Gary Reeder
on larger game a good jacketed soft point is a good one too.
Thursday, April 07, 2022, 12:53

I have used the old Hornady 44 caliber 265 grain JSP on bison and other like size animals here in the states and in Africa and Australia.

I have found that JHP bullets on large game will often fragment and lose their momentum when hitting large bones, whereas a soft point's nose will often flatten out but still continue to do considerable internal damage.

Before my 2018 Cape Buffalo hunt I talked at length with my PH John Abraham about solids or soft points. I asked him about the old stories about solids turning into bent bullets and not going deep enough to put the animal down properly. He laughed and said that does happen but usually with hunters that don't know where to place a bullet. He said on an elephant a shot on the point of the shoulder bone will cause the bullet to veer off and actually bend a solid bullet. He said only a PH that is scared or doesn't know what he is doing will have that happen. Putting the bullet in the right spot will do much more damage and the bullet will normally stay together and go much deeper and at a straight line.

I was surprised when my African PH John Abraham told me to load the Hornady DGX, Dangerous Game Expanding, rather than the DGS, Dangerous Game Solid, for my first Cape Buffalo. But he was right as the first bullet in my 450 GNR at about 45 yards put the buffalo on his knees and the second one finished it. The soft nose flattened a bit and continued doing damage to the buffalo.


The Buffalo was quartering toward me and the 500 grain bullet hit him at an angle from the front shoulder back toward the off side hip. The bullet hole can be seen as a tapered hole going in at an angle. It broke the shoulder joint and did a lot of internal damage.

On my recent Cape Buffalo hunt my guns and gear were stolen in Qatar so I borrowed a Freedom Arms revolver from Michael Mendes that was loaded with 300 grain soft points at a hot 45 Long Colt load. The buff was hit at around 25 yards and the first soft point broke the front shoulder, the second shot hit just above that spot and blew up both lungs. The 2 shots were all that was needed. The buff didn't go 5 feet after the second shot.


Here is one of the recovered bullets. The soft nose was gone but the bullet was still together.

On my lion hunt in South Africa this past fall I used some 350 grain jacketed soft point bullets in my 510 GNR revolver and they did a great job on a 500 lb lion. Here are 3 of my 4 510 GNR shots.

A couple of years ago my wife Collen hit a bear on the way home from work. She was within about 2 miles from the house when she hit the bear in her truck. She called me at home and told me the bear was walking around the side of the road, hurt but not hurt bad. I got there in about 5 minutes and all I had on me was my Star PD 45 ACP with jacketed hollow points. I walked up to maybe 5 feet from the bear and hit him on point of shoulder with the 45 JHP. No sign of a hit at all. I hit him twice more just behind the shoulder and the bear flinched but didn't show any other sign of the hit. Colleen had called the hiway patrol when she called me and he had arrived about the time I was shooting the bear. The young hiway patrol officer was excited and ran back to his vehicle and got his AR-15. He came up to me and asked me if I wanted him to shoot the bear. I told him sure, I wasn't doing the bear any damage. The young officer shot the bear in the side of the head and ended it. While we were talking I cut the bear's hide open and all 3 of my JHP bullets were maybe 2 inches into the bear. None had reached any vitals and all had opened up on the hide and fat just under the hide. In that instance jacketed hollow points had failed miserably.

After that I pulled all hollow points out of my carry guns and replaced them with FMJs. I will never use a hollow point on man nor beast again.

Needless to say I am sold on either silhouette type bullets or jacketed soft point bullets, for me, they work. You can keep your hollow points.