Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 150 Barnes TTSX

I do not have the experience to come to any definitive conclusions. But I have found a 338cal mono going pretty fast drops things fast enough, such that any faster is really irrelevant. Dropping within sight is fast enough for me. It leaves the inside looking like soup. The only one I've recovered was 3/4" across. I would not expect the same degree of destruction with skinnier bullets. The mono nearly always makes two holes and doesn't care if none is hit as well. But what seals the deal with me, and one particular rifle, is the TTSX (two different weights) shoots the best, by a significant margin. Nosler BTs, Partitions and Accubonds go from ok, to terrible. When I get frustrated I shoot a few TTSXs and all is well again. In different rifles, I may come to different conclusions. I will shoot different bullets just for fun, as I used a 180 BT on a bull elk last year. But if I have to pick one, it's a TTSX.

Grabbing this Mule Deer quote from Brad's post, my take away is that you can expect a wide range of results from a "petal type" bullet. Some great, others a bit of a rodeo.

I would very much agree with that.

I'm not much for hype so I pretty much only give opinions when I've got some experience observing something in action. Having said that, in about 130 Barnes kills on deer-size game to moose size, I've only ever seen one rodeo, and it was when I hit a WT doe too far back and just clipped the rear lobe of one lung. Found her dead under a log after following a very easy blood trail for 200 yards.

I haven't seen too many Barnes rodeos either, and none with the TTSX. Did see a couple of pre-Tipped TSX's fail to expand (or only partially expand), which resulted in interesting trail-ups even though both bullets went through both lungs.

I don't understand why people reference the TSX in a discussion of the TTSX. They are different bullets. The TTSX was designed to address the very issues occasionally occurring with the TSX.

Rather than dissecting sentences, there are a few great non-petal style bullets out there as alternatives. But the industry would be smart if they continued to perfect mono-metals as that is where we are headed. Not for us old coots, but for the next generation, if they are allowed to have hunting rifles.

The new Hammer bullets might be the next generation of mono-bullets.

I am not convinced the TTSX is any better. I had an elk run off with no effect after taking a 180 ttsx from a 300 ultra. I have shot deer with the same load and observed them taking much longer to kill than a lead and copper bullet.
I read that Barnes had some problems getting consistent copper, so maybe that's why they wprk well in some cases, but not others.
I have personally seen them work well and work terrible from from the same load and lot of bullet, both TTSX and TSX.

BWalker,

Have you ever seen a cup&core bullet that didn't perform correctly so that an animal ran off?

Looks like a GS bullet to me, which have been around a long time.

I personally have not.

Shot a white-tailed doe with a 25/06 and a rumination core lok. She ran off and thought I missed. Thankfully there was snow on the ground. I followed the track for 80 yards before the first blood, then another 60 to the deer. Deer was standing at 200 yards broadside, shot just above the heart, no leg bones hit. Ran off just like nothing even touched it. The day before, about the same shot, DRT.

BWalker,

You are a very lucky and unusual hunter.

I switched to partitions decades ago because regular cup & core failed a few times, in that I had to go find the animal. Even with the 7mm 175 partition at 3,150 feet per second I had to follow a big mule deer about 200 yards. The bullet went in broadside about 2" above the heart.

I couldn't find one of my GSCustom 265 grainers to include in the photo. To me they look similar like girls look similar. The GS looks like a cross between the North Fork and the Hammer bullet.

Says the guy that has animals run 200 yards after a hit to the area above the heart with a partition..Irony!

BWalker,

The reason for the switch to partitions wasn't because the animal ran off. It was because the regular cup & core broke up on the scapula and didn't enter the chest.

I have never seen that happen,but most of my cup and core kills have been BT'S which are very tough.

A little thing I found on the web... I know I wouldn't chose the middle TTSX.

BWalker,

I switched to partitions before BT's came out.After switching to partitions I switched to Barnes.