gary reeder
I have to agree with Amede. Several years back i was
Sunday, November 03, 2019, 19:55

on a bear hunt in Alaska with good friend and guide George Faerber. At the time everyone was ga ga over the LBT bullets and a couple of gun writers constantly raved about them. That being the case I had my 510 GNR loaded up balls to the wall with heavy 445 grain .510 LBT bullets, the hard cast gas check bullets. I had heard that I might get a 75 to 100 yard shot at a Grizzly so I put a scope on my 510 Hunter. On the 3rd or 4th day sitting in a ground blind by myself I had a big bear come up to dance with me. From kissing distance I hit him with the heavy .510 caliber bullet. He screamed, called me several dirty names and rolled around at my feet. I hit him again and again at kissing distance. At that he had all the kissing he could stand from me and ran off, which meant I had to tip toe into the brush after him (that's the law).

To make a long story a bit shorter George got there a few minutes later. He had been dropping off another of our hunters in a ground blind a couple of hundred yards down stream. By the time he got there the bear was dead. George skinned the bear out and we went back to camp.
When I was pulling my 510 out of the crossdraw holster and laying it on the table in our cabin I noticed the entire gun was covered with blood and the front of the scope plus each front hole in the cylinder was clogged up with blood. In the excitement of the shooting of the bear I hadn't used the scope as he was way too close for that, and didn't even look at my gun until we got back to camp.

The moral of this story is those hard cast LBT bullets had punched a hole all the way thru the bear from close range and he still ran off. There were 4 50 caliber holes in him and he ran off. Each bullet has punched a 50 caliber hole in and out. It looked like one had skimmed off the shoulder of the bear and came out between the ribs on the other side. The second shot hit somewhere in the frontal shoulder area and came out just in front of his offside hip. The bear was close enough that the blood spray from the two hits had covered the gun completely.

A couple of days later a friend who was hunting with me hit a big bear with his 510 Hunter and the same bullet. I was on the video camera filming it. The bear was hit behind the shoulder. The bullet went all the way thru him and in slow motion we saw the bullet hit the water of the creek behind him. We tracked the bear for several hours and never found him. Talking to George later he said he had had several situations just like that where the hard cast bullets went in and out with minor internal damage. After that he banned the hard cast gas check bullets in his camp for bear.
So the gist of this is I agree with Amede on the hard cast lead bullets. I haven't used them since.