Meplat trimming

[Dirtfarmer]

I'm thinking of trimming the hollow point off of the Hornady 385 grain Great Plains conical muzzle loading bullet. Reason: to reduce the expansion of the pure lead bullet and allow for deeper penetration for use elk hunting. I was thinking of chucking it into a drill and cutting off the hollow point to make a flat nose bullet. It shouldn't reduce the bullet weight too significantly. Has anyone done this, or similar? Any reason not to do it?

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[Koda]

I'm no where near qualified to answer but my guess is it would work for what you want, deeper penetration but would tumble more. The question is how much more would it penetrate? I would say I wouldn't modify anything unless I had the means to test and compare like in ballistic gelatin. Otherwise there is no real way to know...

 

[KKG]

I'd think it would be simpler and maybe better if you filled the HP.

 

[Sstrand]

You could contact Gabby Giffords. She has people on her staff who are well-versed in muzzle loaders.

Sheldon

 

[jordanka16]

Should work just fine, either that or melt some lead and fill the tip in with that, then flatten the nose off. That will also add some weight to it.

 

[Dirtfarmer]

Thanks all. I cut off the hollow point of one bullet; it was hard to do, ugly and short bullet, so that's not really an option. I also tried hot glue gun but that didn't work so well. I filled the hollow point with J&B Weld epoxy and it worked extremely well; filled the void, smooth tip, easy to do, dries hard. Now that it is above freezing here in North Idaho I'm going to try some water filled milk jug shooting with both hollow points and the epoxy filled bullets to see any difference in expansion.