On Game: What the Published Record Says About Deer, Hogs and Bears

The makers' own descriptions of their bullets, the two floors and one ceiling they put numbers on, the field accounts a maker chose to publish, and the independent test that does not exist

Figure 1 — Two Hornady 250-grain FTX bullets recovered from game, beside an unfired .450 Bushmaster round and a 5.56 cartridge, on a tape measure. The submitter reports that both were found under the hide on … — Figure 1 — Two Hornady 250-grain FTX bullets recovered from game, beside an unfired .450 Bushmaster round and a 5.56 cartridge, on a tape measure. The submitter reports that both were found under the hide on the far shoulder after complete penetration, one from a bison and one from a wild boar. Not an original photograph and not a controlled test. Source: Team Hornady scrapbook, "450 Bushmaster FTX Expansion," submitted by Rio Wheeler, hornady.com.

6.1 What counts as evidence here

The brief for this volume was “published sources only,” and holding to it removes most of what circulates about the .450 Bushmaster’s effect on game. What is left falls into four kinds, and each is labelled where it is used:

A maker’s numbers: a stated minimum velocity, a construction detail, a weight. These are claims the maker is accountable for.
A maker’s descriptions: “controlled expansion,” “deep penetration.” Accountable in a looser way; not measurements.
Field accounts a maker chose to publish. Real hunts, honestly reported, but selected by the maker and never including the failures.
Independent controlled testing: gelatin, recovered weights and diameters, by someone without a product to sell. None was found for any .450 Bushmaster factory load, here or in the AR-15 dive’s search. Steinel says it tests in “calibrated 10% Type A ballistic gelatin” but publishes no results.¹

So this volume reports what the record holds and is plain about the gap.

6.2 The bullets, as their makers describe them

Table 1 — The bullets, as their makers describe them

Load	Construction, in the maker’s words	Source
Hornady FTX 250 gr	”one-piece, high antimony lead core … mechanically locked to the jacket with an InterLock ring”; “heavy jacket over the shank … controls expansion”; “maximum weight retention for deep penetration on large or heavy-bodied game animals”	Hornady bullet page²
Hornady InterLock 245 gr	”exposed lead tips for controlled expansion”	Hornady²
Hornady Sub-X 395 gr	”lead core. Long grooves in its gilding metal jacket … flat profile and the patented Flex Tip® insert … expand reliably at low velocities”	Hornady²
Federal Fusion 260 gr	”Copper jacket is electro-chemically bonded to the core”; “Skived, pre-programmed nose”; “Maximum weight retention for deep penetration”	Federal³
Federal Power-Shok 300 gr	”traditional lead-core hunting bullets”; “Jacketed soft point”	Federal³
Remington Core-Lokt 260 gr	”locks the jacket and core together for reliable expansion, deep penetration, and exceptional weight retention”; “Tapered jacket design”	Remington⁴
Remington AccuTip 260 gr	”hard cartridge-brass jacket and precision nose cuts control expansion”	Remington⁴
Steinel 250 gr Maker REX	”lead-free, expanding solid copper hollow point”	Steinel¹
Steinel 280 gr brass solid	”engineered to remain intact throughout penetration”; non-expanding	Steinel¹
Steinel 425 gr Maker REX subsonic	”lead-free, expanding solid copper hollow point”	Steinel¹

Read together, the descriptions sort into three families, and that sorting is the practical content of this volume:

Bonded or mechanically locked cup-and-core (FTX, Fusion, Core-Lokt): built to hold together and penetrate after expanding.
Plain cup-and-core (InterLock, Power-Shok): the conventional deer bullet, cheaper, expected to expand more readily and lose more weight.
Monolithic (Steinel’s copper and brass): no core to lose. The copper ones expand by petals; the brass solid does not expand at all, by design. These are also the lead-free options, which matter where lead is restricted (Volume 7 notes Michigan’s recommendation).

6.3 The numbers makers do publish

Three numbers and one weight-of-game claim are all the published record offers:

Table 2 — Three numbers and one weight-of-game claim are all the published record offers

Claim	Maker	What it says
Fusion expands down to 1,400 fps	Federal³	Below that, Federal does not promise expansion
Power-Shok expands down to 1,000 fps	Federal³	A much lower floor, on a softer bullet
Sub-X expands down to 900 fps	Hornady²	Its whole design brief
425 gr Maker expands “as low as 700 FPS”	Steinel¹	A maker’s claim, no test published
”A 260-grain bullet is an excellent choice for hunting bison-sized game and below”	Remington⁴	A marketing statement about weight, not a test

Volumes 3 and 4 turned the floors into ranges: the Fusion is at its floor at about 200 yards from Federal’s muzzle velocity, the Power-Shok at about 400, and the Sub-X at about 240 from a 20-inch barrel and much nearer from a short one. ⭐ The cheap soft point has more than twice the expansion range of the premium bonded bullet, because they are built to do different things: the bonded bullet resists opening so that it holds together at close range and high speed; the soft point opens easily and so keeps opening at low speed. Neither is better. They are tuned to different ends of the range.

6.4 What a maker chose to show: the field accounts

Hornady’s Team Hornady scrapbook carries several .450 Bushmaster accounts submitted by hunters.⁵ They are anecdotes selected by a maker, and they are reported here as that:

Table 3 — Hornady's Team Hornady scrapbook carries several .450 Bushmaster accounts submitted by hunters.[^5] They are anecdotes selected by a maker, and they are reported here as that

Account	Game and distance as reported	Bullet
”450 Bushmaster FTX Expansion,” Rio Wheeler	one-shot kills on a “2,200+ lbs Bull Bison, 220 lbs Wild Boar, Black Hawaiian Sheep, Corsican Sheep and a 310 lbs Wild Pig Sow”; the bison and boar bullets recovered under the far-side hide after “complete penetration”	250 gr FTX
”BIG Boar vs .450 BushMaster,” same submitter	a 220 lb boar, shoulder shot, from an AR, in northern California	250 gr FTX
”Bison with the .450 Bushmaster,” John Daily	a Wyoming cow bison at “about 150 yards,” single shot; “the heart was destroyed by the Flex-Tip bullet”	Flex Tip (FTX)
“.450 bushmaster buck,” submitter “Chris”	a Wisconsin buck, neck shot at 100 yards	not stated

The photograph at the head of this volume comes from the first of these. It shows what the FTX’s construction is meant to produce: a mushroomed bullet with the core still in the jacket, stopped by the hide on the far side. It is one hunter’s two bullets, not a sample; how many FTX bullets in the same hunts came apart, or passed through, is not recorded.

6.5 Deer

For whitetails, the published record and the physics agree, and neither needs much hedging:

Every hunting load in Volume 3 is a deer load by its maker’s own description. Winchester names its .450 load “Deer Season XP”; Hornady calls its line “American Whitetail.”
Inside about 150 yards every supersonic load arrives far above every published floor. The slowest hunting load, the Power-Shok, is at 1,592 fps at 100 yards and 1,331 at 200 on Federal’s own table, against a floor of 1,000.
The limit is the bullet’s own floor or the shooter’s trajectory, not the deer. For the Fusion that is about 200 yards (its floor); for the others it is trajectory and wind (Volume 5).

What the record does not say is anything quantitative about the wound: no published gelatin depth, no expansion diameter. The mechanism usually offered (a bullet that starts wider than most rifle bullets end up, and tends to exit) is reasonable and is what the scrapbook photographs show. It is still mechanism, not measurement.

6.6 Hogs

The two hog accounts above are both from one submitter and both report the FTX penetrating a large boar’s shoulder and being recovered under the far-side hide.⁵ That matches the FTX’s stated purpose (“deep penetration on large or heavy-bodied game animals”) and is the strongest published evidence for the bullet on hogs, which is to say it is not strong.

A reasonable reading of the bullets’ descriptions for hog use is that construction matters more than calibre here: a hog’s shoulder shield is the hard part of the target, and the bonded and monolithic bullets in the table are the ones built not to break up on it. No published test compares them on hogs.

6.7 Bears

There is no published bear account for a .450 Bushmaster factory load on any maker’s page read for this dive. Massaro’s 2022 article calls the cartridge one “which will handle deer and bear at woods distances in any state,” which is an experienced writer’s opinion and not a test.⁶

What the record can support:

Weight and construction. The heaviest supersonic factory loads are Federal’s 300-grain soft point and Steinel’s 280-grain brass solid. The first opens easily (floor 1,000 fps); the second does not open at all and is built for straight-line penetration.
Range. Bear hunting over bait is typically close, which plays to every load’s strengths and to none of its range limits.
The law, where it applies, is about the firearm, not the bear. Each state’s bear rules govern what is legal; this dive does not summarise them.

The honest statement is that the .450 Bushmaster is used on black bears and that no maker or independent tester publishes evidence of how its bullets perform on them. Nothing in the record supports it as a defensive cartridge against large bears, and nothing here claims so.

6.8 The handgun-bullet question

Every .452-inch bullet fits the .450 Bushmaster; not every one is built for it. A bullet designed to expand at handgun speed can open too fast when driven at 2,200 fps. Hornady’s FTX bullet page makes exactly that point about its own line: typical hollow-point pistol bullets “have a tendency to expand too quickly and sacrifice penetration at the higher velocities achieved with lever action guns,” which is why the FTX has a heavier jacket.²

One factory load uses a magnum handgun bullet deliberately: Steinel’s 240-grain load is built on the Hornady XTP Magnum, at 2,260 fps.¹ The XTP Magnum is a heavier-jacketed handgun bullet, so this is a reasoned choice, not a mistake; it is still a bullet designed for a different velocity window, and a buyer should know which kind of bullet is in the box. The handloader’s side of this question (which .452 bullets to avoid at .450 velocities) is Loading the .450 Bushmaster, Volume 4.

6.9 What is missing

Stated as a list, because it is the most useful thing this volume can leave behind:

No independent gelatin test of any .450 Bushmaster factory load was found.
No published expansion floor for the Hornady FTX, the InterLock, the Remington loads or the Winchester loads.
No recovered-bullet weights or diameters in a controlled medium from any maker.
No published bear-specific data at all.

A single recovered bullet from the owner’s rifle, weighed and measured, with the range and the animal written down, would add more to this volume than any further reading.

References

Steinel Ammunition, steinelammo.com “.450 Bushmaster” category page and product pages, read 19 October 2026. URLs: https://steinelammo.com/product-category/rifle-ammo/450-bushmaster/; https://steinelammo.com/all-available-calibers/rifle-ammo/450-bushmaster/450-bushmaster-250gr-maker-solid-copper-hollow-point-schp/; https://steinelammo.com/all-available-calibers/rifle-ammo/450-bushmaster/450-bushmaster-280gr-brass-spike/; https://steinelammo.com/all-available-calibers/rifle-ammo/450-bushmaster/450-bushmaster-425gr-subsonic-solid-copper-hollow-point-schp/. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Hornady Manufacturing, hornady.com: bullet page “45 Cal .452 250 gr FTX® (450 Bushmaster),” item 45201; bullet page “45 Cal .452 395 gr Sub-X,” item 45031; ammunition pages for items 82242 and 82247. Read 19 October 2026. URLs: https://www.hornady.com/bullets/rifle/45-cal-452-250-gr-ftx-450-bushmaster; https://www.hornady.com/bullets/rifle/45-cal-.452-395-gr-sub-x; https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifle/450-bushmaster-245-gr-interlock-american-whitetail; https://www.hornady.com/ammunition/rifle/450-bushmaster-tbd-gr-sub-x. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Federal Ammunition, federalpremium.com product pages F450BMFS1 and 450BMB, read 19 October 2026. URLs: https://www.federalpremium.com/rifle/fusion/11-F450BMFS1.html; https://www.federalpremium.com/rifle/power-shok/11-450BMB.html. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Remington Ammunition, remington.com product pages 27941 and 27943, and the “.450 Bushmaster” calibre page FAQ, read 19 October 2026. URLs: https://www.remington.com/rifle/core-lokt/29-27941.html; https://www.remington.com/rifle/premier-accutip/29-27943.html; https://www.remington.com/rifle/shop-by-caliber/450-bushmaster/. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Hornady Manufacturing, Team Hornady scrapbook archive, hornady.com/team-hornady/scrapbook/archive/: “450 Bushmaster FTX Expansion” and “BIG Boar vs .450 BushMaster” (Rio Wheeler); “Bison with the .450 Bushmaster” (John Daily); “.450 bushmaster buck” (Chris). Read 19 October 2026. URLs: https://www.hornady.com/team-hornady/scrapbook/archive/450-bushmaster-ftx-expansion-rio-wheeler; https://www.hornady.com/team-hornady/scrapbook/archive/big-boar-vs-450-bushmaster-rio-wheeler; https://www.hornady.com/team-hornady/scrapbook/archive/bison-with-the-450-bushmaster-john-daily; https://www.hornady.com/team-hornady/scrapbook/archive/450-bushmaster-buck-chris. ↩ ↩²
Philip Massaro, “Behind the Bullet: .450 Bushmaster,” American Hunter, 16 November 2022, read 19 October 2026. URL: https://www.americanhunter.org/content/behind-the-bullet-450-bushmaster. ↩