Impala .257 80gr LW/50 Bullets

Impala

.257 80gr LW/50 Bullets

THE PAST
Up to the late 19th century shooting was easy and simple. Black powder was the
propellant and lead the bullet material. With the development of smokeless powders
lead suddenly turned out being too soft. Hence a bullet jacket was introduced, firstly
made of soft steel with copper and tombac to follow later.
The full metal jacket bullet as a solution survived well into our time and due to the
comparatively little wounding capability these bullets are even declared mandatory for
military use by the Hague Convention.
The search for better performance on game lead to a temporary solution, the soft point
bullet. This bullet is, however, handicapped by its design in principle: To achieve proper
and acceptable killing performance it has to shed its kinetic energy by either loosing
mass (fragmentation) or enlarging its diameter (mushrooming).
To do so, however, it has to rely on external assistance such as that impact velocity and
target resistance have to be within certain limits. Going below these limits results in a
FMJ effect and marginal wounding effect while on the other end of the scale excessive
meat damage and insufficient penetration are imminent.