Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 150 Barnes TTSX

Jordan: Good thoughts and helpful explanation! I went hunting around for recovered bullets but could not find my stash real quick so am stuck with what's on the computer.

Anyway I have posted this before but here's a bullet that smashed up a lot of bone on a 9ft+ brown bear and came to rest against the off side hide. It was a royal train wreck. Maybe this illustrates your point. I can't see a Barnes that holds its frontal area being much different.








Edited to Add: In line with your analogy, I am thinking that bwinter's 25/06 hit to the shoulder with the 100 gr Barnes represented more of a small area "center punch" to the bone without enough frontal area to radiate damage outward?

Couple days ago I went pig hunting. Shot one in the head so that doesn't count. I was planning to shot the other one in the head but it started turning away so I fired at the back edge of the rib cage. The Barnes LRX 6.5 127 grainer devastated the lungs and exited in the front part of the off shoulder. The entrance and exit holes in the skin were caliber size. The interesting information came immediately inside the skin on the entrance side. There was a hole at the back of the rib cage about 3" diameter. The exit shoulder looked undamaged except for the small hole in it. Not too far from the exit hole was one of the petals and near the entrance hole were two more petals.

The average muzzle velocity runs 3,315 feet per second. The pig was at most forty yards away. It dropped at the shot. After a couple seconds it got up and ran no more than four or five steps and went down for the count. A cleaver person can tell us the approximate impact velocity.

Exactly. In bwinter's pic you can see the cracks in the bone radiating outward from the hole. The bone there is thin enough to be fairly flexible and soft, and behave somewhat like soft tissue. If the bullet had impacted thicker/heavier bone like the humerus, chances are the bone would have shattered, even given equal bullet performance.

My buddy shot a cow elk last year using 06 with 150 ttsx. No bullet recovered.
I have two Bulls with 180tsx out of 06 and no bullet recovered.
I went down to 168ttsx as these retain almost 100% of it weight.
I think 150 would have been fine and I wouldn't go more than that in 308.
Here is how I see it
308-150gr
30/06-168
300 win -180

HORSESHIT. The TTSX is arguably the bullet of choice on safaris nowadays. Safaris, you know where lost or wounded trophies can cost you a bundle. If you like cup and core bullets, that's great, only don't try to tell the rest of us, some with a bit of experience on nonsensical blanket statements like that.

I've only shot 9 things with TTSXs, but every critter died within sight. I don't see how it's possible that copper and lead kill faster "by a wide margin." Internal damage with a fast moving mono is tremendous.

Horseshit, indeed!!!!

If more Internet hunters would actually go hunting for real game once in a while, they might actually be qualified to comment on such things as bullet performance. After shooting dozens of critters. And hitting them in vital spots. Over a lifetime of hunting.

Barnes TSX and TTSX are all I use anymore for hunting, precisely due to a lot of experience using them, on game from little Springbok to Water Buffalo, Sable, Wildebeest, Lion, and loads of NA game.

The list of bullets used looks like this:

.257 Roberts and .257 Weatherby: 100 gr. Barnes TTSX
.280 Rem and .280 RCBS Imp: 140 gr. Barnes TTSX
.30-06: 150 gr. and 165 gr. Barnes TSX
.300 Wby. Mag: 165 gr. Barnes TSX and TTSX
.375 Ruger: 250 gr. Barnes TTSX and 270 gr. TSX

All of these loads have been used very successfully on game by myself for years, and I guarantee I would not be using them if "they simply did not kill as fast as lead and copper slugs and by a wide margin".

I am working on some 168 Nosler ETip's for my 300 Wby. Speeds look good at around 3350. Never taken an animal with an ETip, so I figure it is time to try them out. If the accuracy is there, I think they will open, maintain the frontal area and penetrate well. I plan on shooting them out a few 100 yards this year just to see what they look like. Used a few other Barnes in the past and they have been pretty decent, mainly the TSX in the 300 Win and the 225 in the 35 Whelen. Both did pretty well, but I didn't like how they would break up on bone so easily. Just a nit pick, never lost an animal with one.

Like you, I'm not basing my judgment of the TTSX (and no longer available MRX) on "one or two kills". My group has been using the MRX and TTSX since they became available and as yet have as many or more straight-down DRTs than not and no animal has run more than a few steps.

This cow from 2010 probably had the longest run post-encounter with an MRX or TTSX. In this case it was a 180g MRX. She made it about 10 steps and that is probably generous. The cow was right at 400 yards and the exit is the dark red spot right behind the front leg .


Here are some pictures of the 4x4 mulie buck I took the same year, also with a 180g MRX. Neither the entrance nor the exit holes in the hide were very large. but the insides were a mess. Steps taken: 0.

Exit side first:


Entrance side with approximately a quarter-sized entrance hole:


Exit side again showing much larger exit through flesh than hide:


The other two mulies I've taken with MRX/TTSX also went straight down as have, I think, every antelope my group has taken with them.

While the numbers of animals we've taken with MRX/TTSX aren't huge, we've found them to be very effective with 100% positive experiences. More importantly they haven't disappointed on the first shot as some other bullets have done (a bad omen statistically). Exit wounds may not be as large as with cup-and-core bullets but they have more cutting edge length and internals have always been pretty well destroyed with massive internal bleeding.

Bighorn,

Have shot more than "dozens of critters," and been standing beside other people when an nearly equal amount were killed, partly due to having participated in lots of cull hunts (often specifically for bullet testing) on four continents.

Among the other notes I've made on bullet performance on every big game animal I've killed or seen killed in 50 years, during the past 25 years (when those culls took place) I noted how far animals traveled before falling after double-lung hits.

TTSX's are great bullets, as are similar "petal-type" bullets, but animals of all sizes averaged traveling about 2-1/2 times as far when shot with them as animals lung-shot with what many call "target" bullets like Berger VLD's. In fact, petal-type bullets were indeed the slowest-killing of all bullets used. This doesn't mean animals always go a long ways, since often they drop right there, just that on average they go farther.

And if you want to see REAL internal destruction, use those lighter-constructed bullets. Everybody who thought their TSX's (or whatever other bullet) did massive internal damage has commented on the first animal they saw opened up after being shot with a VLD or MatchKing or Scenar. And the universal comment was something like "OMG."

Mule Deer,

The most devastation I saw on any animal was with a .300 Win Mag. For some reason I don't remember I fired a Hornady target bullet at a deer. I think it was a 168 grainer, but don't remember. I do remember the velocity was 3,117 feet per second. I was shooting five days a weeks at a 100 yard target and guessed the range at about 40% farther than the 100 yard target.

What I most likely will remember the rest of my life is seeing a scapular about forty feet up in the air. The exit hole was 5" diameter with shiny bits of bullet no larger than a BB and some were smaller. I could see almost to the entrance hole. It dropped so fast I thought I missed when I saw two or three deer running away. I didn't realize what I saw in the air was the near side scapula until I saw the slice in the hide on its back.

I don't think there's a bullet out there that can consistently do as much internal damage as the VLD.

Yet another blasphemer.

The scientific method sure sucks if you're a true believer...

Are not what most folks think of when they think of cup and core bullets. How about if we add in bullets like Accubonds or Game Kings?

Here's a 150g AccuBond exit for you. Nephew's first antelope, shot with a .30-06.






[Edited to add...]

Here's what the AccuBond did to the ribs:



That kind of damage might be acceptable for larger game but IMO it is needlessly excessive for antelope.

Son-in-law shot one head-on using a .30-06/168g A-MAX. It raked the strap on the left side, destroying much of the strap and left ham.

And here is one of mine from the same year, 2010, taken with a .257 Roberts and a 110g AccuBond. Less damage but not my much.



I think I'll stick to the TTSX for antelope. They seem to drop just as fast, or so close we haven't noticed any difference, with most going straight down.

Interesting that you're judging meat damage with bullets placed right through the middle of a bunch of meat and bone.

Have generally found that an expanding bullet placed through the shoulders and spine of an animal weighing approximately 100 pounds results in a bunch of meat damage. And that includes plenty of antelope taken with all sorts of bullets, including TTSX's.

I've only shot a couple dozen animals with monos (coyotes, whitetail, elk) at ranges from 110-725 yards, but have shot many more with soft points, Power Points, match bullets (SMKs, Hornady AMAX, etc.), NBT, etc... The longest recovery I've ever had or known of within my group of hunting partners was on a 90lb whitetail doe shot with a 308/168SMK. When I finally found her 200 yards away from impact location, her remaining organs were hanging outside of her chest/body through a 6" diameter hole. Truly bizarre.

I've been extremely pleased with the killing ability of TTSX and LRX bullets including the 308/150, 300WSM/168, and 260/127. That said, I'd agree that deer, for example, will often make it a half-dozen steps from the impact site before going down. The 300WSM/168 TTSX is a really "hard" combo, especially on small whitetail. Most of the deer I've shot with that combo (half dozen) have died within feet of impact location. One small doe made it about 35 yards to the edge of the woods and then slid down a ravine a bit further, though. She was my longest recovery with a monometal.

All that said, the 7mm-08 with a 120 NBT is like having the hand of the Almighty crush a deer in an instant, though. Never had any of the many I shot with that combo make it more than a body length. Truly spectacular. However... I never had a single one exit. We're talking 120lb broadside whitetail here. I'll gladly take a 10-20 yard recovery from a monometal instead of a 3-yard "recovery" from an NBT due to the insurance the mono gives me from the ability to penetrate at any angle. Nothing wrong with either bullet, but I can't find the downside to Barnes (etc.) so far.

Jorge, I will bet you ten bucks I have shot more critters with mono metals than you have.
I stand by my statement.

And to the top one more time...

I didn't need John to tell me the below is true, as I've seen it many times myself. But I think John's seen more game shot with mono's them than me, and I know he's a keen and fair observer, so I put more weight in his observations than those with a predisposition towards "belief."

I would present that illustrating a 7mm 140 grain bullet on large game a more direct comparison to a 165 grain 308 diameter bullet. They will have similar sectional densities. A 125 grain 7mm would be closer to a 150 grain 308. I don't think 125 grain is offered.