BRUSH-BUCKING BULLETS? DON’T BELIEVE IT!

Again today, March 4, 2015, I read yet another article that referred to a cartridge as being good for wooded areas because the bullets "bucked brush" so very well. This is pure crap; nothing more than incorrect imagination forming in the writer's mind, followed by so many other writers who blather the same bunk.

There is no brush-bucking cartridge or bullet, period. I was intently involved in a three-man study of this over a period of 26 months. We shot everything from centerfire 22s on up through to the 470 Nitro Express. It's easy to say this: "Some bullets, particularly those lightly constructed for killing varmints, simply don't make it through any kind of brush; not even much tall grass." The most fragile of them "come apart" when they strike most anything. But those aren't the bullets we're talking about. Read on...

People think a 500-grain bullet fired through brush from a 458 Winchester Magnum, or a 400-grain bullet from a 416 Rigby, will stay pretty much on course and hit the vitals. They don't. In firing through all kinds of brush; from grassy to brushy to twiggy, all bullets are deflected off target. Surprisingly, the deflection of a 180-grain pointed bullet from a 30-06, or a 130-grain pointed bullet from a 270, or a 300-grain round-nose bullet from a 375 H&H Magnum, all deflect off the intended path about the same amount. Any bullet striking any brush other than light grass close to the intended target will NOT go where you want it to! The days of uninformed gun writers making comments to the otherwise need to come to an end. In total, in our study, 57 rifles were used and over 23,000 rounds were fired. All data were processed through statistical mathematical formulas, and there were no exceptions to our findings that no shoulder-fired rifle of up to .475 caliber with any bullet design is a "brush buster."

JDC