I'm not sure how the MB team would test this, but there is a little known bullet called the stealth bullet. They look just like any other bullet, but for some reason they don't clang when hitting steel targets, such as used in CAS.

You see, in Cowboy Action, the targets are too big and too close to miss. But sometimes a stealth bullet either curves (there's a whole nother can of worms) around the target, or somehow passes through the target with no noise or visible effect on the target. No one knows how they work, perhaps they are infected with a stealth virus of some type. Some folks claim a anti-rotational vortex causes them.

Anyway, out of 250 rounds downrange yesterday and today at the SW Regional Championship, yup, you guessed it, I had one stealth bullet. Of course since the target didn't react my shot was counted as a miss.

If the MB could learn how stealth bullets work, or at least how competitors could identify the evil b*****ds and throw them away, they would have the eternal gratitude of every Cowboy Action member in the world.

Please Adam and Jamie, get to the truth of the stealth bullet.

I know exactly how you feel, I've had a number of cartridges loaded with those bullets over the years. As far as I know there is no way to identify them until after they have been fired.

I beleive they contain a material invented by GFW's (Gun Fearing Wussies) with the intention of persuading us to give up our sport through sheer frustration.

The theory that misses are due to the man behind the gun has been rejected so many times, by so many people, that it can be ignored.

I know this will be hard to believe but I have experienced this phenomena with a shotgun while hunting pheasants. Sometimes a bird will flush up close and fly straight away, you can see that old rooster's tail feathers just drooping down he is going SO slow. Now we all know it would be hard to miss a bird like that with a tennis racket but then because of some unknown force field or something the bird flies off unscathed by multiple shots.

On second thought this may be another phenomena entirely. Maybe the pheasant is really not there. Could it be that the bird is really in a parallel reality, not actually present at that time and place in our reality? Whatever, it sure is strange.

blank round?

Sunfisher, it only takes one shot in shotshell to contaminate the rest of the shot. That's why I lean toward a virus theory.

So this "virus" is sort of like rot in wood? it decomposes the lead shot into powder which weighs the same so the recoil is the same but has the ballistic property of a dust bunny? It would work on your cowboy action bullets because they are all lead.

I like that idea As long as we don't get any deer hunters reporting similar happenings with jacketed bullets, we have a workable theory.

Having had more than a few hitherto inexplicable misses when shooting at long range, Sunfishers 'lead rot' makes sense.

I was puzzled as to how the lead dust could get out of hollow point bullets until I came across an article on curving bullets and the Magnus effect.

Air is forced into the nose cavity, the Magnus effect causes the particles of dust to rotate, and then climb up the curved side of the jacket.

With open base bullets it trickles out as the bullet is rising in its trajectory.

Because the lighter bullet retains its energy it accellerates in order to make up for the weight loss. This means they travel faster, get to the target sooner so don't drop so far, and go over the target.

And I always thought I was overestimating range.