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Hi Terry, this is in no way a criticism of an excellent bullet, but I thought it might be instructive to the members.
I have been using Trophy Bonded Bear Claw bullets since they came out. I often had conversations with Jack Carter about loads and his performance criteria. as you may know, the bullets are made by Federal. they are sold through Speer now, as Jack died about two years ago.
also two years ago, I ran across a very big waterbuck and decided to take him as he was bigger than one I had. the shot was an easy one at 225 meters(rangefinder measurement). I put the 175 grain from the 7 Rem Mag dead on the shoulder. he barely flinched. in a few seconds, he was off. we spent two hours chasing him all over the countryside. I had to put three more into him. the second shot was in the heart spot from the opposite side at 200 meters. the third was an attempted Texas heart shot at approx 15 meters, and finally, I spined him at about 25 meters. none of the bullets penetrated more than 2 inches. the killing shot was embedded in the backbone.
we recovered all of the bullets and all had the front section "smeared" away. only the rear part remained. I sent the remaining ammo and bullets back to Federal for testing. they fired them in water and all were picture perfect mushrooms. this is usually what I get when we dig them out of an animal. what went wrong ? nobody knows, or so they said. if it was a bad lot, they didn't admit it.
waterbuck are tough animals, but not bullet proof. the first one I got was with this very bullet about 11-12 years ago. bullet77
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