Bloodlines not performing

[jbeaumont21]

How have these bullets performed for you guys? Anyone have any issues?  The reason I ask is because I had 2 bloodlines that did not perform as expected this year.  I shot a cow at maybe 50 yds with 100 - 110 grains of FFG and a 300 gr bloodline through a brand new Knight Disc Extreme and both bullets were recovered from the back side of the animal with the brass completely intact and not deformed one bit. The bullet did not expand or open up at all and none of the petals broke off.  The cow was hit in the heart and the lungs and took a long time to die. Any ideas why this may have happened? Not sure I want to use these things again.

[duckmen1]

No idea. My brother shot a mulie with the same load at 112 yards and dropped it in his tracks. While butchering I found three or four of the largest petals form a bullet that I've ever seen. The back half of the bullet went from the front shoulder exiting near the rear shoulder with complete pass through. It was just shredded inside. best performance from a muzzy bullet i have seen yet. Glad he tried those bullets this year. plus they wiere accurate.Awesome performance.

[Sabotloader]

How have these sabbots performed for you guys? Anyone have any issues?  The reason I ask is because I had 2 bloodlines that did not perform as expected this year.  I shot a cow at maybe 50 yds with 100 - 110 grains of FFG and a 300 gr bloodline through a brand new Knight Disc Extreme and both sabbots were recovered from the back side of the animal with the brass completely intact and not deformed one bit. The sabbot did not expand or open up at all and none of the petals broke off.  The cow was hit in the heart and the lungs and took a long time to die. Any ideas why this may have happened? Not sure I want to use these things again.

Holy cow! I would have never believed it... I have never had a problem like that, they have worked very well on several animals...  100 grains of powder should have really provided sufficient velocity at those ranges to strip the petals.  Did the shots feel right? Was there plenty of recoil?

One thing the bullet does have to encounter sufficient fluid, like the internal organs to cause the petals to open.  Hide - Bone and muscle tissue may not cause the nose to open.

On the second shot, the heart lung shot, do you think the bullet may have worked there.  It should have liguified the lungs.  I can understand on the second shot that the animal response may have been slow.  The first shot that entered the body would have started the animals flight response mechanism pumping and the second shot would not have been the shock to the system that it normally would be.

I shot two deer at the end of the season over here one at 60 yards and did find the petals one the floor of the garage as we cleaned the animal up.

I will pass this information on to Lehigh Dave and see what he might think...

mike

[jbeaumont21]

How have these sabbots performed for you guys? Anyone have any issues?  The reason I ask is because I had 2 bloodlines that did not perform as expected this year.  I shot a cow at maybe 50 yds with 100 - 110 grains of FFG and a 300 gr bloodline through a brand new Knight Disc Extreme and both sabbots were recovered from the back side of the animal with the brass completely intact and not deformed one bit. The bullet did not expand or open up at all and none of the petals broke off.  The cow was hit in the heart and the lungs and took a long time to die. Any ideas why this may have happened? Not sure I want to use these things again.

Holy cow! I would have never believed it... I have never had a problem like that, they have worked very well on several animals...  100 grains of powder should have really provided sufficient velocity at those ranges to strip the petals.  Did the shots feel right? Was there plenty of recoil?

One thing the bullet does have to encounter sufficient fluid, like the internal organs to cause the petals to open.  Hide - Bone and muscle tissue may not cause the nose to open.

On the second shot, the heart lung shot, do you think the bullet may have worked there.  It should have liguified the lungs.  I can understand on the second shot that the animal response may have been slow.  The first shot that entered the body would have started the animals flight response mechanism pumping and the second shot would not have been the shock to the system that it normally would be.

I shot two deer at the end of the season over here one at 60 yards and did find the petals one the floor of the garage as we cleaned the animal up.

I will pass this information on to Lehigh Dave and see what he might think...

mike

Hey Mike,

Yeah I could not believe it either.  After my first shot she just stood there frozen for what seemed like forever, maybe 5 minutes while my buddy ran back to the truck to grab a speedloader.  Then I hit her again and she ran maybe 15 feet and stood there again frozen so I loaded another round and hit her a 3rd time which finally brought her down. However she still flopped around and even tried to stand back up a few times.  After my first shot which drew blood it took her probably 20 minutes and a total of 3 rounds to kill her. My buddy and I were both amazed by how long it took her to expire. She was one tough cow!

Then when we butchered her we found 2 of the slugs on the back side, so they went all way through but never exited. There was a small perect hole through the bottom of the heart and the same through the lungs. No shredding or anything. Just a nice hole punched through. I believe the third shot shattered her shoulder, but we never recovered that bullet and was unable to tell where it exited. 

I really can't explain it. All shots seemed good with plenty of kick and a lot of smoke. It wasn't raining at the time but there was a lot of moisture in the air from all of the snow.

I have attached a couple pics of the bullets that I just took.  You can kind of see some blood and tissue down in the hollow point.

Sorry I should have taken some pictures of the heart and lungs but didn't think of it at the time.  My buddy did video all three shots so I will send you a link to the videos in PM.  Let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Jesse

[kenzmad]

call me ssceptic here but in my opinion, neither of those rounds have been fired out of a muzzleloader. I don't care what the bullet is made of but it will distort some upon contacting the animal. calling bs on this one

[hoytem]

call me ssceptic here but in my opinion, neither of those rounds have been fired out of a muzzleloader. I don't care what the bullet is made of but it will distort some upon contacting the animal. calling bs on this one

Agree 100%

[bare.hunter]

I shot a doe with oneand it took fist size chunk out of her.250 grain bullet 110grains powder knight bighorn.I really love those bullets.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

First off, those are not sabots. They are bullets or slugs. The sabot is the plastic liner used to shoot bullets of a smaller diameter than the bore size. I use sabots to shoot .45 slugs out of my .50 caliber rifle.

[BOOM!!]

call me ssceptic here but in my opinion, neither of those rounds have been fired out of a muzzleloader. I don't care what the bullet is made of but it will distort some upon contacting the animal. calling bs on this one

Are you kidding me? Why would he lie?

[Sabotloader]

call me ssceptic here but in my opinion, neither of those rounds have been fired out of a muzzleloader. I don't care what the bullet is made of but it will distort some upon contacting the animal. calling bs on this one

Are you kidding me? Why would he lie?

Steve,he is not. I talked to him on the phone about the problem and  will tell you I really feel bad for him and you can here it in his expressions, that he would really like to know what happened for many different reasons.

The failure, I am almost positive of was the lack of velocity!  These bullets normally need to be traveling around 1000 fps. when they hit liquid to break the bond between pellets, bend them back to 40*, and cause the release of the petals.

If you look at the nose of the bullets they are scarred and one even has some meat in the bottom of it.

From the description of the internals it was like he shot them with a military anti-personell bullet.

If I remember correctly they had been hunting in some really lousy weather for a few days before the incident happened.

[luv2hunt]

I have a hard time believing that... I shot a cow slightly quartering away at 75yds with the 275 grain bloodlines using 100 gr ffg. She ran maybe 20 yds and cartwheeled backwards while trying to run up hill. I hit her through the lungs and recovered the bullet against the shoulder, the lungs were destroyed and the bloodline performed flawlessly with all the petals gone.  I have watched two animals die with this exact load with one shot each, neither animal went more than 25yds. Is it possible the powder was measured incorrectly or had moisture in it causing lack of velocity?

[Sabotloader]

I have a hard time believing that... I shot a cow slightly quartering away at 75yds with the 275 grain bloodlines using 100 gr ffg. She ran maybe 20 yds and cartwheeled backwards while trying to run up hill. I hit her through the lungs and recovered the bullet against the shoulder, the lungs were destroyed and the bloodline performed flawlessly with all the petals gone.  I have watched two animals die with this exact load with one shot each, neither animal went more than 25yds. Is it possible the powder was measured incorrectly or had moisture in it causing lack of velocity?

I am not the shooter so I can not attest to it, but after discussion with jbeaumont I believe that to be the exact problem...

[dawhunt]

Maybe it was just a couple of off quality bullets Possiable
Bob

[MountainDevil54]

happens with powerbelts as well. Some complain they explode, others say they dont expand at all.

Didn't hit enough jelly IMO and thats why it didnt open. Barnes will do the same thing.

[kerrdog]

OK doubters, This guy is my friend and Neighbor, and I've never known him to even exaggerate.  And I was there. So the fact that someone would suggest that he'd make this up based on the photo of the bullets, means that person doesn't know what he is looking at-or what he is talking about.

It was my rifle (a brand new Disc Extreme) and I loaded one of the bullets (his first one) into the rifle after having shot my cow with it a few hours earlier. (His trigger malfunctioned on his rifle so he grabbed mine.) While helping him field dress the cow, I also saw the bullets come out of her. It happened exactly like he said.

Why didn't the bloodlines expand? Obviously not enough velocity....buy why? 

With the rifle clean and the barrel swabbed with a touch of bore butter, the bloodline and sabot were fairly hard to get down the barrel. After my first shot, it was ridiculously hard to load.  It took everything I had, even with the adrenaline of the first shot (Which dropped the cow dead within 40 feet...a pass through with two broken ribs, liquified lungs, and a huge blood trail.  I think the bullet did fragment as designed) I could barely get it loaded again. No way any second bullet should ever be that hard to load.

I believe the bore was lined with plastic from the first shot.  That, along with the fouling in the barrel caused the the sabot on the next shots to be "sticky" in the barrel, therefore lowering the muzzle velocity. (just a theory, which I got from watching a video on power belts)

Solution?  Use thinner sabots with bloodlines?  Maybe.  I'll check that out next time I get to the range. Or Maybe Sabotloader knows.  Maybe carry a speed loader with a Powerbelt (which are easier to load) for follow up shots? Maybe carry another speed loader with a T/C maxi hunter for the third shot....should it come to that?

As for the idea that the powder could have been moist.....we were both using Triple Seven in speed loaders.  They were kept dry, so they would have had to grab the moisture from the air while loading.  Or moisture would have had to get into the speedloaders over time.  My point is, does 777 attract moisture?  Don't know. Could there have been immediate condensation inside the barrel after a shot? The air was very moist.

[jbeaumont21]

To those of you calling b.s I don't really care what you think... go police some other thread. I just wanted to get the story out there to see if anyone else has had issues with these bullets. I wanted to know if it was an anomaly or if others had experienced a similar issue. I wanted to know if I should still try and use these bullets again next year since everything I had read about them sounded awesome.  I wanted to have a discussion about what possibly went wrong. This post was not intended to trash talk Leigh bullets. I practiced all summer with the bloodlines and loved how they were performing on paper, however during the instance as described above they did not perform as expected. 

As to the facts I can tell you that each shot was loaded with between 100 to 110 grains of Triple 7 ffg.  Fact... The 2 bullets pictured above were shot through a brand new Knight Disc Extreme and were recovered on the back side of the animal with little to no damage to the bullets... I noticed a little bit of dented spiraling on one of the bullets. I am more than happy to send both bullets to Leigh for inspection or even perhaps have a discussion with them.  As to whether or not moisture or the plastic from the previous sabot affected the velocity I cannot say.  It was snowing out all morning but it was not snowing at the time I shot this cow. 

[jbeaumont21]

I have a hard time believing that... I shot a cow slightly quartering away at 75yds with the 275 grain bloodlines using 100 gr ffg. She ran maybe 20 yds and cartwheeled backwards while trying to run up hill. I hit her through the lungs and recovered the bullet against the shoulder, the lungs were destroyed and the bloodline performed flawlessly with all the petals gone.  I have watched two animals die with this exact load with one shot each, neither animal went more than 25yds. Is it possible the powder was measured incorrectly or had moisture in it causing lack of velocity?

I had a hard time believing it too.  I was using a T/C red speedloader that can only take 110 grains of powder and I know it was filled to the top and watched all of the powder pour into the barrel.  After talking with Sabotloader he roughly estimated that at a minimum it would take around 75 grains of powder to produce enough velocity for the bullets to perform.  So even if a few grains of powder missed the barrel during my excitement of loading and reloading I'm positive that I had enough in there.  This cow was broadsided maybe 40 to 50 yards away for each shot.

[Sabotloader]

'j'

Wait until spring and we will figure this all out... I did talk to to Lehigh Dave about all this also.

Save those two bullets unless Dave requests them cause - I will want you to try a couple of things with them in the spring. Or when ever you have time to do a shoot.

One thing you could do right now. On the bullet that has a fairly clean nose... compare the inside of the nose to the inside of a new bullet.  At the joint where the petals come together - there should be a very small u of v shaped groove that runs from the top of the petal to the bottom.  There should be 6 of these grooves. If you insert a pin in the nose and turn the bullet you should feel the pin drop into the grooves.

[Chesapeake]

I tried those bullets and still have most of 3 boxes. I was looking for passthroughs for blood trails, but they are so hard to load I gave up on them after 3 or 4 shots. You could barely get one down the barrel.

I believe you must have had low velocity. This is why: I shoot 345, 360, and 375 grain lead bullets. They mushroom extensively and almost always make the off-side hide. Your bullets mushroomed none, remained fairly sharp pointed, and still stopped on the offside. To me this says they had much less energy, or such a streamlined bullet would have gone through like a full metal jacket.

Maybe your entire can of powder is bad? You should chrono a few shots from it. I could see the load in the barrel being wet, but then to have the loads in the speed loaders do the same seems odd.

Did you send it to a butcher? Maybe they will find the missing bullet.