bigcountry

You know what I have found out after posting on alot of forums? There is alot of urban legends that go around. In stead of people actually going out and testing an opinion before flapping, they believe John Barshness or the other numerous " experts" . I take magizine articles for entertainment. But seein is believin. Do your own test. I did. I was surprised by some results. Put a target 3 feet inside horrible brush. Not trees, but brush, weeds, thorns, etc. Used a slug 1oz, 44 mag 240gr, 270 130gr, muzzleloader 250gr and 300RUM 220gr bullets. The slug gun got 6" groups and missed two times out of 10. I was standing 25 yards from the brush and the target was inside but I could make the target somewhat. The 270 was very random and missed the target completely most of the time. The 300RUM hit the target but also missed a bunch. Muzzleloader surprised me by missing half the time. 44mag surprised me by hitting all 10 times (barely). So what did all that shootin tell me? Yea, its very possible to hit something thru brush. Should you make a practice of it? No, there is too many deer out there to have to shoot the first one you see. Am I guilty of it? You bet ya. Will I do it again? Really depends on the circumstances, the deer, and the amount of brush. I wouldn' t with the amount I used during the test.

eldeguello

Brush and small limbs will deflect bullets. The degree to which such deflection causes misses depends upon how far the bullet has to travel after hitting the brush before it gets to the tareget. The greater this distance, the larger the degree of the miss. Naturally, the lighter the resistance presented by the stuff the bullet hits, the less the amount of deflection. But twigs as small as 1/4" to 1/2" inch in diameter are plenty to cause a bullet to change direction, or even start to expand!

Nomercy

Big country, taking your advice, I did my own tests, first one similar to yours, and then I did it right. Have you ever really thought about what you did in your test? You put the target close to the brush that was to deflect it, the thing about deflection is that it works just like a mis-zeroed scope, at a foot, you' d never know the difference, even if your glass was off by 100MOA, they' d all be so close you' d never tell, but at a 100yrds, and you impact over 8ft off, you' ve got to know somethings wrong. I used:

230gr jacketed softies .44mag,

3/4oz 12ga slugs,

400 and 350gr flat soft points and 405 and 500gr all lead round nosed bullets in .45-70,

150gr Win. bali. silvertips, 180win silvertips, 150gr rem core locts, & 150 A-frames in .30-06,

123gr hollo points, 139gr core locts and FMJ 7.62x39mm,

and 55gr speer softies and 52gr match hollows in .22-250
since I had a bunch of " potential brass" and old handloads lying around.

Like I said, I did a test like yours, and got similar results, the big bullets shined, but the .22-250 wasn' t at all marginal, then I did it right, placing my 16" x16" (<--far more leniant than a deer' s vitals!) target at 50, 75, and 100yrds away in typical KS brush (which is rather light in diameter, yet very viney/twiggy/thorny) using either iron sights or 2.5x -4x glasses typical of brushguns, at 100yrds, one of the .22-250' s got through, and that was it. at 50yrds, I got much better results, with the .22-250 and the .30-06 150gr Bali silvers performing the best (.22-250 BY FAR!!). The old stand by .45-70' s and .44mags performed about 50% as well as the .30-06 impacting between 30-45% of the time, and the slug gun impacted on two out of 20 attempts. The experts had it right by my experience, and I never doubted them for a second.

A one tenth degree deflection (incredibly small deflection as compared to what would actually happen) at a foot isn' t much, at 300ft, it' s more than enough to shake things up.