When have you ever been let down by the performance of your rifle on game?

I’m in the same boat...

Been fortunate enough to never experience a rifle, scope, or bullet failure on a hunt...

But I’ve got a benelli 12 gauge in the safe that gives me fits... failures to feed on several occasions...

It will do it when it’s bone dry, soaking in oil, hot, cold, shooting 2 3/4” light loads, 3 1/2” mags, etc.. I’ve tried several times to identify the problem and can’t seem to figure it out..

I can take it to the range and shoot 3 boxes through it and it will perform flawlessly...

Take it to the duck blind though and it’s almost guaranteed to jam up at least once during the hunt.. if not twice...

After a couple of years of fighting this... I finally figured out (via the interwebz... and talking with several other Super Vinci owners).. that its a freaking design flaw in the gun, and is a very common problem with the Benelli Super Vinci..

Apparently the tolerances are tight in/around the area where the lifter release and safety are located (front of the trigger guard).. and if so much as a single grain of anything gets down in there... youre screwed.. you have to break the gun down and get the funk out.. or you end up with feed failures and/or a stuck safety..

Still love the shotgun.. it points naturally, swings fast, is reasonably lightweight, and recoils softly..

when its working well, its a dream of a duck gun..

But have learned to be prepared to take the gun down, and have a small can of compressed air, some wood handled q-tips, and a rag with me in my duck hunting bag.. or risk not having a great hunt..
 
Just curious when the PMP fails is it a failure to expand or penetrate?
Over expansion and failure to penetrate and hold together have been the most common issues.
I have completely stopped using PMP ammo in favour of peregrine and swift aframes.
I had a 300wm fail to exit on a head shot puku...
that was the last straw.
 
Over expansion and failure to penetrate and hold together have been the most common issues.
I have completely stopped using PMP ammo in favour of peregrine and swift aframes.
I had a 300wm fail to exit on a head shot puku...
that was the last straw.
Is PMP made by Prvi Partisan?
 
No. Prvi partizan iz PPU. it means prvi partizan Uzice.
PMP is south african ammo.
 
Thankfully, I have never had a rifle let me down in the field.
 
- Nosler 35Whelen - broke ejector pin (but at the range)
- Springfield 30-06 - Timney trigger adjusting screws came loose on the sear jamming the gun while trying to get a second shot into a very pissed off and wounded bear.
- .303 British jungle carbine - miss-loaded clip jammed shooting grizzlies.
- Early nylon tipped .303 on a moose - complete pass through of the rib cage, no expansion. Moose ran 100 yards before going down.
 
I had a 30-30 lever action break an ejector on me while hunting bushpig at night over bait.
Made a shot on the one and then struggled to get the case out with a double feed.
It ran into some bush tunnels and I didn't want to follow it with a one shot rifle. Came back the next morning and it was lying about 5m from where I had made the call.

I have had bullet failure but still got the animal, a frontal shot on an Impala with PMP brown box 150gr 30-06.
The bullet vaporized and I didn't find anything bigger than 2mm in the carcass. It dropped as if shot by lightning though.

PMP Pro-Amm blue box has performed stellar for me and I cannot think of a bad thing to say about it. (180gr 30-06)
Avoid the brown box stuff.
 
Had a mystery bullet just disappear --no idea where it could have gone at point-blanc range...also had a gemsbok hit with 220 gr Nosler partition in 30-06 run off and on for two days until the trackers gave up. Every once and a while it would lay down and there was a big spray of blood when it got up.
 
I’ve let my rifles down. I’m not sure I can recall them ever letting me down. Now the old Hornady DGX ammo, that’s another story. (Sorry couldn’t help myself)
 
I had to use one of the ranch's rifles on my red stag hunt in Argentina. It turned out that the scope was all kinds of jacked up (as in, unbeknownst to me, it shifted point of impact 12 inches at 100 yards over the first few days of the hunt. There weren't even clicks- the dials just turned!). That was rather disappointing.

Same rifle, using whatever ammo they had killed my stag but to this day I have no idea how. Never found an entrance wound, no blood, nothing. Not sure if disappointed or amazed.
 
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haha, seems like they do! When they get a good mud crust built up on their sides and there's a bunch of rocks in there.
Agree about the hogs. I've skinned a lot of big old boars with plates about 1.5 inches thick. My knife grits through the tough places because of all the calcium. In pathology we call it 'dystrophic calcification.' I saw a video of a fellow, using a bow, hit a big boar in the shoulder. It was almost night and you can see a perfect fireworks of sparks when the broadhead strikes it.

In terms of bullet failures that lose game during the hunt: Well, if the animal is never recovered and autopsied, we can't know if the bullet failed or not. No doubt some animals run away because the bullet blew up superficially. One time I was in Zululand with a self-proclaimed great reloader. He'd searched the world for this perfect bullet. I don't know the name but it was in 270 caliber, had an exposed lead tip. Embedded in this exposed lead was a small pyramid of brass. The expert told me that the pyramid was pushed back through the lead core producing rapid, lethal expansion. Before I left, this guy had wounded animals running all over the countryside but, one day, I saw a skinned impala hanging from a tree. The expert finally bagged something. I admired the huge exit wound that had removed an entire shoulder. Then I looked for the entrance wound--nothing. The huge 'exit' wound was actually an entrance wound. This is why he wounded so much game.

Virtually any bullet can fail given the right circumstances. In Africa, I usually shoot Nosler partitions with excellent results. One time, though, I recovered one that lost its core. The Barnes triple shock is also a good bullet, but one time my son knocked a 12 pt buck down with the TSX only to have it jump up and run away. We found it three months later, a mile away. It's upper humerus--shoulder--was fractured. The thing was mummified, but I boiled out his head, anyway. The bullet fell out of the head. The clover-leafed, 'point' end was canted about 45 degrees. I think this is what happened. The bullet broke the shoulder but was deflected out of shape. Rather than shoot right through the chest, it ran under the flesh of the chest and neck to terminate somewhere in the head.

Probably the single best bullet I've ever used [no longer sold], was the Barnes monolithic solid. It was made of solid alloy. I used it extensively in the 220 Swift. On hogs and deer, it was the crack of doom. Yes, I missed a couple but that was just me. If I hit it in the head, neck or chest, it was gone. There's something to say about hitting an animal with a bullet--even a very small bullet--at 4,000 fps.
 
Agree about the hogs. I've skinned a lot of big old boars with plates about 1.5 inches thick. My knife grits through the tough places because of all the calcium. In pathology we call it 'dystrophic calcification.' I saw a video of a fellow, using a bow, hit a big boar in the shoulder. It was almost night and you can see a perfect fireworks of sparks when the broadhead strikes it.

In terms of bullet failures that lose game during the hunt: Well, if the animal is never recovered and autopsied, we can't know if the bullet failed or not. No doubt some animals run away because the bullet blew up superficially. One time I was in Zululand with a self-proclaimed great reloader. He'd searched the world for this perfect bullet. I don't know the name but it was in 270 caliber, had an exposed lead tip. Embedded in this exposed lead was a small pyramid of brass. The expert told me that the pyramid was pushed back through the lead core producing rapid, lethal expansion. Before I left, this guy had wounded animals running all over the countryside but, one day, I saw a skinned impala hanging from a tree. The expert finally bagged something. I admired the huge exit wound that had removed an entire shoulder. Then I looked for the entrance wound--nothing. The huge 'exit' wound was actually an entrance wound. This is why he wounded so much game.

Virtually any bullet can fail given the right circumstances. In Africa, I usually shoot Nosler partitions with excellent results. One time, though, I recovered one that lost its core. The Barnes triple shock is also a good bullet, but one time my son knocked a 12 pt buck down with the TSX only to have it jump up and run away. We found it three months later, a mile away. It's upper humerus--shoulder--was fractured. The thing was mummified, but I boiled out his head, anyway. The bullet fell out of the head. The clover-leafed, 'point' end was canted about 45 degrees. I think this is what happened. The bullet broke the shoulder but was deflected out of shape. Rather than shoot right through the chest, it ran under the flesh of the chest and neck to terminate somewhere in the head.

Probably the single best bullet I've ever used [no longer sold], was the Barnes monolithic solid. It was made of solid alloy. I used it extensively in the 220 Swift. On hogs and deer, it was the crack of doom. Yes, I missed a couple but that was just me. If I hit it in the head, neck or chest, it was gone. There's something to say about hitting an animal with a bullet--even a very small bullet--at 4,000 fps.

Just got to use enough gun on the hogs .... 500 Jeffery, 570g TSX at 2300 fps. Shot at 8 feet between the eyes.

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I have shot quote a few wild boar and a few black bear with 180 grain 30.06 bullets. I have found the "cheap" stuff doesn't work. I mean specifically Remington core lokt and federal soft points. They pretty much blew up on the first bone they hit which worked fine on whitetail but poor on anything heavier. As soon as I started using trophy bonded tips or Barnes triple shocks my 30.06 was transformed into a death ray capable of shooting through nearly anything. The core lokts and other soft points were good for head shots and not much else. In my experience the soft points separated from the jacket almost immediately after entering the hide. Great idea for a thread!
 
Never really had a rifle fail but a tasco scope I had shit the bed after 50 shots out of a 30.06. Seen a couple Remington 760s blow up in people's faces and I've seen Remington give guys vouchers to go get new rifles from cabelas. In one case I know hand loads were involved but don't know if that was the culprit.
 
The previous post about the magic super expanding 270 bullet reminds of a regular Sierra bullet out of an '06 and a regular Hornady bullet out of 270... a long time ago- like 1968 and 1970 respectively. Last Sierra or Hornady I ever shot at game. At that time the "improved version" of Partition was just becoming THE premium bullet of choice. So for years that is all I used without a hiccup- very predictable and very effective. I've since expanded my experience and tested and tried many of the more recent bullet developments. Many have been excellent like the Swift A-Frame, appropriately known as a "Partition on steroids", the banded monolithics by Barnes and the Trophy Bonded Bearclaw to name a few.

However, bullet design is not a haphazard science. It requires serious thought and serious testing beyond an engineer's blueprint and a beancounter's idea. Some of the thin jacketed bonded cup and cores out there have been marketed around the "bonding" concept while all the other dynamics of terminal performance that need consideration have been forgotten. I really don't think many of the questionable performers in that group were/or have ever been seriously tested for toughness with real-world test procedures or media. Draw it up, estimate and minimize cost of production, put them together, test fire them for pressure and accuracy and market the "bonding" as the primary attribute needed for a good tough hunting bullet. Well, there is more to it than that! I never lost a game animal to one of these thin jacketed bonded cup and cores but after seeing how frangible they really are, I will not use them again. My criteria now is that any bullet I'm going to shoot a big game animal with must pass my test for toughness in addition to some basic accuracy and consistency minimums.

Replying directly to the OP- as to being let down by the performance of my rifle on game?? Not really. I've used all manner of firearms to hunt and take game. Muzzleloading rifles and shotguns, lever guns like Win 94s and Win 86s and 71s, original Civil War era muzzleloading rifle muskets and various modern bolt rifles from 22 cal up to 45 cal. None have let me down if used within their limitations along with the use of the correct bullet. Start jacking around outside those parameters and that's where problems and poor performance begin to show.

In my experience the only firearm that let me down really didn't break as much as it just gave up prematurely- a Browning BPS 12 ga. I did use it a lot for work and play. I maintained it correctly and religiously like I do all my firearms, but it wore out well before it should have. I own and shoot many firearms that are in excess of 160 years old and they are not even close to being worn out and have undoubtedly a tad more experience than a modern pump shotgun that didn't make it to 10 years old :)
 

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Impact shots from the last hunt

Early morning Impala hunt, previous link was wrong video

Headshot on jackal this morning

Mature Eland Bull taken in Tanzania, at 100 yards, with 375 H&H, 300gr, Federal Premium Expanding bullet.

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