My very first experience with Barnes bullets was (IIRC) with the 300 gr X in .416 cal out of my Ruger #1 in .416 Rigby, back in the mid 90's. I bought them because they were the lightest .416" bullet I could easily find at the time. Looking at ballistic tables and loading data, I found a couple of loads using that bullet that basically duplicated the trajectory of one of my favorite 7mm Rem Mag loads, at around 2880 to 2900 fps, so I worked up to that load. I had a Leupold Vari-X III 1.75 - 6X scope on the rifle. I wanted to shoot it out to 400, maybe 600 yds, just for grins, so my son and I went to our farm, where I had a 600 yd shooting range.
Arriving at our range, I started to get my stuff out of the truck, while my son (about 8 yrs old) got out with his binoculars and started looking downrange. Suddenly, with a hushed but excited voice he says "Daddy! There's that big wild dog you've been after!" Sure enough, right past the 400yd target stand was this huge, male, long-haired, black & tan, feral dog that we'd been having trouble with. It had killed and partially eaten some of our neighbor's calves, had stalked one of my sister-in-laws, had attacked or killed one of their dogs plus killed some neighbor's dogs, and had tried to attack one of my nieces, but my brother managed to protect her. The dog weighed around 175 lbs and looked like a monstrous cross between a St. Bernard and a Rottweiler.
I quickly got ready to shoot and aimed at the dog. Dog was standing there looking at us. He sensed danger, whirled around before I could get a round off, and started running straight downrange away from us. The rifle was sighted about 2 1/2" high at 100 yds. I knew where I would hold if I was shooting my 7 mag, hoped that this load really would duplicate its trajectory, put a little daylight over the dog's head, and squeezed off the round.
That was the first time I'd fired that rifle without a bag of shot between my shoulder and the butt of the rifle. The recoil was rather....uh....robust!....and sharp! My son yelled "WOW Daddy!! It did an endo!" I quickly reloaded and watched it to make sure it was dead.
The dog wasn't just merely dead, but really quite sincerely dead.... His body was pointed back up-range, so he really had done an endo. There was blood, fur, and canine clockwork splattered for 20 to 25 feet all over the grass and weeds downrange of the dog. The entrance hole was about an inch below his anus and about a half inch left of center. The exit hole was high, about in the centerline of his chest and was ripped up into the base of his neck. I could have easily shoved my fist up into it. I had had my doubts that the X would expand, but I was wrong. That 300 gr X bullet had obviously expanded very well traveling lengthwise through over three feet of dog.
Last edited by Skeezix; 03/14/24. Reason: Corrected bullet info error & brevity
