The author explored the other end of the accuracy and terminal performance envelope of the Federal Fusion bullet with this 400-plus-yard shot on another pronghorn buck near Vaughn, NM. This buck dropped in its tracks as well, it’s heart destroyed by the 150-grain Fusion bullet launched from a .270 WSM-caliber Kimber 8400 rifle.
From the time Major Eduard Rubin, Director of Munitions at the Swiss lab at Thun, first stuffed a piece of lead wire into some copper tubing in 1883 and shot it, ballisticians have been trying to make jacketed bullets perform uniformly. It is certainly no stretch of imagination to acknowledge that a traditional copper-jacketed, lead-core bullet impacting a target at 3,000 feet per second is going to behave differently than the same bullet smacking an identical target at half that velocity.
For decades cup-and-core bullets were held together by the friction of dissimilar metals pressed together. Lead, being somewhat softer than the copper or cupro-nickel jacket, would “wipe” a bit as it was swaged into the cup of the jacket; thus creating miniature voids within the core. These voids create a couple of problems. First, they are completely random, so accuracy is adversely affected because the center of gravity is inconsistent. Too, these voids are weak points in terms of maintaining the friction that holds the core and jacket together at impact.
The Name is Bond
Bonded bullets—quite the rage now—are not that new. In the 1970s and ’80s Bitterroot Bullets led the way by actually soldering cores and jackets together. Those bullets received a lot of good press, but as a poor boy looking at bullets priced at more than a buck apiece I could not afford to buy enough of them to research finding the best load for my .30-06 and then another supply to load for hunting. Since then, a number of manufacturers have developed core-bonding technology, and its acceptance by the shooting and hunting community has been nothing short of phenomenal. But the possibility exists, albeit a much smaller one than with traditional cup-and-cores, for microscopic voids to occur as the core is bonded to the jacket. Suppose one could develop a method of melding the core and jacket into a projectile with absolutely zero voids and the bond occurs at the molecular level—no third-party bonding agent.
That’s exactly what Federal has done with its new Fusion bullet. The jacket is actually plated to the core much like chrome is plated to the bumper of an automobile. This project, some four years in the making, according to Federal president Mark DeYoung, has brought to the market a bullet that performs uniformly well over a wide range of velocities, making it equally adept at holding together as it slams into a buck at quail-covey-rising range as well as mushrooming and delivering the energy to yonder buck on the far side of a quarter mile. Sound like barnyard residue? Well, let me tell you…
New Mexico
On the weekend of September 17-18, several writers hunted pronghorn near (very near in some cases) Vaughn, NM, using this new bullet in several calibers. Pronghorn are not large critters, and the ones who call this part of the country home are a bit more diminutive—I’d estimate by 10 to 15 pounds—than their northern cousins. They make up for that loss of body mass by substituting horn mass, especially after a wet year like last year. Nonetheless, they aren’t all that tough and don’t require a tough bullet to put them down cleanly. What they do need to hit the dirt cleanly is a bullet that mushrooms consistently put in the proper place.
We all scored on speedgoats, using calibers from .243 Winchester up to the .270 WSM, and although a couple of guys had shot placement issues, the Fusion bullet gave a fine—perhaps even stunningly good—performance. Imagine trying to design a bullet that holds together well enough at point-blank ranges where the velocity is running about three grand and still deliver the goods equally well when it’s way out there after it has shed more than a third of its velocity. That’s a tough assignment.
Another tough assignment is to be a bright young lady on her first hunt with a bunch of grizzled veterans, but InSights assistant editor Angela Sullins was up to the task. She had precious little exposure to guns prior to signing on with InSights and zero hunting experience. But she studied and shot, and after completing a hunter safety course, joined with me for her first hunt.
 NRA InSights assistant editor Angela Sullins got her feet wet in big-game hunting September 17 when she took this pronghorn buck at a range of 80 yards after a long and patient stalk. The 140-grain Federal Fusion bullet performed flawlessly, literally turning the buck on its back instantly. |
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Angela exhibited the patience and poise of a veteran hunter, rejecting iffy opportunities to fill her tag. She wasn’t about to take a shot beyond her comfort zone, and early Saturday afternoon her patience paid off when a curious pronghorn buck presented her with an 80-yard, broadside shot. When her Kimber 8400 in
7 mm/08 barked, the 140-grain Fusion bullet thumped the buck so hard it literally flipped over onto its back and didn’t move. Of course, the bullet passed through and was unrecoverable, but the damage done in the chest cavity of the pronghorn and its reaction left no doubt as to what happened.
About three hours later it was my turn, and what occurred then is a clear indication of the effectiveness of this bullet over a wide range. I had spotted a buck running with four does, and this buck was certainly the largest we had seen all day. Now pronghorn bucks are like any other bucks during the rut—they tend to lose a lot of their wariness. OK, truth is, they get as dumb as a box of rocks when they focus all of their attention to the girls. But those girl pronghorns not only maintain their wariness, they get a bit flighty as well, as they work out their boy-and-girl issues. This makes for some interesting stalks.
So I spent a fair amount of time late Saturday afternoon playing chess with this small pod of pronghorn. Twice I thought I was in position for a shot, and twice they gave me the slip. But the third time I saw them they were walking slowly out from behind one of the knolls—actually just a slightly higher piece of desert—toward a larger group of ’goats. I put the crosshair of my Kimber .270 WSM even with the top hair and just behind its ears, and squeezed. The 150-grain Fusion bullet tore through the pronghorn’s heart, destroying it, and the buck dropped where it stood. I had hoped to recover a bullet from such a long-range shot, but alas, it passed through as well. In fact, no one in our group recovered a bullet.
So how far was that shot? I had left my rangefinder at the second place I had seen the pronghorns and forgot to pick it up. The rifle was sighted in to be 2 1/2 inches high at 100 yards; a pronghorn’s chest is approximately 16 inches from backbone to brisket; and its neck added another 10 to 12 inches of elevation. I’m guesstimating it to be well in excess of 400 yards, but until I receive some more test ammo to run through the chronograph, I won’t be able to calculate the whole thing out.
Nonetheless, that’s pretty impressive bullet performance at both short and long range. More test ammo is on its way, and as soon as I shoot it, you’ll see the results here, but my initial impression of Fusion ammo and this cutting-edge-technology bullet is extremely positive.