when a bullet touch's a fencing wire

[Treeman]

The buck was standing behind a old fence, the remnants of a sheep fence the large diamond type. The fence had long since rusted away in all but where the poles protected it from elements and all that remained was in some spots there was still tension strands - the fence would perhaps retain a over weight plastic bag for all it was worth, but there was still indication of it if but mainly by the line of old poles. I remember this fence, but only as a after thought.

The client shot an Impala standing loose of the heard which was either side of the now imaginary fence.
The Impala exploded, yes exploded, never seen something like it. I was watching for the hit and saw it far back on last ribs and then saw the area erupt. The animal ran off. When we got to POI I found what appeared to be the entire stomach contents, a huge pile of wet chewed grass. The track was short and the animal did not suffer, it did a short sprint and fell over 100 m away. The tracking was follow the grass trail, no blood.

When we skinned the animal we found this.
VID-20250213-WA0006 by David Frank Allen, on Flickr

Four days later it struck me what could have happened, that fence ??
7mm-08 Barns TSSX 130 gr bullet at 100 odd meter.

[Ds J]

The only similar thing I saw was when a slow 308 bullet hit a jackal at 75 yards. It literally blew apart as well, with pieces lying opposite each other.

[oafpatroll]

That's a Tarantino movie movie worthy mess. Is the theory that the bullet was deformed or broken up by hitting the wire?

[Tripodmvr]

Saw something similar when my friend shot an Impala with his 270 (quite possibly 130gr PMP). When we reached the POI we found stomach content. We retraced the bullet path as the distance was short and he is a good shot. We found a sickle bush branch that had been severed.

That ram took off and made a large circle covering about 500m. We found the intestines that had torn off after snagging on foliage. It was found dead due to shock and blood loss.

The bullet quite possibly tumbled and cut open the pouch just past the first ribs. I think that is what caused the damage in Treeman's case as well.

I have had two cases where I hit a fence. My first shot at an Impala (303 with 174gr PMP) ended with a dropper shot in half. I also severed a wire of a fence when trying to shoot a gemsbuck. This was with 150 TSX in my 7x64. Both animals ran off without any sign of a hit.

[Ds J]

That's a Tarantino movie movie worthy mess. Is the theory that the bullet was deformed or broken up by hitting the wire?

The bullet might have tumbled.

[Treeman]

That's a Tarantino movie movie worthy mess. Is the theory that the bullet was deformed or broken up by hitting the wire?

************************
Tumbling on impact is my guess.