Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters .260 rem./120 bal. tip

I would like to hear from those with actual experience using the .260 rem. and the Nosler 120 balistic tip on deer and black bear.Thanks to all of those who respond in advance.

My son and I have both been shooting .260's for several years. That's a great combination for deer. I have not used it on bear... but I see no reason not to for black bear.

Works great on deer, never shot a bear.

Same here


I run them around 2900fps from my 22" Mountain Rifle.

Using the 120 BT in a .260 you'll find that bang-flops are common on deer. I haven't shot a bear.

I use a close-to-max charge of H4350 in my daughter's Model Seven with 18.5" barrel.

Wacked a bear that surprised me during a hunt....my presence must have surprised him also... all he did was immediately charge....

35 yards, nailed him as he rounded a tree in the shoulder..

he whirled a 180, and just dropped tumbling head over heels down a hill side for about 50 yds....

he was in his deaththrows for a few minutes and then expired.

The 120 was exiting the muzzle at a little over 2900 fps...

4064 powder used.

maby 6 deer with 120 bt. and all drt . 2 hogs also drt. can't ask for more. 1 of the hogs was 144 yards by range finder every theng else was less.

I have been using this as in my .260 as my go to load in my Sako 75 for the last few years. I'm running them at 2750 fps and they are the hammer of Thor on deer. Always pass through and deer drop pretty quick. You can't go wrong with them.

Autofive,

All I've used them on are pronghorns, about the size of whitetail does from your part of the world. Have recovered one, started at 3100 fps from a 6.5 Creedmoor with a 26" barrel. At 250 yards, it entered right behind the bone of the left shoulder and ended up under the hide of the right ham, retaining 59% of its weight.

I've taken a few deer and at least 2 dozen hogs with the Nosler 6.5mm 120 grain BT in cartridges ranging from the little 6.5 TCU in a 10" Contender up to an including the .260 and 6.5x55. Most have been with the 6.5x30-30 AI.

Performance has always been exceptional -- never a complaint from me. And it's relatively rare to recover one. Even on the boar below, I got a pass-through on a slight quartering presentation.

Thanks everyone. Ill be using them this fall in my 260 Mtn. rifle at about 2800 fps.

Used to use that combination in a 260 Ruger 77 compact 16.5 "barrel. Shot quite a few deer and one bear (about 230 lbs) . Hit the bear in the shoulder and found the bullet under the hide on the opposite side shoulder. No tracking required, as far as the deer they worked fine as well. Good luck

Looks like a typical BT to me.

Nice buck.

Yep, as in a really good deer bullet.

One aspect of the Ballistic Tip "hunting" bullets (as Nosler calls them) that seems to cause problems with the preconceptions of many hunters is their tendency to lose cores during expansion. This is considered by many as an absolute disaster, in part due to decades of statement such as Bob Hagel's, who claimed that as soon as jacket and core come apart "penetration soon ceases."

This was often true with conventional cup-and-core bullets, but even then there were exceptions. About 40 years ago I shot a forkhorn mule deer buck as it bounced up a slope about 100 yards away with a .270 Winchester, the bullet a 130-grain Sierra GameKing started at about 3000 fps. The bullet landed in the short ribs on the left side, and the buck dropped, as far as I could tell instantly dead. When I skinned the deer later the same day, the empty jacket was lying just inside the entrance hole, not even having made it through the ribs. A little while later, however, I found the base of the core under the hide of the right shoulder, after it traversed the chest.

In that instance the lead core weighed a lot more than the relatively thin jacket, the reason the core kept penetrating after the jacket stopped. Saw something similar happen on a whitetail buck shot with a 105-grain Speer Hot-Cor a year or two later. That buck needed a finishing shot, because the core broke the spine just behind the shoulders, but the lead still penetrated sufficiently after leaving the jacket.

Today's hunting Ballistic Tips, however, are built in what might be considered the opposite way from typical thin-jacketed cup-and-cores. Usually the jacket weighs more than the core, sometimes up to around 3/4 of the total bullet weight. Somebody once called them "monolithics with a sliver of head in the nose," which is a pretty good description. They still expand rapidly and violently, due to the large hollow-point in the sliver of lead under the plastic tip, but even if the core separates they normally retain a minimum of around 50% of their weight--very similar to Hornady Interlocks.

Ballistic Tips with heavier jackets often retain 60% or more of their weight, even after losing the core, close to the weight retention of some Nosler Partitions. (It might be appropriate to mention here that not all Partitions are designed to retain 65% or 2/3 of their weight, the numbers usually cited. Many of the heavier, larger-caliber models are designed to retain a minimum of 75% of their weight, and often retain more. I have several in my collection from .338 to .416 in diameter that retained 85-95% of their original weight.)

As a result, whether or not a hunting Ballistic Tip retains its core or not isn't all that relevant. What matters is whether they penetrate sufficiently. It's been at least 25 years since I've seen one not penetrate through the vitals of any big game animal, and most exit.

Thanks Autofive, been wondering the same thing. Been considering those or an 123 grain AMAX. Both are accurate in my rifle but seem more like target bullets to me. Great to hear the positive reports on the BT.

Shortleade-

In my own testing, the 120 grain Nosler BT penetrates more than both the 123 grain A-Max and 123 grain SST. And oddly, while Hornady hails the SST as a game bullet and the A-max for targets, the two -- at least in this 123 grain/6.5 comparison and used in the 6.5x30-30 AI cartridge -- perform nearly identically in both test medium and game.

If there is a better 6.5 deer and antelope bullet than the 120 BT I have now found it yet. I have used them extensively, and I mean extensively, in a variety of 6.5 cartridges over the years with outstanding results.

They shoot, too....but we knew that.

Just got back from range. These are the first 5 hand loads I ever fired from my Creedmoor. 120 BT and H4350.

I think I'm done with load development.