Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 150 Barnes TTSX

I had one blow a football sized patch of hair off a buck one day. It was as if someone cut a patch of hide out. Not a single piece of that 165gr NBT from my Ruger #1 30-06 in Federal Primeum Ammo penetrated any meat. Totally exploded on the hide. Now granted that was 15 years ago and supposedly they have beefed up the NBT. That and the bullet proof buck was the all mighty Columbia Blacktail. The deer died. But it was a partition from my friends rifle. I still have't conned myself into giving the new improved BT a try. Funny how a guy has one failure and all faith is lost when clearly so many have great success/performance with "loser" bullets.

Sakohunter264,

You picked a hell off a place to down a bull!! Nice Moose!

I'm not a big fan of caveats when it comes to arguing which is better. Kind of takes the wind out of your argument.


I'm not exactly anti TSX or TTSX. I use them in some guns. But I don't buy into the hype and usually expect a longer tracking job.

Using other people's experience lends your opinion zero credibility. Welcome to the "do nothing gang"

I think you mean BT not TTSX?

I have. I guess it's a mediocre bullet

Nope, no caveat. It's pretty simple, and applies to any bullet up to the task- you want DRT, break heavy bone. Period. It's not like the TTSX won't kill unless bone is hit...

The TTSX kills quickly enough with lung shots. See my moose pic above. He traveled about 45 yards and collapsed. Shot a bunch of mulies and WT deer with nothing but lung shots using X/TSX/TTSX bullets. The TTSX is the quickest killer of the bunch.

I don't buy into the hype, either. The TTSX is simply a fantastic bullet, akin to the PT. It's not magic. But I feel some responsibility to say something when the "anti-hype" starts flying around

Disagree. It's not as good as first-hand experience, but it does say something. People quote JB all the time, and it does add some credibility to the discussion.

Bob - I can't explain it. The hole is slightly bigger than caliber size - you can't put your pinky finger in it. Interestingly I had a bad experience with a 7RM and 140 TSX the year before. Deer shot through the lungs no bone hit and it ran off like I missed. I found it but it looked like it was shot with a field tip arrow, just like the the second deer I shot with the 25-06 the following year. I haven't used them since.

I do believe they were working the bugs out because I'm not the only one that experienced similar results with the TSX in those years. I'd really like to try the LRX in my 270 but every time I think back to watching that deer die over a 5 minute period, I come to my senses and buy more Partitions. I've heard of Partition failures but have never seen one in 40 years of hunting. Most of the guys I hunt with use Nosler products and most use Partitions. These guys hunt all over the globe and shoot 10-50 animals per year. Never a bullet issue. Some poor shot issues on occasion but not the bullets fault when you misplace a shot.

I shoot mostly Barnes TTSX bullets. I have yet to shoot an elk though. Plenty of white tails and a couple mule deer. I reload for a 25/06, 260 Rem, 7mm mag, and 338 win mag. I can not get any of those rifles to shoot a partition bullet worth a darn. And have really struggled with the accubonds. Finally have the 25/06 shooing accubonds and the 338 shoots them ok, but all my rifles shoot the TTSX bullets MUCH better. The only bullet I ever recovered from a Barnes was the TSX. Had a double doe tag, six ran by, shot one that stopped to look and then shot another as it ran away. Yup thats right, as it ran away. Shot thru the back leg ham and ended up cross body just under the skin in the opposite front shoulder. Bullet traveled approx. 26-28 " Perfect expansion just like you see in the Barnes adds. Shot a nice mule deer this past fall with the 260 with a LRX. Only a .264 hole in and double that on the out side, just what I expected. My buddy shot his with a BT in a 270. Tons of blood shot meat, what a mess, mine hardly any, both hit in the same area, both the same range, both dead. Shoot what you are comfortable shooting and enjoy life.

JB has had some if the same observations as I have had......

Personally, I've never had a NBT "fail"... every one expanded, penetrated and did the job. I started using them in the 1980's. The newest BG incarnations have wonderfully thick jacket bases.

OTOH, I've had and seen many expanding mono's "fail"... ie, they didn't open, but acted like a FMJ.

The red-herring the mono-fans use is; "at what point in the animals death did the bullet fail?" This is a disingenuous argument that misses the point intentionally. If a bullet fails to do what it is designed to do, it failed, full stop.

If I wanted to shoot an elk with a FMJ, I'd have just bought and used them, much more cheaply... and yeah, FMJ's will kill.

I'm of the opinion TSX/TTSX's fail far more often than the TB's think (true believers).

But like the guys said, use what makes you happy. It's all fun and games anyway.

Yes, and JJHack has been one of Barnes' biggest advocates. My only point is that referring to the experience of others can serve a purpose, especially when most NA hunters are limited in the number of big-game critters they can test bullets on every year.

Taking advantage of the experience of other credible sources only makes sense.

If scientists couldn't build on the experience of other scientists, but could only rely on the results of their own studies, science would progress slowly, indeed.

what would be the point of a forum like this if we could not learn from the experience of others??

I absolutely want to hear from those who hunt hundreds of animals each year. I may not always agree for one reason or another, but their insight is always considered. FWIW, the PHs during my safari were luke warm regarding monos. To say they were curious about a small 338 shooting 160s is an understatement. The lack of need to track and massive internal damage changed their opinions. However, given their druthers, they still prefer a heavy for caliber, tough bonded bullet launched at moderate speeds. In fact one thought a 225 swift A-Frame launched at ~2400-2500 would be a perfect plains game cartridge for the area we hunted.

Inconsistent and bad experiences with the original 'X' bullets (in the blue coated 'XLC' version) left me unwilling to try the TSX on game, even though they were accurate in my rifles. Results with the MRX and newer TTSX have been 100% positive with as many or more antelope/deer/elk straight-down DRTs in my group as not, with no animals going more than a few yards at most.

I suspect that much of the belief that the TTSX do not kill as fast as copper/lead bullets is a hangover from the X and TSX days and a tendency to lump all monos into the same basket performance-wise. That said, and in spite of only positive TTSX experiences in my group, there are still the occasional lingering doubts in the back of my mind. Brad's recovered bullet is one reason. Witnessing two tips jam up the bolt in a friend's rifle is another, although that was largely his fault.

Its not a hangover. I HAVE seen it with my own eyes and I am not basing this on one or two kills.

B: JWP475 on here commented during a phone conversation that it takes frontal area to "smash" and break bones on game animals. I never gave that much thought, and he may have been talking heavy animals but the comment made me go...."Mmmmm".

What you might have seen with the 25/06 Barnes shoulder shot is the lack of fragmenting and smaller frontal area of yje 25 cal slug. Which also maybe points out the limitations of smaller calibers in generating wound channels compared to larger calibers.

We like to think there's not much difference there, but....I think it matters at some levels.

As to the 7mm/140 TTSX I have not used any Barnes on any animals, I have too many Bitterroots and Partitions to bother.But IME a heart/lung shot with about any expanding bullet has the potential to produce a "runner".

Years back I handed a companion my rifle as we slithered within 400 yards of a pronghorn buck,which was a target of opportunity. Load was a 130 BBC at 3100,hit was a solid 1/3 of the way up the chest. The bullet expanded, cut the heart and exited off side ribs,and exited with a nickel-sized hole. Hardly dramatic on such a light animal with a bullet clearly designed to be used on elk or grizzly if you want.Much like a Barnes from what I;ve seen.

But the pronghorn staggered in a small circle and collapsed.

Years later, same load, I crawled within 350 yards of a big mule deer and shot it broadside through the lungs. It sagged, staggered, and spurted downhill 30 feet or so. A second shot through the onside shoulder back into the lungs dumped him on his nose. Oh....BTW both those bullets exited again with those nickel sized holes.That seems as Barnes-like as you can get as well.

What's all this prove? I dunno but like someone said if we are going to use lung shots we have to expect animals to run off to some degree, and won't get many DRT type kills without involving the running gear as well as the vitals.

Bob,

Interesting idea. Just a bit of theorizing on my part here, but I would agree with the well-established notion that soft tissue suffers greater damage from being penetrated by a projectile with greater frontal area. Hard and brittle materials, however, behave differently than soft/elastic material.

Soft, flexible material can absorb concussive shock without permanent damage much better than can hard, inelastic objects. Consequently, these soft types of materials need to experience more direct contact in order to be permanently damaged, as where harder objects can be destroyed by indirect contact, due to the concussive force transmitted through the material's close and rigidly arranged molecules/atoms. To illustrate, if you can imagine taking a small piece of 2x4 lumber, setting it on the ground, and then placing a steel punch in the middle and hitting it with a hammer. The only place on the 2x4 that retains permanent damage is the small (call it 1/4") circle directly underneath where the punch was. The wood molecules are loosely arranged and with weak enough inter-molecular bonds, that the impact force from the punch was absorbed without the surrounding molecules being affected. In order to damage more wood, we need to hit a greater amount of its surface (the head of the hammer, swung with equal force, impacting the 2x4 directly would accomplish this). Now, if we do the same thing to a rock that is the same size as our hypothetical piece of 2x4, the entire rock would break apart when we hit it with our punch and hammer. This is because the molecules in the stone are tightly and rigidly arranged, and the material is very hard and brittle, so when the punch hits a small area on the surface of the rock, the impact force is transmitted throughout the molecular structure, so the entire rock is subject to permanent damage. In fact, we're more likely to fracture the rock by hitting it with the punch, as opposed to hitting it directly with the hammer, using the same swing force, because by focusing the force into a smaller surface area, we're increasing the pressure applied on the rock.

The same principle would apply to bone versus soft tissue, such as skeletal and smooth muscle. For muscle to be permanently damaged, it needs to be impacted directly, or at least be very close to direct contact. Thick bone on the other hand, can shatter from a focused impact several inches away. A bullet doesn't need a large frontal area to accomplish this, it just needs to have enough pressure and momentum to fracture the hard barrier, and the thicker the bone, the more momentum is required. Momentum and pressure are why the narrow, but heavy and long 6.5mm and 7mm bullets were such good penetrators and bone breakers 100 years ago, before other calibers caught up, and why a 160gr 7mm bullet at a certain velocity is more likely to break bone than a 160gr .338 bullet of equal construction and at the same velocity.

It's funny how our eyes can see such different things. Just goes to show that there are very few absolutes in this game.

In the last couple of years I've seen a number of lung-shot animals, from deer to elk and moose, hit with TTSX bullets of varying weights and calibers, and all have exhibited massive internal damage, with none going very far at all. I've also seen several animals shot through the lungs with non-mono bullets over that same time period, and if I had to guess, I would say that the animals shot with non-mono bullets traveled further after the shot, on average. I'm by no means brand loyal, but I've personally seen good things from Barnes bullets, as far as wound channels go, especially the TTSX/LRX line.