The ballistic tip that turned into shrapnel was a 150 grain 7mm RM with an MV of about 3000 fps on a 250 yard quartering away shot. It contacted 2 ribs and made a palm sized entry wound then the fragments pierced portions of the near side lung. The bright spray in the snow every 20yards apart at most was great the first 200 yards as he head toward the trail down the mountain. The next 300 yards after he crossed the trail had me doubting my marksmanship and wondering if this really was lung blood. When the trail quit a little shy of 600 Yards from bullet impact he was done and drained.
The entry was exactly where i had aimed trying to hit the off side shoulder. These weren't new bullets but shouldn't have been too old a lot either. Since my switch to ttsx i haven't found any bullets but I have found dead elk.
I took a bull a week ago with a nosler 150 NBT at 80 yards. I was using a 280AI and pushing it at 3050 fps. had perfect performance, second shot went through off side shoulder leaving a 1" hole. it wasn't needed but he was still on his feet after walking 4 steps after the first shot, so I put another into him for good measure.
just goes to show that different things can happen with essentially the same load, regardless of the bullet make. I'm glad my experience was different from yours.
What it shows is that different things can happen with the same cup-and-core bullet under similar circumstances, not bullets of different make or construction. To me the difference in demonstrated performance suggests the bullet is bumping up against or exceeding the limits of its performance envelope, which is determined by its construction.
In 20+ years of my using 160g Speer Grand Slam bullets in my 7mm RM, none were recovered and none fragmented inside an animal. When I finally did recover one it had destroyed both shoulder joints of a 5x5 bull elk and stopped under the off-side hide, still in the bone but exposed with over 70% weight retention. In the 10 years or so I’ve been using Barnes MRX and TTXS bullets from .257”/100g to .308”/180g the story is the pretty much the same – no signs of fragmentation and none recovered, exits even when shooting lengthwise through mule deer, signs of good expansion every time and as many DRT as there were that took short walks with no long runs, at ranges from 20 yards to 400. (My antelope this year went maybe 35 yards, the longest any animal we’ve shot with the MRX or TTSX has gone. 140g TTTSX, 7mm RM, 373 yards.) North Fork bullets recovered from game, water and dirt have been remarkably consistent in appearance with excellent weight retention and good expansion even below 1800fps impact velocity in animals and about 1200fps in dirt.
If you go back to my post showing pictures of recovered bullets (https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/10556410/Re:_Bullet_selection#Post10556410), the second to last photo shows a pair of 225g Hornady SST bullets fired from my .338WM into water. One fragmented, the other did not but did lose its jacket. Penetration was 3 and 4 water jugs respectively. Like your example, this shows the same bullet can perform differently under nearly identical circumstances. Compare the SST bullets with the 225g AccuBond, which held together better and penetrated 6 jugs. Based on this evidence, I reserve the SST’s for practice and the AccuBond for hunting. Neither elk I’ve shot with my .338WM/225g AccuBond survived the experience and the wound tracks showed good expansion at ranges of 262 and 487 yards (calculated at about 2424fps and 2165 fps respectively).
Considering the choices offered by the OP (150g Nosler Partition or 140g Hornady BTSP) and my experience with a 7mm 162g Hornady BTSP (less than 48% weight retention at ~110 yards, see picture in post referenced above), I would strongly recommend the Partition. Elk aren’t that easy to come by and the consistent performance (good expansion and penetration) offered by Partitions would be cheap insurance.
Congrats on your bull. I was planning on using my virgin .280 Rem for my elk hunt this year but after taking an antelope with it a couple of weekends ago (140g TTSX) am going with a .30-06/150g Accubond with the no-longer-a-virgin .280 Rem/140g AccuBond as backup.
