Originally Posted by Firestorm
Originally Posted by bigwhoop
Originally Posted by ingwe
Originally Posted by Mule Deer
I'd like to see the elk shoulder that could stop a 210 .338 Partition.




Sign me up for that too! laugh


I'd like to ask that "guide" about Partitions being called "trackers"?
Sign me up for a front row seat.


It really doesn't matter what all of you believe to me. This is what happened and I found the bullet where I said I did. I was there, you weren't. Obviously the bull was dead from the second shot so I was able to recover the first bullet. Time and place- Selway-Bitterroot wilderness area in Idaho 1985. Geez, someone doesn't agree with your opinions of a bullets performance and the insults start. How about-"odd, it shouldn't do that", but no, here come the "bs" claims. Now, the next bull I shot was with a 250 gr. Grand Slam, and both shoulders were broken. Kinda what one would expect from a .338.
The guide service was Moose Creek Outfitters, now long defunct.


Firestorm -

Your post has certainly justified your user name!

I have no experience with the 210 NP on elk, but I would have to regard your description as well out of the ordinary for what I would expect from that bullet.

Personally, I have very few bullets recovered from elk, as I tend to use 250 grain bullets (NP and Swift A-Frames) in my .338. Elk really do not slow these bullets down.

I am prepared to believe that a Nosler Partition might not work as expected in some isolated instances.

In the 1980s, while hunting on the ranch where my friend Finn Aagaard lived, my wife shot a small whitetail with the 130 grain Nosler Partition from a .270 Winchester at about 75 yards with no obstacles between her and the deer.

After a three hour search we finally found the deer dead, well hidden underneath some small brush. The deer had *two* entrance wounds maybe nine inches or so apart (hard to remember exactly now). That 130 grain Nosler Partition apparently came apart in mid-air.

Now I have used that bullet and other Nosler Partitions quite a bit. Never before, nor since, did I experience anything like that. I regard Partitions as one of the most reliable bullets anyone could use. I regard that experience as a strange anomaly, and in no way typical. It was a one-off, strange bullet performance, and that is all.

I have also seen a bull elk hit at about 45 yards with a 175 grain Nosler Partition from a 7mm Rem Mag that ran about a quarter of a mile over dry ground. There were no more than two small drops of blood over that distance, but we tracked it by the disturbance on the ground made by the running hooves. It was dead when we found it, having apparently died in mid-stride. It was a straight through shot that hit both lungs, but no bone. Apparently the bullet simply did not expand enough to produce a quick kill.

Both of these instances are not typical, and stand out as glaring inconsistencies in a lifetime of using Nosler Partitions.

I can believe you maybe had something unusual happen with the 210 NP on your elk, but there is no way on earth for a guide to be justified in calling Partitions "trackers", unless his clients were not putting the bullets in the right place.

There are bullets that will drop elk faster than Partitions on average. But when the dead elk is typically found anywhere from zero to a hundred yards away, it doesn't take much tracking skill to find the elk.

Nosler Partitions remain one of the most reliable bullets made, and I do not find them inferior in any way.