McGuire Ballistics Copper Bullets: The Monumental Monometal You Need

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In recent years the pressure for lead-free ammunition has begun to increase across the country to protect various species of concern, primarily the California Condor. California was the first state to put a complete ban on lead ammunition and change the face of hunting for its residents. While many companies offer copper or monometal bullets in their ammunition lines, the limitations of mass-produced copper bullets have led to a stale market in developing a copper bullet that performs like a high-B.C. match bullet that long-range shooters and hunters desire for optimal terminal performance at the slower impact velocities encountered at longer distances.

The Copper Bullet Beginning

After years of using traditional cup-and-core (pre-ban) and copper bullets in his home state of California while guiding hunters for deer, hogs, and elk, Sam McGuire set out to develop a better bullet. Tracking wounded animals from poor bullet performance was becoming the norm, forcing him to begin the process of making lathe-turned copper projectiles starting in his family’s machine shop. Sam spent years testing his creations on gel, bags of water, and other mediums to develop his ideal expansion mechanism in a solid-copper projectile. The final test was the plentiful wild hog population that provided a unique bullet trap with there very tough cartilage armor on their flanks covering their vital organs during fights with long-tusked boars trying to gore their opponents.

Initial bullet designs showed promise, and after thorough testing, a new design idea was nearing perfection. Following more testing and fine-tuning in the programming, the new Copper Rose bullet was born. The final product was developed after years of testing in the field, where results were measured in accuracy on targets and lethality on animals. McGuire Ballistics had the perfect setup; build a bullet on the machines, load it, shoot it on the range out the back door of the shop and then hit the hills for hogs to prove the final concept. Being small has its perks at times.

Range Results

Last year I received a variety of bullets to test and was told by Sam, “Shoot them and let me know what you think, good or bad. I want to know.” I tested the Copper Rose (CR) 71-grain .224 caliber in a 22 ARC; 93-grain .243 caliber in a 6ARC and 6 UM: 95-grain and 117-grain .257 caliber in the 25 Creedmoor and 25 PRC;148-grain .277 caliber in the 6.8 Western; 160-grain and 168-grain .284 caliber in a 7 SAUM and 7 PRC; and the 168-grain and 195-grain .308 caliber in 300 Winchester Magnum, 300 PRC, and 300 Norma Improved. 

I started with Peterson, ADG, and Hornady brass for each test based on brass availability, all primed with Federal Match primers. Using the appropriate powders for each cartridge and bullet weight, I was able to achieve sub-one-inch, 10-shot groups with every bullet tested being fired through a PROOF Research carbon-fiber-wrapped barrel. These barrels have proven to be the most consistent for me over the years and are my go-to barrels when I want ultimate accuracy for testing new bullets.

Hard to find a fault in a bullet that just shoots well across the board from .224 to .308. I was able to achieve excellent accuracy and velocity with each bullet offering, without more than 25 rounds of load development per cartridge. I found all the bullets to be very easy to load and not as sensitive to bullet jump, unlike many copper or monometal bullets that tend to spike pressure if they are not given room to run in the freebore.

After developing loads for each rifle, I loaded 50 rounds for data collection at distance to check the ballistic coefficient as they seemed like high numbers for a copper bullet, but low and behold, they tracked perfectly with the estimated B.C. and rang steel with ease out to 700 yards, with proper center line impacts. For the reloader interested in just punching paper or mashing steel, the story ends here as these bullets have proven to be extremely accurate, lathe-turned projectiles.  Just load and shoot. Thats it.

Copper Rose Bullet Options

McGuire Ballistics offers two bullet styles, one for single feeding and one for feeding from a magazine. Each of these bullets have identical flight characteristics, and you will not see any point-of-impact change shooting them on paper. They even group together on steel at distance. The difference lies in the tips’ softness. The magazine-fed tips are thicker in the tip to resist deformation when loaded into a magazine of a hard-recoiling rifle. The single-feed tips are softer and are loaded by hand into the receiver, as the name indicates.

I have run the single-feed bullets in several of my rifles magazines and didn’t see tip deformation after recoil when using a magazine with a stiff spring. This will vary by cartridge and magazine combinations. The only rifle I witnessed some tip deformation was in a nine-pound 300 PRC without a muzzle brake, with the bullets sliding forward during recoil. The bullets with the slight deformed tips still shot with the groups at 100-200 yards.

The concept is simple, for most hunters, run the magazine-fed bullets and don’t worry about it. For the long-range shooters wanting the best performance at lower impact velocity, throw in a single-fed round as you set up for the shot and fret not. I shot one boar with a magazine-fed 117-grain CR and one with a single-feed 122-grain CR and the terminal performance was notably more impressive with the 122-grain CR. However, the 122-grain bullet was going 300 feet per second faster, so it’s not a fair apples-to-apples comparison. The 117-grain bullet dropped the boar in its tracks for the record.

Field Testing

After a few months of shooting various calibers and weights through nearly every modern cartridge I had on hand, I was smitten with the results and could not wait to test the bullets in the field, but hunting season was months away. I was hoping to have an opportunity sooner than later that would offer multiple shot opportunities to see how the bullets perform in a larger sample size than just one animal on a typical western states hunt.

Sam was gracious enough to host a hog hunt for fellow writers Zak May and Tyler Freel, and was gracious to included me. The plan was for us to come out to California and hunt with Sam under his guide service, SMC Williams Guide Service. After booking flights and loading bullets, we were set for what would turn out to be a whirlwind two days of prime hog hunting. 

The first morning found us stalking a freshly cut barley field on a group of boars spread out across the field. I carried Horizon Firearm’s new Venatic Carbon II chambered in 25 Creedmoor loaded with McGuire Ballistics 117-grain Copper Rose handloads with a muzzle velocity of 2.850 fps. This rifle is set in the MDT HNT 26 chassis, making an extremely lightweight and handy setup for stalking with a rifle in one hand and a tripod in the other. Upon closing in at 250 yards, we stopped and prepared for the shot as we were running out of cover in the open field. I set up my tripod for a high kneeling shot and rested the rifle across my Game Changer bag atop my MUB table.

As I prepared for the shot, we heard Tyler (guided by one of Sam’s partners) shoot a boar behind us in the other field, causing my boar to become alert as he seemingly looked through us, attempting to locate the distant gunshot. My boar paused as he turned to leave the field, offering a broadside shot at the opportune time as I tracked him through my Leupold VX-6HD Gen 2. Upon impact, the hog locked up and dropped in his tracks. The small bullet delivered a large dose of “wallop,’ imparting instant death on the 180-pound boar.

A necropsy on the boar would reveal the bullet upset upon entering the chest cavity, not impacting a rib, causing massive trauma and driving the base of the bullet shank through the offside rib. The shank was recovered when later skinning the offside. It was trapped between the ribs and the 1.5-inch-thick cartilage plate. The initial temporary wound cavity was far more devastating than the highest praised "hunting" bullets and was more comparable to a match bullet performance. The cavity and tip design of the Copper Rose is responsible for this expansion, and we concluded the compression of the air inside the cavity causes the violent "grenade" like expansion. Many of the small fragments of copper recovered inside the hogs had a concaved curvature from the front half of the bullet expanding outward from internal pressure verse the "peeling" or "pedaling" often found with traditional copper bullets. To best sum up the Copper Rose terminal performance would be a blend of the penetrating performance of a hunting bullet, with the terminal expansion of a match bullet. Massive tissue damage and hemorrhaging in the first portion of the wound cavity, with deep, straight-line penetration driving through the thoracic cavity even with small diameter bullets.

Very impressive performance for a sleek .25-calibe monometal bullet, considering the spine was also severed, as pigs have a very low spinal structure allowing for the heart and lungs to also be compromised with the spine when a bullet has a large enough wound channel. Perfect performance. This would be the first animal taken with this bullet design because Sam made the prototype bullet just for the new 25 Creedmoor with its 1:7.5-inch twist rate. That twist rate would not stabilize his 122-grain version, which needs a 1:7-inch twist. While five grains may not seem like much, when it comes to copper, the projectiles can get really long with small weight increases. As the weight-to-length ratio increases, the twist rate also increases to a faster twist in order to stabilize the projectile properly.

My second boar was taken with a 122-grain .257 Copper Rose fired from Sam’s personal 25 PRC rifle built by Remuda Rifles. The second morning we found ourselves stalking in on the same field before the sun was even up, locating another large boar feasting on barley. At 350 yards I set up for a prone shot as the boar was feeding his way out of the field to his bedding area. The obese boar was feeding broadside when I slipped a single 122-grain Copper Rose behind his shoulder and into his chest. The boar bolted at the shot and ran only 20 yards before expiring, showcasing the lethality of a well-placed, small-caliber bullet. The projectile exited the offside, and later review of the video taken by Sam showed it skipping through the field.

The team took seven large hogs in total during two days of hunting, offering a great sample of what the McGuire Ballistics Copper Rose can achieve on a tough animal like the Russian boar. Except for one large sow, every hog taken was a mature boar, weighing 200 pounds on average with a chest cavity nearly 20 inches wide from hide to hide.  The field trial made for a tough bullet test, and after seeing what these bullets do on hogs, there is no question they will perform well on big game across North America and I plan to test them in Africa this year on a plains game safari.

I have heard hunters as of late say they refuse to shoot an all-copper bullet and give in to the “antihunters.” While I question the logic of this ideology, I do know from personal experience that modern, lathe-turned copper projectiles offer excellent performance on game. All hunters should experience it themselves before settling on avoiding monometal bullets completely. Innovative companies like McGuire Ballistics are changing the performance standard after decades of the status quo in copper bullets. I know I will be loading McGuire Ballistics’ Copper Rose bullets for my hunting rifles this fall. Give the Copper Rose a try in your favorite rifle this fall and use promo code "ShootingTimes10" to save 10% off your next order of bullets from www.McGuireballistics.com

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