Box of Truth?

I went out in the desert this last weekend to experiment with various weights and versions of copper jacketed lead hunting bullets in response to the AZGFD's "discussion" on January 18th.

Here is my hastily constructed version of a "Box o' Truth." It holds up to nine 1-gallon jugs of water roughly six inches deep each. The box is ten inches wide and about five feet deep.

It turned out to be insufficient to the power of my targeted cartridge, the .308 Winchester. I loaded up one round of Federal's 150gr PowerShock ammunition and fired it into my BoT.

The bullet smashed three water jugs, then changed course and smashed through the 1/2" particle board wall and disappeared into my backstop.

It was immediately apparent that I would have to go back to the drawing board for measuring the expansion and mass retention of big game rifle cartridges. If the .308 did this to my box, then .30-06 and larger cartridges would be even worse.

After repairing my impromptu bullet trap, I left the .308 platform for awhile and moved on to centerfire pistol cartridges, hoping that the less powerful cartridges would be less damaging to my frame.

First up: the .44 Remington Magnum cartridge. This particular loading is a 240 grain Lead Semiwadcutter bullet pushed by 16.0 grains of Accurate Arms #7 powder with an overall length of 1.575" on the assembled cartridge. It is not a very aggressive loading. Recoil in general is fairly soft. I do not have a chronometer, but I would estimate velocity to be between 1250 and 1300 feet per second. The firing platform was a stock Ruger Redhawk with a 4" barrel, fired from 15 yards.

The bullet fully penetrated six jugs of water but moved off-center far enough to miss the final three jugs and embed itself into my dirt berm, unrecoverable. I examined each of the water jugs and found a perfectly circular entry and exit hole on each one. I also checked the bottom of each container for any lead shavings or bullet fragments. None precipitated to the bottom of the jugs. Despite not being able to retain the fired bullet, between these two observations, I can conclude that the LSWC bullet used in this test maintained 100% (or near enough) integrity and left no lead residue behind.

Next, I tried a .357 Magnum loading. This particular load was a 158gr LSWC design similar to the 44 Magnum above, pushed by Hodgdon Titegroup powder measured to 5.0gr. The cartridge measures 1.600" OAL. I'd estimate the velocity to be approximately 1100fps. The firing platform was a Ruger SP-101 revolver with 3" barrel.

This bullet performed almost exactly like the .44 Magnum; it penetrated five jugs of water and moved off-center enough to miss the remaining water jugs. It brushed against the right wall of the box and bounced off again, impacting into the dirt berm. Each of the entry and exit holes of the bullet were completely round, and there was no lead residue or shavings in the five perforated containers.

I would have preferred to retain the bullets if at all possible, and a redesign of the bullet trap will allow for this in the future. That being said, I am confident that the results I have extrapolated from available data regarding lead wadcutter bullets will hold out when a better trap is constructed.

I moved on to .22 long rifle cartridges. I was using an old Coast-to-Coast hardware rifle based off the Marlin model 795 as a test platform.

The first cartridge tested was the Winchester XPERT22 offering. This is an all lead bullet with a fairly prominent hollowpoint, weighing 36gr. The bullet completely penetrated the first jug leaving behind the lead walls of the hollowpoint, and the base came to rest inside of the second jug. I retrieved the pieces of the hollowpoint from the first jug and the base from the second jug for later weighing.

The second cartridge was the CCI Stinger offering. This is a copper jacketed bullet with a hollowpoint, weighing 32gr. This bullet performed almost identically to the Winchester XPERT22; the hollowpoint sheared away in the first jug and the base penetrated into the second jug. I retrieved the pieces for later weighing. The broken pieces of hollowpoint wall appear to be almost entirely copper in construction.

The third cartridge was the CCI MiniMag offering. This is a copper plated lead bullet with a very minimal hollowpoint, 36gr in weight. This bullet performed the most impressively out of the four tested. The bullet penetrated three water jugs. No bullet pieces were left in the first two containers, and the recovered projectile from the third jug was perfectly mushroomed to 0.325" diameter and weighed 35.8gr on recovery. This two-tenths of a grain difference in weight is easily explained by bullet weight variation; I don't believe any of the bullet is missing at all.

The fourth cartridge was the Federal Value Pack offering. This is also a copper plated lead bullet with a minimal hollowpoint, 36gr in weight. This bullet penetrated three water jugs, almost into a fourth. It penetrated the far wall of the third jug and lodged in, stopping the jug from draining. No pieces sheared off in any of the three jugs, and the bullet did not expand at all. It weighed 36.7gr on retrieval. Given the relatively inexpensive production techniques for these bullets, it appears that it retained 100% of its weight on impact.

The final cartridge tested for the day was a .30-30 Winchester offering, the 170gr Power Point. I hoped that since this cartridge was less powerful than the .308, it might be stopped by my weak bullet trap. The firing platform was a Winchester model 94 rifle.

The bullet penetrated five jugs, coming to a rest in the sixth. The water shockwave from jugs 1-2 completely destroyed the rest of my bullet trap beyond any hope of repair. The bullet came to rest in jug #6 and appeared to be intact. While the first 2-3 jugs were heavily damaged by the bullet's passage, no lead or copper sediment was visible in the bottom of each. The recovered projectile had sharp copper serations on the opened mushroom, with a diameter of 0.553". I have not weighed the projectile yet, but I expect it to weigh in excess of 160gr.

From these observations, I can reasonably conclude that:

The metallic material used has little or nothing to do with concerns over lead poisoning. If we were using pot iron or soft steel as a bullet core and designing these bullets to expand while hunting, we would be talking about tetanus or internal hemorrhaging of these birds rather than lead poisoning.

The culprit is bullet construction. A light, thin-jacketed bullet will sheer its jacket off on impact and collapse on any hollow cavity it contains. Barnes bullets and similar solid copper bullet competitors eliminate this problem by eliminating the jacket; they simply make the jacket and body the same material. Judging from my tests, the same exact result can be achieved by using a solid, hard-cast lead bullet. Other, longer-established premium bullet manufacturers such as Hornady and Speer have techniques to more solidly bind the jacket material to the lead core and eliminate separation or fracture of the bullet core.