COOK, MINN. -- My brother, nephew, two sons and I hunted white-tailed deer here last weekend, not brown bears.

Yet our hunt was connected to a brown bear hunt taken more than 20 years ago in Alaska by Randy Brooks of Lindon, Utah.

The connection was an all-copper bullet.

Copper bullets are in the news of late as an option to the more traditional, far more common and significantly cheaper copper-jacketed lead bullets.

Lead bullets fragment upon impact, and some researchers believe the pieces -- many too small to detect while eating venison -- might pose health problems, particularly to children and pregnant women.

But Brooks, owner with his wife, Coni, of Utah-based Barnes Bullets, wasn't worried about eating lead bullet fragments when he had a brainstorm in 1985 while hunting bears in Alaska.

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The temperature was 19 degrees with a northwest wind and there was a dusting of snow on the ground for deer hunters Sunday morning near Cook, Minn. Here a doe killed with a 130-grain .270 caliber cartridge and Barnes copper bullet was dragged from the woods.

Rather than simply jacketing, or encasing, lead bullets with copper, he thought, why not make bullets entirely of copper?

One disadvantage would be expense: Lead is cheap, compared to copper. And all-copper bullets would require more tooling than jacketed lead bullets.

But copper bullets would offer advantages, too. They wouldn't foul the bore, or barrel, as much as jacketed bullets, which should lead to improved performance.

And copper bullets, Brooks figured, could be made to expand quickly. And because they wouldn't fragment like lead bullets, copper bullets would retain their weight longer as they entered and (in many cases) passed through big game.

Brooks knew that retained weight, as a factor of energy conveyed, could result in deeper penetration and more killing power.

A year later, in 1986, when Brooks returned to Alaska, he killed a brown bear with an all-copper bullet he developed at his Barnes Bullets factory.

Putting it to the test

Fast forward to last weekend. For the first time, I had my .270 loaded with cartridges carrying Barnes all-copper bullets. I had always been curious about them, and knew they were considered premium bullets by knowledgeable shooters and hunters -- "premium" meaning they had a reputation for extreme knock-down power and quick kills.

But at $45 or more a box, they're more expensive than jacketed lead bullets. Which is why (let's be honest) I always bought cartridges with copper-jacketed lead bullets.

Then came the news about fragmenting lead bullets and my resulting curiosity about all-copper bullets, of which Barnes is and has long been the leading manufacturer.

A quick trip through the company's web site (www.barnesbullets.com) was informative. And a couple of friends who are into shooting and ballistics confirmed that Barnes "Triple Shock" bullets, when properly placed, tend to anchor game where it stands.

Some Federal Premium cartridges carry Barnes all-copper Triple Shock bullets. Other ammunition manufacturers also use them, including Black Hills and Weatherby.

My son, Trevor, 15, like me, shoots a .270, and I gave him a handful of the loads also. One of us, I figured, might be lucky enough to happen upon a whitetail, and we could then learn firsthand -- albeit in a limited test -- how the bullets performed.

As it happened, Trevor was the lucky one. Sunday morning he shot a 130-pound doe walking directly toward him, targeting the animal straight on, between its front shoulders at about 50 yards.

The deer fell in her tracks, dead instantly -- something that, as all hunters know -- doesn't happen uniformly, even when a bullet is exactly placed and penetrates the heart and lungs.

Serendipitously, while field-dressing the doe, we found the bullet, completely intact, in the animal's intestinal area, about 8 inches from the base of its tail.

As advertised by Barnes, the bullet had peeled back, or mushroomed, into four "petals."

"The difference between our copper bullet and a jacketed lead bullet is the hydrostatic shock that the copper bullet makes," said Ty Herring of Barnes Bullets. "The copper bullet expands quickly, creating the shock, and because it retains its weight, it transfers that shock a long distance through the animal."

Big game animals usually are killed standing broadside, so the all-copper bullets (and jacketed bullets) tend to pass entirely through an animal's body, rather than -- as in our case last weekend -- being retained.

But the bullet fired from Trevor's rifle seemed to confirm -- though not definitively -- what Barnes advertises about its copper bullets: "More one-shot kills."

"All of this toxic/non-toxic stuff about lead bullets is a recent issue that had nothing to do with why my dad developed the all-copper bullet," said Jessica Brooks, who grew up in the bullet business and who is today a Barnes Bullets executive. "We still make a lot of copper-jacketed lead bullets and we support their continued use; they're excellent bullets.

"But the copper bullet always has been our premium bullet. We make it because it performs, not because it's lead-free."

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com