I shoot 100 gr Barnes TSX in my 25-06' shoot 130 partitions in my 270 win, 140 accubonds in my 270 wsm, 150 Bt's in my 06, 200 gr accubonds in my 300 rum and Barnes 225 ttsx in my 338 rum. No I don't still have the bullet from 2010. Sorry. Dale you ****ed me off but Im over it. Korhil thanks but I still owe you for the fat joke. All bullets have pros and cons and that's why I originally started this post 2 years ago after my dismay with the 140 TSX in my 270 win. But I learned now to shoot 130 partitions in it.
Barnes triple shock disappointment
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Trying to figure out how a completely unexpanded bullet fails to pass through on a deer-sized animal shot broadside through the ribs. The only two expanding bullets I've had fail to expand on deer-sized animals passed completely through the animal on broadside shots through the ribs. One was a dall ram at 12 yards - a 150 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip fired from a .280 RCBS Improved. The second was another dall ram at 355 yards - a 210 grain Berger VLD fired from a .300 Win Mag.
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I didn't mean you..guess I should have been more specific when I said guys. What you are inquiring about makes sense.
RockyMtnMT
Official LRH Sponsor
One thing that I think is worth mentioning about the mono bullets. They are long compared to lead core bullets of the same weight. Barnes has not done a good job of letting hunters know that they require more twist for conventional weights. This can cause bullets to not track straight through an animal.
As a general rule, you can't run mono bullets the same that you run lead core. They are a very different cat.
Steve
As a general rule, you can't run mono bullets the same that you run lead core. They are a very different cat.
Steve
Outlaw6.0
Well-Known Member
Something here doesn't jive. The purpose & design of the "high shoulder" shot is to impact the central nervous system i.e. the spinal cord. If conducted properly, the fuzzy wuzzy will have no ability to utilize its legs what-so-ever. If a high shoulder shot was performed correctly & not botched; how did said critter travel anywhere ?
t
Outlaw6.0
Well-Known Member
You are dead on with that statement according to my observations. I've seen & participated in several discussion involving a heavy for caliber Barnes ending up where is shouldn't be. For some reason it seems to be a 160grn in a 7 mag but that could be coincidence. Rotational velocity is a must if you want your bullet to track on a straight path ESPECIALLY when the bullet starts to deform & become gyroscopically unstable.
After a bullet deforms the bullet encounters more drag on the front making the projectile want to tumble or reverse for lack of a better term. Think of how non-rotational projectiles stabilize i.e. jets & arrows....
devins
Well-Known Member
I apologize for the typos in the last post. I will pick up where I left off.
Yes, Dentist to answer that question. And I am still outdoors as much as possible and still doing a lot of farm work and two years ago was personally seeing about 35 different deer stands for myself, my son in law and a few frinds. I have cut that down to about 20. I am still shooting all I can and I was a competative shotgun shooter but had to quit due to hearing loss, I was from before the days of electonic muffs. I have also shot archery competatively.
I could go on and on about anatomy and bullet performance and you see all sorts of responses that seem conflicting on here and it seems like you can not just get a straight answer. For every response of how well it worked another responds about how well it failed. The truth is there is no "magic bullet."
I am sorry but you can not use one bullet for all things unless you are extremely disciplined and an extremely good hunter and shot, so all of you disagreeing pat yourself on the back you must fit into that catagory
.
Just a couple of general rules to think about that might help simplify it.
1. Embrace the fact that you might need several loads if you use multiple calibers and hunt multiple species. That just lets you spend more time shooting to do load development.
2. Thin skinned game can be taken with a relatively thin skinned bullet.
Note the "relatively," that is one of the points people are going back and forth over.
2A Where are you wanting to shoot this animal? If you prefer the double lung shot, which is an excellent shot and will, if done correctly always be fatal, then you will benefit from a softer more expansive type bullet than someone like me who prefers, often due to terain, to take out a shoulder and plant the animal asap. This leads to a tiny bit more meat lost initially but with terrain and heavy coyote populations in my local area it saves more meat in the long run.
2B shot placement again, because not every animal comes out and poses like the pictures in your book or your posters you practiced on. My example here goes back to my friend taking his first deer and shooting it quartering away and aiming at the off front leg. The bullet fragmented just as it should but was deflected by the ribs and did not puncture the lungs. It ended up destroying the meat in the shoulder and making for a somewhat difficult follow up.
*So a point for me to remember is, I would have taken that same angle shot, therefor I do not carry varmint type or target type bullets to take game bigger than a coyote. OK someone just had a little anger well up. I am not say you can't, I am just saying I am not disciplined enough to not try that shot and If I cary a little bit tougher bullet it would make it on a deer. But what if it had been an elk. Well then I would beef it up even more, right? (just a side note, later I mention bullets I use, it was a ballistic tip in 130 gr, if I remember right from a 270 win therefor I use an Accubond and it does great for me in my 270)
3 Velocity. There have been so many good points already brought up here and this opens such a big can of worms, how can we simplify this a bit. We just have to know that bullets are designed to work at different "impact pressures", can we agree on that? Lets not think speed for a bit lets just imagine if we layed 10 different bullet designs down, tip up, on our work bench and dropped the same hammer straight down on the tip of each one from the same height. They would behave differently from each other. But if we lined new ones up again and did it but this time we held the hammer much higher but at the same height for all, we would see they performed differently, but also they perfomed differently from the first one of the same bullet. OK now throw into this mix, this is "Long Range Hunting." Is there anyone out there that if you are offered a shot at 200 yards you say, "Wait a second this is too close I need to back back out to 800 yards?" Well your bullet will perform differently at 200 and 800 yards. Yes that means that where it might have performed amazingly well on one distance it was sub par at the other but it could be reversed for a different bullet design all else being equal.
So it is not really the bullets fault if we use it for something it wasn't designed for or in the heat of the moment I forgot and used a target or varmint type thin skinned bullet and then went out and tried to penetrate the shoulder.
I have intentionally not named names up until this point other than the Barnes TTSX 180 gr in 308. They performed very well in Africa and in fact the guide with 20 plus years of experience as a head guide and my PH said they had never seen that many animal go down with no tracking from one hunter. They said they usually had to track one if not several per hunter. Well I have had that type of results from Nosler Accubonds too and Nosler Partitions. On mule deer, audad, moose, whitetail. I am currently probably carrying Hornady SST's in 140 grain 260 AI. The rifle shoots Amax, Berger VLD's, and probably the 142 SMK's the best but it is about 3/4 MOA with the SST's and for my style of shot placement that works very well. I use the 165 gr Accubonds in my 7 mm Rem Mag, and Accubonds in my 270 win, Vmax in all of my 22's but in varying sizes depending on the varmints and the conditions. I shoot 75 grainers from my 22-250 AI when the wind is up a little more. The list goes on but that brings up the next point.
4 BC and just plain out, what does your rifle like the best. There is a great video out of two friends shooting targets starting at 500 yards and firing three shots each and moving out 100 more yards and repeating until reaching 1700 yards. If you watch the video you will notice the number of hits by one of the shooter starts to go down the farther they are out. They were shooting, 6.5 mm 123 gr Scenar at 3020 fps, BC 0.547 and 6mm 115 gr DTAC 3025 fps BC 0.588. Can you guess which one started to miss more as the distance increased? But it really did't make a difference at closer range. See the reoccuring theme?
A lot of bullets would perform well under a lot of circumstances but if you start changing variables beyond the intended scope of design you will start to see performance decrease. "petals will break off" at too high of velocity. But given several hundred more yards of loss of velocity and all else being the same that bullet probably would have performed flawlessly. ( A side note there about some of the comments about the barnes choice of gr in caliber, the only bullet I recovered on the Namibia trip was caught in the offside skin of a large gemsbok bull and it retained its petals and 95% of its weight. If it had been onother configuration than the 180 gr perhaps it would not have been able to. I have had similar retention on Accubonds on slightly lighter animals and hope to say that I have with the SST's soon)
So here is the best part, we all just need to shoot more. We need to practice more and try more loads and try different bullets. My personality actually leads me to wanting just one bullet to load for everything and not have to worry about it any more. So I have to encourage myself to try more and different ideas. I have dropped animals in there tracks with a double lung shot, with Nosler Accubonds. But when you look closer you see there were additional factors. Trauma to the spine as well or to the Aorta, and I misspoke when I said the ascending on my last post it can be the transverse as well or even the descending portion but with where I aim I am hoping to perforate the ascending as it exits the heart. With a heart shot, by the way I saw one study that said a whitetail could still run at least 150 yards. The double lung showed to let them make it less. Still dead either way, in my mind just cover and terrain making a tracking job easier or harder would let me see where one was more adventageous than the other.
So even if we have the "magic bullet" found I would still try new developments and considerations for different hunting scenerios becasue the worst that can happen is you find your load is still the best and have even greater confidence in your gear when you hit the field.
Yes, Dentist to answer that question. And I am still outdoors as much as possible and still doing a lot of farm work and two years ago was personally seeing about 35 different deer stands for myself, my son in law and a few frinds. I have cut that down to about 20. I am still shooting all I can and I was a competative shotgun shooter but had to quit due to hearing loss, I was from before the days of electonic muffs. I have also shot archery competatively.
I could go on and on about anatomy and bullet performance and you see all sorts of responses that seem conflicting on here and it seems like you can not just get a straight answer. For every response of how well it worked another responds about how well it failed. The truth is there is no "magic bullet."
I am sorry but you can not use one bullet for all things unless you are extremely disciplined and an extremely good hunter and shot, so all of you disagreeing pat yourself on the back you must fit into that catagory
.Just a couple of general rules to think about that might help simplify it.
1. Embrace the fact that you might need several loads if you use multiple calibers and hunt multiple species. That just lets you spend more time shooting to do load development.
2. Thin skinned game can be taken with a relatively thin skinned bullet.
Note the "relatively," that is one of the points people are going back and forth over.
2A Where are you wanting to shoot this animal? If you prefer the double lung shot, which is an excellent shot and will, if done correctly always be fatal, then you will benefit from a softer more expansive type bullet than someone like me who prefers, often due to terain, to take out a shoulder and plant the animal asap. This leads to a tiny bit more meat lost initially but with terrain and heavy coyote populations in my local area it saves more meat in the long run.
2B shot placement again, because not every animal comes out and poses like the pictures in your book or your posters you practiced on. My example here goes back to my friend taking his first deer and shooting it quartering away and aiming at the off front leg. The bullet fragmented just as it should but was deflected by the ribs and did not puncture the lungs. It ended up destroying the meat in the shoulder and making for a somewhat difficult follow up.
*So a point for me to remember is, I would have taken that same angle shot, therefor I do not carry varmint type or target type bullets to take game bigger than a coyote. OK someone just had a little anger well up. I am not say you can't, I am just saying I am not disciplined enough to not try that shot and If I cary a little bit tougher bullet it would make it on a deer. But what if it had been an elk. Well then I would beef it up even more, right? (just a side note, later I mention bullets I use, it was a ballistic tip in 130 gr, if I remember right from a 270 win therefor I use an Accubond and it does great for me in my 270)
3 Velocity. There have been so many good points already brought up here and this opens such a big can of worms, how can we simplify this a bit. We just have to know that bullets are designed to work at different "impact pressures", can we agree on that? Lets not think speed for a bit lets just imagine if we layed 10 different bullet designs down, tip up, on our work bench and dropped the same hammer straight down on the tip of each one from the same height. They would behave differently from each other. But if we lined new ones up again and did it but this time we held the hammer much higher but at the same height for all, we would see they performed differently, but also they perfomed differently from the first one of the same bullet. OK now throw into this mix, this is "Long Range Hunting." Is there anyone out there that if you are offered a shot at 200 yards you say, "Wait a second this is too close I need to back back out to 800 yards?" Well your bullet will perform differently at 200 and 800 yards. Yes that means that where it might have performed amazingly well on one distance it was sub par at the other but it could be reversed for a different bullet design all else being equal.
So it is not really the bullets fault if we use it for something it wasn't designed for or in the heat of the moment I forgot and used a target or varmint type thin skinned bullet and then went out and tried to penetrate the shoulder.
I have intentionally not named names up until this point other than the Barnes TTSX 180 gr in 308. They performed very well in Africa and in fact the guide with 20 plus years of experience as a head guide and my PH said they had never seen that many animal go down with no tracking from one hunter. They said they usually had to track one if not several per hunter. Well I have had that type of results from Nosler Accubonds too and Nosler Partitions. On mule deer, audad, moose, whitetail. I am currently probably carrying Hornady SST's in 140 grain 260 AI. The rifle shoots Amax, Berger VLD's, and probably the 142 SMK's the best but it is about 3/4 MOA with the SST's and for my style of shot placement that works very well. I use the 165 gr Accubonds in my 7 mm Rem Mag, and Accubonds in my 270 win, Vmax in all of my 22's but in varying sizes depending on the varmints and the conditions. I shoot 75 grainers from my 22-250 AI when the wind is up a little more. The list goes on but that brings up the next point.
4 BC and just plain out, what does your rifle like the best. There is a great video out of two friends shooting targets starting at 500 yards and firing three shots each and moving out 100 more yards and repeating until reaching 1700 yards. If you watch the video you will notice the number of hits by one of the shooter starts to go down the farther they are out. They were shooting, 6.5 mm 123 gr Scenar at 3020 fps, BC 0.547 and 6mm 115 gr DTAC 3025 fps BC 0.588. Can you guess which one started to miss more as the distance increased? But it really did't make a difference at closer range. See the reoccuring theme?
A lot of bullets would perform well under a lot of circumstances but if you start changing variables beyond the intended scope of design you will start to see performance decrease. "petals will break off" at too high of velocity. But given several hundred more yards of loss of velocity and all else being the same that bullet probably would have performed flawlessly. ( A side note there about some of the comments about the barnes choice of gr in caliber, the only bullet I recovered on the Namibia trip was caught in the offside skin of a large gemsbok bull and it retained its petals and 95% of its weight. If it had been onother configuration than the 180 gr perhaps it would not have been able to. I have had similar retention on Accubonds on slightly lighter animals and hope to say that I have with the SST's soon)
So here is the best part, we all just need to shoot more.
We need to practice more and try more loads and try different bullets. My personality actually leads me to wanting just one bullet to load for everything and not have to worry about it any more. So I have to encourage myself to try more and different ideas. I have dropped animals in there tracks with a double lung shot, with Nosler Accubonds. But when you look closer you see there were additional factors. Trauma to the spine as well or to the Aorta, and I misspoke when I said the ascending on my last post it can be the transverse as well or even the descending portion but with where I aim I am hoping to perforate the ascending as it exits the heart. With a heart shot, by the way I saw one study that said a whitetail could still run at least 150 yards. The double lung showed to let them make it less. Still dead either way, in my mind just cover and terrain making a tracking job easier or harder would let me see where one was more adventageous than the other.So even if we have the "magic bullet" found I would still try new developments and considerations for different hunting scenerios becasue the worst that can happen is you find your load is still the best and have even greater confidence in your gear when you hit the field.
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300 ultra
I re read my post and it was more abrasive than I meant it to be, I can understand your ****ed off ness and apologize.
I have had great luck on deer, elk, bear, antelope with barnes X and TTSX. The 25 caliber 80gr, 30 cal 180 & 165, 270 130 grain, but this year I used the 180 grain interbond in my Blaser R8, 300 win mag and the one animal I shot thru the shoulders, blowing up the heart and it exited dropped like I turned off the switch, now I didnt get an elk but I def want to try this round for cariou and elk next year.
I used 150 grain 30 caliber GMX's to kill 2 black bears and a wolf last year out of my 308, I think with the mono using less weight helps with expansion.
Does anyone have real world experiece with the berger hunting bullets, I was thinking of trying them next year on a bou and mtn goat hunt, but am so impressed with the interbond superformace I thought I might stick with those?
I re read my post and it was more abrasive than I meant it to be, I can understand your ****ed off ness and apologize.
I have had great luck on deer, elk, bear, antelope with barnes X and TTSX. The 25 caliber 80gr, 30 cal 180 & 165, 270 130 grain, but this year I used the 180 grain interbond in my Blaser R8, 300 win mag and the one animal I shot thru the shoulders, blowing up the heart and it exited dropped like I turned off the switch, now I didnt get an elk but I def want to try this round for cariou and elk next year.
I used 150 grain 30 caliber GMX's to kill 2 black bears and a wolf last year out of my 308, I think with the mono using less weight helps with expansion.
Does anyone have real world experiece with the berger hunting bullets, I was thinking of trying them next year on a bou and mtn goat hunt, but am so impressed with the interbond superformace I thought I might stick with those?
I've killed quite a few whitetails in KY with the 150 Berger VLD from my 270, and one buck with my 308 and a 210 VLD. They work fine, even at close distances, less than 100 yards.
No worries Dale. Talk to me more about Caribou when you get a chance. I am looking into it for next year also.
300
Iam going with Jack Hume, he is the person to hunt with for Caribou in Quebec, he has numerous camps and will move you around, you can look at his site at Jack Hume Adventures................I cant wait, Sept 15th I think Iam taking my 270 for this hunt.
D
Iam going with Jack Hume, he is the person to hunt with for Caribou in Quebec, he has numerous camps and will move you around, you can look at his site at Jack Hume Adventures................I cant wait, Sept 15th
I think Iam taking my 270 for this hunt.D
Shootin4fun
Well-Known Member
Has anyone compared the TSX performance on deer, elk, or pigs with Hornady's GMX?
I have shot a hundreds of rounds of Barnes TSX in a couple of calibers while developing accurate loads and testing drop, etc. But I have not hunted with them yet. I am planning a pig hunt here in Calf. and will be depending on the 130gr TSX out of my 270. I have even considered the 85gr TSX out of the 243, considering how hard these bullets are supposed to be. A guide told me a 243 with TSX will punch through their shoulder and go deep just fine.
I also have some GMX on the shelf and am wondering if experience out there tells of better performance over the TSX.
Barnes seem to be the most expensive thing out there and hence "should" perform as good or better than the others. With the current bullet and primer hording that's going on, Barnes and Nosler are the ONLY bullets left on Cabellas or Scheels shelves in Reno. (no lead free zone up here either) Its weird to see all Hornady and Sierra bins empty in ALL calibers.
I have shot a hundreds of rounds of Barnes TSX in a couple of calibers while developing accurate loads and testing drop, etc. But I have not hunted with them yet. I am planning a pig hunt here in Calf. and will be depending on the 130gr TSX out of my 270. I have even considered the 85gr TSX out of the 243, considering how hard these bullets are supposed to be. A guide told me a 243 with TSX will punch through their shoulder and go deep just fine.
I also have some GMX on the shelf and am wondering if experience out there tells of better performance over the TSX.
Barnes seem to be the most expensive thing out there and hence "should" perform as good or better than the others. With the current bullet and primer hording that's going on, Barnes and Nosler are the ONLY bullets left on Cabellas or Scheels shelves in Reno. (no lead free zone up here either) Its weird to see all Hornady and Sierra bins empty in ALL calibers.
Ive shot the Barnes TSX and TTSX out of 243, 270, 300 win mag, 300 wsm and have used them to take deer, elk, hogs, Nothing was lost, if you put the shot where it needs to be there is zero problems, they dont drop them in their tracks, well unless you break both shoulders, spined it or head shot it.
people make **** poor shots or spray and pray and hope they get something and when the animal runs off they blame the bullet.
Ive used the GMX in 308 for 2 canadian black bears and one wolf, worked just like the TSX, little cheaper and were accurate for me.
My favorite bullet thus far is the Hornady Inter Bonds in the superformance series but I will be using the 85 gr TSX in my 243 for goats in new mexico if that tells ya anything
people make **** poor shots or spray and pray and hope they get something and when the animal runs off they blame the bullet.
Ive used the GMX in 308 for 2 canadian black bears and one wolf, worked just like the TSX, little cheaper and were accurate for me.
My favorite bullet thus far is the Hornady Inter Bonds in the superformance series but I will be using the 85 gr TSX in my 243 for goats in new mexico if that tells ya anything
Varmint Hunter
Well-Known Member
I shoot more whitetails than everything else combined, except groundhogs of course.
I tried the Barnes TSX bullets in a custom 7STW and found that lung shots imparted so little shock that the deer often just walked away like they weren't hit. Naturally, they didn't go far before piling up. I never recovered a single X bullet from a whitetail.
I also hunted with the 162 A-Max which killed faster and occasionally dropped them on the spot. IMO, they are an excellent choice for whitetail at any distance.
Lately I've been shooting the 180 Berger VLD from a custom 7WSM. So far I am very impressed with the terminal performance. Shoulder or frontal shots drop deer like rocks and they appear to die instantly.
Barnes bullets may be a better choice for larger/heavier game but I haven't had the opportunity to try and probably won't bother.
I'm currently working on a 338 RUM load for a fall moose hunt. I think I'll skip the fragile and mono-metal bullets and just go with the 250gr Accubond. The 300 Accubonds didn't shoot too bad but it seems like a bit of overkill.
I tried the Barnes TSX bullets in a custom 7STW and found that lung shots imparted so little shock that the deer often just walked away like they weren't hit. Naturally, they didn't go far before piling up. I never recovered a single X bullet from a whitetail.
I also hunted with the 162 A-Max which killed faster and occasionally dropped them on the spot. IMO, they are an excellent choice for whitetail at any distance.
Lately I've been shooting the 180 Berger VLD from a custom 7WSM. So far I am very impressed with the terminal performance. Shoulder or frontal shots drop deer like rocks and they appear to die instantly.
Barnes bullets may be a better choice for larger/heavier game but I haven't had the opportunity to try and probably won't bother.
I'm currently working on a 338 RUM load for a fall moose hunt. I think I'll skip the fragile and mono-metal bullets and just go with the 250gr Accubond. The 300 Accubonds didn't shoot too bad but it seems like a bit of overkill.
