HMMM, ok we have unopened TSX's which prove?????? how about what happened to the animal? Obviously they were recovered from a dead critter, pictures with no explanation is very subject to my B.S. meter, and man is it pinned!
So it's okay even when the bullet never passes into/through the vitals as long as you can shoot well enough/(are lucky enough) to cut a major artery with said bullet? (Or can manage to get a second bullet into the animal?)
I was an advocate and defender of mono-coppers when many people still thought they weren't accurate enough to hunt with, and JJHACK was giving his view of them which were sometimes virtually opposite the ones presented here. (And even then I was put off by the fact that no two boxes of 150 XFBs could be counted on to work, shoot, or even look the same. And that factored into being the last straw for me.)
But Barnes bullets...the monos anyway, are bullets which many folks find it difficult to be objective about (not saying that I am either.) But long before they ever came on the market it was well known that even some of the fine varmint bullets of the pinched hollow point design did not have the same reliability of expansion as their otherwise designed brethren did.
But there are a lot of good bullets which will do the job. (Do we realize how lucky we are?) So, though the X design does do a heck of a job in many circumstances, there are others which, though perhaps less spectacular or maybe a bit more messy, can also do as well and sometimes better in terms of reliability. And some are better suited to parts of the range of use that is demanded of bullets these days. So, use what you like, but it is almost certain that when a Barnes or two goes sour, then you stop and think... and at that point, the honeymoon is over. And yes, there are still Partitions (and Swift's answer to many of the complaints about that design) as well as a host of newer good answers.
