projectiles it's going to be an effective it's going to be an effective tool I'd say though I think at 140 yards watching the footage and looking at these I mean this scapula on this gel is gone similar to Bonnet but even more so here I probably go I probably go with copper at 140. those is a cool test guys because like you said I don't think anybody's done it to this extent yeah up to this point I mean we were just generally curious too right we talk about this stuff all the time but a lot of it's speculative or maybe you find a round in an animal one time you know you had an animal get away from you and you blame a bullet maybe you hit it behind the last rib right this is a great test to see you know really what's going on in there well thanks for coming Kayla that was great man I'm super stoked that you guys had me and I very much appreciate it [Music] this test can't account for all of the factors of a real hunting situation but this test has shown me a couple of important things bonded bullets expand more consistently than the copper or cup and core bullets it ranges inside 300 yards the copper bullet seems to expand faster on impact cup and core bullets although unpredictable seem to have a bigger shock Factor about halfway through the gel but with far less penetration than the bonded or copper projectiles like it hit the scapula my biggest takeaway is how hitting bone seems to intensify the effect that the bullet had on the ballistics gel hitting a shoulder bone might not be a bad thing that actually might be a good thing if I had to choose one style of bullet based on what we saw in this test I'd have to go with the bonded bullet overall it was the most consistent in expansion penetration and damage [Music]

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 274,940

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, meat eater, Steve rinella

Id: C_oYH_dXGDM

Length: 22min 41sec (1361 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 07 2022