Federal Fusion Ammunition for South Africa

I am excited to be heading to the eastern cape for a 10 day hunt with my son in April of 2011. We have kudu, gemsbok,impala,springbuck, blue wildebeest, warthog and steenbok (bushbuck as well time permitting) on our list.

My question is has anyone shot much of the Federal Fusion ammo? I have shot a dozen or so whitetails with it and love the bullet. I am concerned about being enough bullet for the larger animals on my list. I will be shooting the ever boring 30-06.

Thanks for your advice and I enjoy this website immensely.

I went to Namibia in May 2008 and hunted the same animals, plus a Hartman's Zebra. Shot all of them with Winchester XP3 Elite in 150 gr. .270. Your 30-06 should be fine, but you really want a good bullet for the tough wildebeest.

Consider it to perform very similarly to the other bonded bullets on the market, most notably the Nosler Accubond.

Accu-bonds are a tougher bullet, but in the 30-06 they should do just fine.

I sugesst that you use premium bullets why take a risk?

Federal has a good reputation, and the Fusion line is no different. They will be fine, just remember shot placement is different that the NA game. Everything I harvested was taken with Federal silver box ammo (30-06, using 180gr. hydra shok) Blue Wildebeest, Impala, Blesbok and Warthog. Again put that bullet where it needs to be, and then give us a hunting report.

Used Federal Fusion on my last trip. The bullet performed very well, with a cape eland bull as the largest game. My only issue was that, the stated bullet velocity and trajectory didnt match up in real. I guess Federal has loaded them a bit on "the sloppy side".

Originally Posted by Wolverine67

Used Federal Fusion on my last trip. The bullet performed very well, with a cape eland bull as the largest game. My only issue was that, the stated bullet velocity and trajectory didnt match up in real. I guess Federal has loaded them a bit on "the sloppy side".

I also used Federal Fusion in 30-06 when I hunted in SA last year and my experience was different from yours.
They killed the animals, but I was not happy with the ammo anyway.
On lighter game like Impala and Springbok, it killed them very quickly(drt) and made large exit wounds.
On Black Wildebeest, Kudu and Gemsbok, the exit wounds were very small. They looked like entrance wounds from a .375.
Sadly I didn't check the internal damages on the BW and the Gemsbok.
The Kudu I hit it a bit more forward than I wanted on a very slightly quartering to shot, breaking the exit shoulder.
The bullet hit both lungs but did very little damage to them. It almost looked like I had used a FMJ round nose.
The Kudu only ran about 60 meters before it bedded but was still very much alive when I carefully moved around some bushes and put a second shot in its neck.

They told me that both shoulders had much damaged and blooded meat. The entrance one from the bullet and the exit one from the broken bone.

I am not sure how the Fusion behaved, specially because I didn't butchered the meat and saw what the bullets had done.

But I have decided not to use it anymore.
I rather use other bullets that I am 100% confident about how they behave, like bullets from Barnes and Swift.