Originally Posted by JMR40
Originally Posted by Gringo Loco
The video stated the shot was 397 yards with a 140 gr TTSX from a 280AI. Putting that into RCBS.load's ballistic calculator and assuming a muzzle velocity of 2970 fps puts it at about 2130 fps when it struck. That's faster than the minimum velocity I've seen for Barnes TTSX to open up, but like BC30 says, it was a high lung shot and missed any heavy bones to help it open.

This explains it to me. Most bullets work if used right. Nothing wrong with TTSX's, but it was the wrong bullet for the job in this case. Copper isn't a good long range bullet. Bullet speed was too slow at that range to get any expansion.

The high lung shot placement is what I believe to be the primary reason for the time it took the buck to expire. I probably could have worded my original comment better than I did but I didn't mean to imply that the bullet didn't open since it was traveling significantly faster than 2000 fps which is why I pointed out the velocities to begin with. I meant to imply that maybe it didn't open as fully as it could have if it had gone through some bones. Or perhaps it did open sufficiently, but not before it had penetrated a fair amount of distance before doing so. Did the bullet punch through a rib or slip between them on the way in? We lack some details really. I have no experience shooting Barnes bullets of any stripe to date and would take Mule Deer's word for it that they open nicely at 2000 fps. His description of lung tissue in his earlier comment describing smaller blood vessels and lower air pressure at the fringes of the lungs make a whole lot of sense to me.

I had a somewhat similar shot on a whitetail buck last season. It was similar in that the buck started quartering away to his right just as I pulled the trigger on my .358 Win BLR with a Hornady 200 gr SP over IMR-3031 at about 40 yards range. The buck ran about the same distance of 40 yards before piling up with no blood on the ground until he fell and crawled about 6 feet more into a little depression underneath a log where I found him. I was disappointed that there was no exit wound but I can't say the bullet didn't do its job. The bullet entered towards the rear of the rib cage on the buck's left side like the subject shot of this thread, but it was centered, not high. It shattered the offside scapula and lodged in the ball socket without penetrating it. Retained weight was 149 grains. See pics of the recovered bullet below. I'm thinking a Barnes bullet would have exited in my case.

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Attached Images
35-200 SP Interlock - side.jpg (88.06 KB, 939 downloads)
35-200 SP Interlock - frontal.jpg (87.1 KB, 938 downloads)