Copper bullets and meat damage

Meat damage is one of Andrew Venables’ primary reasons to move away from lead bullets. For him, the argument revolves around weight retention.

“You’ve seen the x-rays, you’ve seen the ballistic media, the different pictures going around on social media. 40% of that bullet is left in the animal. Copper retain literally 99% of their weight. With the plastic-tip ones you lose the plastic, but then they retain 98% of their weight.”

One of the main complaints about shooting smaller deer with the high-velocity .243 is it creates fragmentation.

Andrew points to the shoulders of a muntjac he shot with a copper .243. It broke through the shoulder on one side of the animal and went out through the shoulder blade on the other side. “It left a hole in the shoulder blade, he says – “no contamination, no metal and, because there’s less fragmentation, you don’t get blood shot meat around the wound. You do get the hydraulic/hydrostatic shock.

“I found that you can harvest more meat more effectively with the copper bullets.”

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Have a look at these films with Andrew:

Best copper bullets for deer

 

Lead-free ammo and clean kills

 

Lead-free ammo – what’s on offer?

For more from Andrew, including his blog, visit the WMS Firearms Training website
For more from Fieldtester, visit Fcha.nl/fieldtester
Click here for more of our films with Andrew