Confessions of a
Lead & Copper Shooter
It Ain’t Alchemy!
While everyone considers silver and gold precious metals, I have other ideas. For me, good old lead, or Pb #82 as it’s known on the periodic table, is my precious metal of choice. Of course, I like my Pb alloyed with some antimony, (Sb #51), some tin, (Sn #50) and a smidge of arsenic (As #33), for heat treating capabilities. Without arsenic, heat treating is impossible for hardening lead alloys for reasons above my cranial intellect.
As a committed lead head, I’ve cast thousands of pounds of lead alloy into beautifully shaped bullets born from a varied collection of bullet molds. While never considering myself liberal — I perish the very thought — I guess casting bullets is a left-leaning activity. Huh? For bullet casters recycle lead alloys into usefully shaped projectiles for shooting in our guns.
I guess that’s paradoxical. I never thought of it that way until just now but find it funny.
Magic Mumbo Jumbo
Alchemy is a spiritual belief system that is a combination of experimentation and so-called magic. Alchemists first attempted turning lead into gold during medieval times. I’ve always considered bullet casting the same way. Only I called it more art than science, especially when I didn’t know the answer to something someone asked me. It usually quells further questioning.
For the past 40 years I’ve sweated over a propane turkey fryer, melting different lead alloys consisting of roofing material, wheel-weights, lead BBs from carnival machine gun games, radioactive medicine containers, you name it and I melted it, thinking I was being self-sufficient. But I was recycling, making “green” bullets out of discarded lead alloy. Ironic, eh?
And since lead is a naturally-occurring element, shooting these recycled “green” bullets returns the lead back to Mother Earth, in the form of a berm. So, this makes shooting cast slugs environmentally sound. Who knew?
Tank used the 180-grain TCC slug to kill a
Pennsylvania whitetail buck.
Shotguns, Sixguns & Semi-Autos
For big bore sixguns I still think cast bullets are the best for most applications. They kill things way out of proportion to what they should do. I’ve killed deer, elk, and hogs, as well as a bunch of rodents with cast bullets shot from sixguns.
I even shoot cast bullets in my poly-framed striker-fired semi-autos, with excellent results mind you, upping their coolness factor a few notches. As a cop in my former life, I’d have to shoot a lot of deer struck by motor vehicles. While floundering in the roadway, a shotgun was my preferred gun, especially when using a lead slug of my own making.
They were more effective than the issued 00 buckshot. I simply made a “hot” tactical swap with my handloaded slug. I only did this during the wee hours on the midnight shift, when there was no traffic, or witnesses around.
When a shotgun wasn’t handy, I always had a few hard-cast rounds in my cruiser for deer duty. They penetrated better for head shots, making instantaneous kills. I learned our issued hollowpoint ammo tended to bounce or skip off the skull.
Four Barnes TSX 250-grain 9.3mm recovered bullets next to a .510"
Hammer “Punch” bullet weighing 570 grains that killed Tank’s
Cape Buffalo with one shot. Copper Killers? You bet!
Copper Killers
I never used copper bullets until a couple of years ago. Barnes bullets has been making Copper (Cu #29) bullets since 1985. I’ll admit prejudice to copper bullets. I thought of them as “green” beatnik bullets for tree huggers who lived out west. Who wants to shoot copper bullets when good old lead was around? But then I noticed two guys who I deeply respect and killed more game than anyone I know. Both Tim Sundles of Buffalo Bore and Andy Larsson of Skinner Sights are stout believers of copper bullets.
Two years ago, I was invited to Tim Sundles African Game Reserve in South Africa. The bullets I used were copper, Barnes TSX .375 bullets weighing 270 grains and Lehigh Defense 380 grain mono metal solids loaded in .45-70. I killed a Cape Buffalo, Sable and Blue Wildebeest with the .45-70 loads and loads of game with my Ruger African rifle chambered in .375 Ruger. It was my indoctrination into the world of copper bullets and I was impressed by the performance of these copper killers. Weight retention was almost always 100% with very fast killing power whenever we ever recovered one.
Tank’s a firm believer in casting his own lead bullets but
appreciates the performance of modern copper bullets too!
Round II
I just recently returned from the same South African ranch and used a copper Hammer Punch bullet in a CZ 550 African rifle chambered in .500 Jefferies. A single shot from 70 yards decked the large 46″ bull with the 570-grain bullet. The slug penetrated the bull’s scapula and broke through the massive 6″ spine. The hollow-pointed nose broke off in four pieces in textbook fashion as the shank kept penetrating to the offside, causing the skin to bulge.
I also used a CZ 550 9.3X62 loaded with Barnes 250-grain TSX copper bullets. The bullets were very accurate. I made two shots over 300+ lasered yards on a red hartebeest and springbok, as well as several warthogs, waterbuck, impala and other culling duties. Only four bullets were recovered as the copper slugs penetrate so well.
Lehigh Defense, now owned by Wilson Combat, makes
dandy copper slugs and loaded ammunition.
Lehigh Defense
This past deer season I was using a Wilson Combat NULA rifle chambered in .358 Winchester. I was shooting some Lehigh Defense (also owned by Wilson Combat) ammo. The bullet was their copper 180-grain TCC “tipped controlled chaos” bullet. I took a nice 10-pointer at around 75 yards and the deer just crumbled after two steps when shoulder shot. I was impressed with the copper bullet, yet again.
Lesson Learned
Using copper bullets taught me they weren’t a west coast, left-winged, conspiracy driven “tree-hugger” program. These things work! They’re tough, accurate and perform flawlessly with their expansion. You can keep your silver and gold, as for me, I’m sticking with copper and lead for my precious metals for field performance.
