I am a witness to the ballistic tips that Randy shoots out of his .223. Absolutely no fur damage whatsoever.....couldn't even find the entrance wound on the majority of his kills. I'm sold on that caliber and load, that's for sure. It kills better than the 55 grain soft points I shoot due to the fact that when his bullet enters the animal, it explodes and all of the energy is absorbed inside the body, causing a ton of internal damage while not exiting. The soft points that I have been shooting tend to pass completely through the animal, and the coyote was more prone to spin, bite and run a distance before dropping.....not to mention that the energy of the bullet wasn't fully absorbed by the coyote since it would exit and keep going. True, both loads might have killed equally, but I feel he is definately going to get more "bang, flops" with his load, even though it's running considerably slower than mine. I've had the opportunity to talk to Randy about his load testing over the years and the various results he's had with different loads, and I'm a firm believer in the load he shoots. I'm about as green as they come when it comes to reloading, but it doesn't take a lot of knowledge to realize that after looking at all of the kills that he racks up on a consistent basis.....from 45 lb. coyotes and cats down to 5 lb. grays. How many of you have seen any bad blow-ups in those pics....even on those small grays? Not many...if any at all.
The way I look at it is that he's literally in the "business" of killing predators with his guide service, and if he had run across something better over the years, I think he'd be using it. The load he has now seems to perform pretty much the same on both the big predators and small ones......22 sized entrance hole and no exit.......and most importantly a dead critter. True, if he ONLY killed coyotes, he might shoot a different load, or maybe even a different caliber all together, but with the wide variety of predators with varying size that we have out here, he has found a caliber and load that works quite well on all of them.
The only bad part about all of this is that I'm now in the market for reloading info. and equipment!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
Take it easy, fellas!
Rusty