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warty110
Nov 25, 2023
In Hunting
Another succes in the books, for our whitetail season, for my oldest son, and for the 135gr .308” Apex Outdoors Afterburner. This morning my 13yo boy made a great shot with my coaching and help. A group of does popped out of the woods about 120 yards from us, with a smaller buck, and immediately started jogging away from us to a different part of the field. We watched them for a bit, knowing they were now 500 yards or more away. Then two more bigger bucks came out along with a couple more does. One was definitely looking pretty good through the scope and binos. It was becoming obvious they weren’t coming back our way, so we made a decision to take the long shot. It didn’t seem like there was much wind at all so we ranged him (right around 500 yards), did the math, and told him exactly where to aim and to hold 2.5mils and send it when he’s ready. Well, could have used just a bit of wind hold it turned out, or maybe just nerves, but I’m not mad at all. Impacted broadside at the base of his neck, just at the leading edge of his shoulder. Severed the main arteries, filling him full of blood and pumping it out everywhere. He made a wobbling big circle and piled up. It was a quick bleed out. Exited pretty much the same spot on the offside. One lung had a bit of blood in it, so he was starting to drown in his own blood, and there was blood all the way down his esophagus to his stomach. So it ended impacting at around 1946fps, which is finally in the area I wanted to test these bullets the most, plus by not hitting any bone it ended up as a lower impact resistance shot too. I searched and searched, reaching fingers all around and through the wound channel, but was unable to find any pieces of petals. The hole was over 2” diameter in places though, and there just wasn’t any evidence of penciling, so I’m confident it did expand, but everything punched right through. The wound channel started small, got bigger, then small again- which is indicative of how this bullet is designed to perform. So that ends up actually being a pretty good test. I’m confident hitting shoulder would have just resulted in destroyed organs and an exit out the back like the other two examples I’ve seen/had firsthand (plus one other neck shot for a total of 4 kills with this bullet). This was the last Afterburner I had too. The rest were used for load development and some sent to a friend for gel testing. We could have definitely switched over to the 195gr TMKs I had with us and dropped a bunch of does, but our freezer is full still from last year and now this year lol. So we decided to count our blessings and call it a season. Plus my youngest told me he thought we should let the other buck we saw get a bit bigger for next year lol. Proud dad moment with him thinking of conservation. I have to say, I’ve been pretty impressed with this bullet for a copper variety. If you need or just want a copper hunting bullet, I’d definitely recommend trying these. I’m confident too that Mark would work with anyone too on any issues they may encounter. The shooter Lung with blood in it Wound channel His last stumble he expired over the spot on the right Entrance Exit Blind on the right, kill at the crosshairs, gutted at the blue dot lol Looking back at the blind from where he was shot
My son’s 500 yard whitetail success content media
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warty110
Nov 14, 2023
In Hunting
Opening day for rifle (whitetail) was a success for us. Took my two boys out to a new farm we haven’t hunted before. After seeing lots of does and activity all morning, we decided to be patient on the first day rather than stacking up the does and putting on the pressure right away lol. It payed off. With about 30 minutes of light left, this old 11pt buck came walking out of the woods headed our direction. My youngest son was hitting the grunt calls hard right before that, and I’m sure it’s what got him to leave the does and come check it out. We estimate he’s at least 9 years old by his tooth wear. Left antler base measures 7” in circumference and the right measures 7.5” . The shot ended up being right at 200 yards after GPS measuring.I originally figured around 185. The impact velocity would have been around 2550fps with my load of the 135gr Apex Outdoors Afterburner I’ve been testing out since last year. I had to wait another year to test it on a buck. Like I said, he was initially headed right for us, but the group of does he had been with were several hundred yards to his right. As I was getting on him for the shot, he turned to look back at the does and when I shot him in the chest, his chest rotated just a bit to the right as well. The bullet entered on the left side of his chest, took out most of the left lung and the front lobe of his right lung, missing his heart and all other organs. The shank of the bullet then took out 2-3 ribs on his right side and then slid down the fat under his hide and ended up coming to a stop down near his belly. This was by far the fattest deer I’ve ever shot and butchered. I’m talking an inch thick fat on his back alone. His heart and all organs minus his lungs and liver were covered in fat as well. So with the angle the bullet took, it was just perfect for it to encounter all that fat under the hide and between his ribs and allow it to stop without exiting. Normally I would anticipate an exit pretty much every time with this type of bullet except maybe a Texas heart shot. Since my youngest son helped call him in, and it was the first deer kill he’s been there for, he wanted to be the one to pose with it. He also thinks it’s going in his room lol. We’ll see about that . So anyway, the Afterburner definitely worked as advertised. It shedded its petals and dumped a ton of energy in doing so, by losing both mass and momentum at a very sudden and deliberately designed moment, and also sent a a ton of force into the brachial plexus of nerves, shutting down his central nervous system. He did a backflip on impact and dropped as a result, and with his lungs taken out but his heart still able to pump, he bled out rapidly and never stood a chance of recovering. So far this bullet has killed three deer for me and has performed very reliable to its design and the deaths have been very quick and clean and amount of wounding has been quite satisfactory and more than I’ve seen with many other copper bullets I’ve used. I’d still like to see how it does at impact velocities 2200fps and below though. That’s yet to come.
135gr .308” Afterburner, whitetail buck, opening weekend in Missouri.  content media
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warty110
Nov 19, 2022
In Hunting
Well, first tests in the books. I picked off two doe Monday night with the 135gr Afterburner. First one was about 70 yards right out of my blind. Impact velocity would have been right at 2838fps. She managed about 10 yards and piled up, and that was mostly from a big jump she took upon impact. The second one was as I was walking back to get my truck. She was across the field but kept stopping to look back at me. At first, I wasn’t going to even try taking a shot at her because she was already on to me. I figured she was going to take off at any moment, but as I kept walking she would only take a few steps and continued looking back at me in curiosity. I got to a crest in the field, so I got down prone to see if I could actually get a shot on her. She was still heavy quartering away, looking back at me over her left shoulder (as I later figured out). I went ahead and took a shot, aiming for what should have been her shoulder. It was close to last light at this point and I was also looking through corn stalks. She dropped on the spot. When I got to her, I discovered I had actually neck-shot her, so she was turned a bit different than I thought, looking through the scope. I’m glad it still worked out well at least. She was still pouring out a lot of blood from the wound when I got to her. In the heat of the moment, I completely forgot to turn on my Tactacam, so I didn’t get the shot footage. I tried to document most everything after the shot though, which is all in the YouTube video. At the beginning of the clip, as I initially started field dressing the first doe, I misspoke about which was the entry and exit hole. Since these bullets expand, shed their petals, and then are left with just the shank to exit, the terminal performance tends to be a bit backwards from my norm with a traditional expanding bullet. It made me miscall the entry hole into the chest cavity as the exit and I called the small hole the entry lol. As I thought more, and recalled how she was presented when I took the shot, I realized I had it backwards. So what occurred was that the shoulder initiated the expansion upon impact and the petals must have still been peeling back as it went through the ribcage, and that’s why that entry hole was so large. It destroyed the onside lung, the top of the heart, and most of the offside lung as well. By the time it got through all that, it was down to just the shank as it exited. So with all that said, it’s pretty safe to say the bullet worked exactly as advertised. Definitely a great result, and if I’m honest I haven’t had any better performance from TMKs, ELDMs, AMAXs, or any other bullet under the same scenario and conditions. It was like strawberry purée in that chest cavity, which is exactly what I like to see. She was dead on her feet. She made a huge jump on impact and that momentum is what carried her to where she piled up. The next big test would be to try a lower impact velocity shot. I’d also like to increase my sample size at typical impact velocities too though, so I’ll be doing whatever I can. Just like I don’t like to take one or two poor results as a conclusive result, I also don’t want to take one or two good results as conclusive either, but first impressions are definitely good. Confidence has definitely been instilled. https://youtu.be/G6zrzWcjsF4
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warty110
Sep 04, 2022
In Bullets
Got my 135gr .308" Afterburners in today. So here starts the testing on them. Follow along. I'll be starting the testing in a 24" 1:10 twist 308win and the intent is to test them close range first on whitetail this November. First thing was first, I wanted to see how consistent these bullets are out of the box. So I weighed all 50 on my AnD FX120i and then measured all 50 with my Sorteez digital indicator. The results are pictured below, in the notebook. The extreme spread for weight was .9gr with the average coming in at 134.85gr. The extreme spread for base to ogive was .0065" but the majority were within .0025" I did some initial comparing in QuickLoad to determine which powder combo would likely be best. My go-to powders in 308 (albeit with heavier/longer bullets), being Varget and RL-15.5 look to be too slow burning, and thus fill the case up way too fast. Both are showing compressed already at starting loads, and way compressed at max loads. Not a big surprise, but nice to know ahead of time. IMR 8208 XBR looks the the most promising temp stable option, with a potential node possibly being around 2922fps. This of course will change once I start testing it, but it gives me an idea of what to maybe expect. I'm still hopeful I can get 3000fps. I've decided to use small rifle primer Peterson brass, as I really like the consistency I get from them, as well as I have more SRPs on hand lol. COAL looks to be around 2.810" based on as far as I can seat them out without the bore rider and crimp groove negatively interfering and potentially producing issues with runout. The next step is to load up a few rounds each at 3 different charge weights so I can go shoot them and record velocities. I'll then use that to calibrate QuickLoad to my actual results. That'll allow me to get much more accurate node estimates from it. Then I'll be able to load up some more to confirm where the node actually is. If that goes well, I may or may not need to do a seating depth node test, then I should be set for deer season with bullets to spare. The ballistic chart below shows the potential at my altitude for this bullet with a MV of 2922fps. For this initial test, it’s unlikely I’ll take a shot further than 300 yards.
Testing the 135gr Afterburner content media
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