Ballistic Media?

[Red Rabbit]

Trying to think of ideas for relatively inexpensive media to test bullet performance.

50/50 paraffin/vaseline, wet newspaper, wet acoustic ceiling tiles, gallon water jugs, 1/4" fiberboard to simulate shoulder bone, flour/salt modeling clay.

A search on another forum had a post suggesting "terra sorb" which forms a gel for water retention in soil.

Any other ideas of an inexpensive material that would be consistent and reasonably simulate muscle/ribs/shoulder blade?

[SO I HUNT]

Try sand filled gallon jugs, wet the sand. For front shoulder bone is what I use.

[10Turkeys]

I know when Berger was starting to make hunting bullets, they were testing them on dead cows. I don't know if you live by any dairies or not but if so, you might give them a call. Depending on how serious you want to test your bullets.

[Red Rabbit]

54 minutes ago, SO I HUNT said:

Try sand filled gallon jugs, wet the sand. For front shoulder bone is what I use.

sounds rather unforgiving.  how much penetration have you gotten into the wet sand?

[SO I HUNT]

Through the first and usually half of the other with a 6.5 prc 140 gr. Accubonds 200 yards, 143 horndy eldx. I usually tape the bottles together.

[recurveman]

I have been very fond of using coyotes for this exact purpose.   

Not sure you will get the desired results with using a ballistic media.   If I thought it would react the same in a critter I would do it but honestly I don't think most of the medias are going to work well for testing bullet performance.   Going through hide, meat, maybe hone and then a softer internal organ is hard to duplicate with a ballistic media.   

I have found that bullets that work well on coyotes also do very well on deer.   If the bullet didn't work good on a coyote the bullet also didn't do well on deer.   Plus it is an excuse to go tip over a critter during the off season.   

[PRDATR]

https://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0701/0701267.pdf

[rcdinaz]

By a cheap rectangle bucket and make ballistic gel.  The recipe is easily found with Google, looks like Gelatin and water.  Since it may melt wrap in small trash bags or fill jugs with it.  I believe you can reuse it so you could probably shoot it in the bags grab what is left when you are done and reset it.

I like the idea of the fiberboard, would be cool if you could place it in front and then see what makes it through. Seems this would be a good way to see which bullets might shed their jacket.  

All of this is just advice from a Google warrior I have never tried it you just got me curious so I started looking at some of the videos.  

[Red Rabbit]

As an alternative to tough sand and water, buckets filled with wood shavings like for hamster cages, or garden mulch, and filled with water may be good.  Finding bullet fragments would be more difficult than with plain jugs of water though.  Maybe just one jug of mulch and water in front?

[muledeerarea33?]

I’ve used plain gelatin, double the gelatin to water mixture and set it up in greased coffee cans or steralite tubs. Throw a layer of denim or wet news in the mix and it’s a decent representation. Time consuming and you can’t shoot it much but if your only testing one bullet type it’s fine. I’ve heard of guys encasing a pork shoulder in the gelatin too but I’d rather not waste meat.

[recurveman]

Schedule a trip to a Texas game ranch.   I learned a bunch about bullets in Texas and that is an opportunity rich environment.  

There really as so many variables it is really tough to perform tests that are accurate.    If you shoot a deer at 75 yards the bullet may perform very different than if you shoot the same deer at 700 yards.   The ELD-X bullet I'm shooting doesn't seem to want to exit an animal when shot under 100 yards.    if I shoot a deer at 700-800 yards the bullets seems to stay together better and I will have an exit hole.   How do you test that other than putting holes through hair?   All critters died too so not sure that it mattered but just interesting to watch the changes.