The Case for Solid Copper Projectiles

I lined up the cross hairs, I exhaled, and pressed the trigger. I heard the shot go off. I watched it impact, and I watched the dirt behind the pig kick up. Text book shot. I then watched that pig run off, seemingly unfazed by a shot right in its boiler room. I climbed down from my stand, and on my hands and knees, tracked tiny droplets of blood for the next 2 hours, under the light of my headlamp since it was now well past dark. 168 yards later, I found my pig. Upon further examination, it WAS a perfect heart shot, just that the ammo I used (specifically advertised for shooting razorbacks…HINT HINT), never expanded and passed through the heart and both sides of the pig leaving a small entrance wound and similar exit wound. The pig only stopped because of the hole through his heart. At that point, I knew I needed something that was ACTUALLY designed to stop big game.

A few months later, I was introduced to the solid copper projectiles manufactured by Lehigh Defense. All copper, no lead whatsoever…I was intrigued and started putting them to work. I went on a pig hunt with Jon from The Gun Collective using their 110gr Controlled Chaos in .300 BLK. Jon shot his pig first with a single shot .500S&W Magnum round with the Lehigh Extreme Penetrator bullet (Think phillips heads screw driver on steroids that wants to destroy everything in its path). Jon blasted a 300lb pig from about 35 yards away and that pig dropped like a ton of bricks…literally. He put that round through the front shoulder as the pig faced him and it traveled through 48 inches of ham and out the hind quarters, devastating both the front left shoulder and right rear (not a great shot for maximum meat yield, but perfect for showcasing the bullets ability to hit hard and keep going). The pig I harvested lined up for a perfect broadside shot, and I let him have it right in the shoulder shield. The Controlled Chaos round smacked him hard and put him right down, making for an epic video as he tumbled about 80 yards downhill at me. When we gutted him, we found the round had broken up, as designed, with the “petals” shredding the lungs and heart, and the base of the round traveling through one shoulder shield and coming to rest in the other…EXACTLY as advertised.

The necropsy of those 2 pigs had me convinced…copper projectiles were the future. I began testing the different Lehigh rounds on all sorts of mediums. Testing their hunting rounds through bone, ballistics gel, and layers of meat. I tested their defensive rounds through drywall, sheet rock, plywood, auto glass, car doors, heavy clothes. I came to one conclusion with all of it…IT WORKED AS ADVERTISED! The manufacturing process is too detailed to get into on a blog post, but I’ve seen these rounds manufactured in person. Ive used them on game big and small. My most impressive harvest? I’ve taken 3, 200lb pigs at full sprint 100 yards away with a 45gr .223 round most would consider too light for that job. Ive taken a 425lb black bear with a 140gr .357 Magnum everyone said was too small to get the job done. And I took a 200lb white tail at close to 700 yards on the move with a 165gr .300 Win Mag with an admitted bad shot, that still resulted in a clean harvest. None of these animals went more than 20 yards from where they were shot. I’ve been using the Lehigh bullets on all my hunts for the past 4.5 years, and even give ammo to friends to use on their hunts, and the results are all the same…1 shot, clean harvests, no blood tracking.

Consistency. Consistency is the key here. The way these bullets are manufactured provides consistency in each and every single round. I’ve been buying and using ammo long enough to see poor consistency across ALL of the major house hold names of ammo manufacturers. Bad primers, poor crimps, deformed heads…it happens…A LOT. The Lehigh projectiles are spun up so carefully that inconsistencies are almost nonexistent. That leads to peak performance in their rounds. Peak terminal ballistics. At the end of the day, that’s what we want. When using a round to harvest an animal, or stop a threat, we want to make sure it performs the same each time, EVERY Time.

The 2 main rounds Ive used are the solid copper Fluid Transfer Monolithic (FTM) and the Controlled Chaos rounds. The FTM is solid copper and comes as an Xtreme Penetrator or Xtreme Hunter/Defender. There are grooves or flutes cut into the forward portion of the round that, when impacting tissue, act to cut, and create a LARGE permanent wound channel by pushing muscle and tissue out of the way. Unlike a hollow point, or soft point that can get “clogged” with dense muscle, bone or clothing, and fail to open up, the FTM projectile has the ability to punch through all of that and continue on its path, causing massive soft tissue damage, hydrostatic shock to surrounding muscles and organs, and blood loss. With most hollow points, the permanent wound channel is far smaller than the temporary wound channel, which can cause increased time for blood loss, and less penetration, meaning it will take longer for the animal to expire.

The Controlled Chaos round, as I stated earlier, breaks up on impact. The round hits, and hits hard, penetrates flesh and muscle and the round starts to break apart, sending “petals” or slivers of the bullet outwards, while the base of the bullet continues on its true path. The petals cause MASSIVE tissue damage, and on a shot aimed at the heart, usually do a damn good job at shredding the lungs and heart, resulting in an almost instantaneous kill shot. Due to the nature of the round, a bad shot can be compensated for by the way the bullet performs.

So, a long winded explanation, but the fact of the matter is, Solid Copper Projectiles are the future. I personally have transitioned ALL of my hunting and self-defense ammo to different forms of these Lehigh bullets. The Lehigh rounds are actually now loaded by A LOT of companies, including Black Hills Ammunition, and Underwood Ammo, which I’ve used extensively. There haven’t been a lot of “breakthroughs” in ammunition technology in the past few decades, but this, for sure, is one. Especially with many states moving to lead free hunting ammunition, Lehigh is leading the charge in terms of innovation and forward thinking. Try some…you won’t be disappointed.