Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game What compares to the Bitterroot Bonded bullets?

With those I wouldn't worry about anything....anywhere.


The reports I got from Bill and some Boise folks I know were that those things from a Rigby just crumpled Cape Buffalo.

Man, you two give me the vapors with all of those danged BBC's.

Someone might've mentioned how well they killed to me (ahem Bob) and I'll be danged if I didn't have my two quickest elk kills to date with them.

So again, I know you all are stocked up but if you ever hear of others for sale please PM me... they are worth the money.

Whitebird, those 335 grain .416's are wicked. They HAVE to cut a unreal channel!

Scotty I will keep you posted.

You have a bunch of 130 7mm's I think. Didn't some guy over on Nosler destroy his bullet recovery box with a 130 from a 7mm WSM ?


One thing that does not come through in these threads about Bitterroots is that they were, for the times, singular,and designed to withstand velocities much higher than the standard cases provide....and even the magnums in some instances.

Oh...they would "work" in standard case if you picked a 130- for the 270 or a 165 for the 30/06. But both those bullets would work even better at 3200-3400 fps from a magnum case.

Basically they were more like a Barnes in that they were unique;you could throw out all the rules you thought you knew about expansion and penetration from standard bullets not designed to withstand high velocity impact.They could withstand as much velocity and twist as you could give them.

It's good to keep this in mind when deciding what bullets will and won't work under those circumstances when evaluating what is their equivalent today.

The Kodiak from Alaska Bullet works is really close. It has an alloy jacket instead of pure copper but it is bonded and annealed to make it stay together like copper.

Some people claim they were really inaccurate but this hasn't been the case for me. Initially when they were having a hard time keeping up with demand they would mix different lots of bullets off different dies. Now they don't do this and it has improved uniformity and accuracy.

Next would be Woodleighs but they open up even more than the Bitter Root and Kodiak.

I wanted to buy the rights to Bitter Root but Bill Steigers talked me out of it. He said you would be paying a whole lot of money to be making minimum wage.

Tejano ,making BBC's was labor intensive. They were virtually handmade.

Lots of people wanted to buy Bitterroot from Bill, including a major bullet manufacturer.

He did not do it because most of these buyers wanted to move to mass manufacturing techniques and at the time this meant moving to gilding metal jackets and alloy cores to facilitate mass manufacture, both of which were inferior to materials Steigers used and would have compromised the bullets performance.

I know this because Bill told me all about it as his negotiations progressed.

Don't want to get into the details but this is precisely what happened to the TBBC when Carter sold to Federal...the quality of the bullet went downhill.

I have the Alaskan here and have shot some. Never killed anything with them. I would say that if a manufacturer recommend their bullets not be pushed over 3000 fps impact velocity, they are not in the same class as a BBC.



Tejano have you used them much?

Bob,

Yeah, I would guess we spoke to Mike Brady on different days, because I basically spent an entire day with him in the Glenrock shop and didn't meet you there! :-)

I was interviewing Mike for a magazine article, and he specifically mentioned not finding any difference in performance due to bonding while showing me his bullet-testing set-up. It didn't seem odd to me that he went ahead and bonded the cores anyway, partly because I've also talked to several custom rifle and barrel makers who provide a "break-in" procedure to their clients who firmly believe it's required, even though the gunsmiths and barrel makers don't.

But I also called Mike later, while starting the article, to reconfirm some of my notes, and he repeated his statement, so I mentioned it in the article. After article appeared he thanked me for it, and did not "correct" the statement. So that makes three confirmations. Don't know for sure why he told me and not customers, but he sold North Fork not long after my article appeared, as I recollect not more than a year. Maybe he just wanted to get it off his chest.

My opinion on Oryxes being similar to BBC's is based on several factors. Obviously all the bullets discussed here differ somewhat in construction, but I mostly based it on the results I've seen when testing Oryxes in three ways: in softer media, in harder media, and on animals. Those I've recovered from all three look more similar to BBC's than do A-Frames or North Forks (including the BBC's shown here), with a shorter shank than North Forks, and an unexpanded shank, unlike many A-Frames.

Yes, Oryxes have thinner jackets than BBC's, but Oryx jackets are gilding metal, which is stronger than pure copper, so doesn't need to be as thick to keep the shank intact. The disadvantage is it's more brittle, so sometimes Oryxes lose parts of the mushroom, but they still expand very widely and knock the snot out of animals. They also hold up very well to high velocity.

I have seen the Oryxs and Alaska Bullet Works in a couple of animals and some water jugs and both of them "wad" up pretty good when pushed hard but as a couple others mentioned the look pretty good. I don't think either are in the same league as the BBC for overall integrity though. Run either of those into dirt/shale and they'll get chewed up pretty good.

The BBC in dirt or shale didn't seem too much different than water jugs or animals.

The Northforks and A-Frame seem like kissing cousins in my book.

Both ran out of the gun within 50FPS of one another. Both retained about the same amount of weight and were just about the same expanded front end.

Northfork






Swift



Those are 140's out of my 7mm WSM.

I've been shooting the 140 BBCs out of my 7mm WSM as well at around 3250 and those little suckers penetrate a little less but expansion is usually about a .7

I've also got a pile of 132's. I plan on trying those out of my 280.

Whitebird, that pick of your Dad and his 338 is exactly why my 338 Alaskan with 225 BBCs will go to Alaska when the time is right. I dig that picture everytime I see it! Thank you

Has anyone used the Hornady Interbond? I know that JJHack was touting it awhile back.

I shot one deer with it (243 85grain), and it did a nice job straight through. It exited so no recovery.

The cutaways of the Interbond show a distinct shoulder in the jacket that should cause that wide/flat frontend mushroom to stay intact.

Yes all this came to light as I talked to Steigers. It was obvious that his attention to detail was why they were so good. Without the man behind the bullet it would be easy to try to take short cuts and then lose the quality. We talked for almost an hour but that minimum wage remark was the clincher. I was all set to work with him for a week before hand but decided not to as it would easily become something other than a labor of love like it was for Stiegers.

Kodiaks are velocity rated like the Woodlieghs. For the 375 some are for the Winchester and 38/55 and others for the H&H and Weatherby. You can even specify the jacket thickness you want if you by 500 or more. I have had no problem pushing them to right at 3000 fps before.

I have only used them on Deer and Hogs as I never had them on me when I successfully hunted Elk. Performance is impressive no mistake when a good hit is made. There is usually a distinct Whap sound and the animal goes down hard. When I have been close enough to watch the hit I can see what looks like shock waves radiating out from the point of impact. The animals look like the took one on the jaw from Mike Tyson when he was really PO'd.

I've seen some pictures of the Interbond from a few friends animals and they looked great. Very wide and flat. Might have to try them again in the future. I had great luck with some and others I couldn't do much with. The 130 Interbonds were wicked out of my 270 WSM. They stopped deer quick with rib shots but I never recovered a bullet.

The Interbonds have performed well for me on several deer. They usually retain more weight than an Accubond because they are fully bonded where the Accubond is only bonded for half or two thirds of the core.

What they look like afterwards I have no idea as both have always exited. They are not the super expanders these other bullets are but they expand plenty enough.

Tejano: That's interesting. You're the first person I have talked to who actually thought about taking a swing at Bitterroot as a business.

Bill was incredibly anal and what I found with him was you could tell him....but you couldn't tell him much.

When it came to those bullet he knew exactly what he was talking about . he would make you completely realign what you thought you knew about bullets and terminal performance. It was quite a sleigh ride.

But I will say this....if you did as he said....."A B C",you would get the results he promised. You saw VERY few runners with those bullets.

Amen to that!

He would tie you on the phone for hours but man, I never learned so much.

Oh he was encyclopedic. he knew an awful lot and if you just listened he taught a great deal about rifles, hand loading ,terminal ballistics etc.


Every package of Bitterroots came with instructions for loading to at least a specified level of velocity and a minimum twist rate. Of course you could load to greater velocity(no upper limit) and faster twist without concern.This would give desired results. I recall some folks tried to substitute their "judgement" for his and it did not work well.

Notice he recommends a lighter BBC if your rifle can't meet those thresholds. Bitterroot shooters were not too big on "efficient" cartridges....they wanted speed,which,along with fast twist is what made the bullets "work".

Then, as now but for different reason, many BBC shooters ordered special barrels with faster than normal twists and they were invariably cut rifle tubes. Steigers was not too much of a fan of button barrels.

Yes he was an icon. He developed much of the Speer reloading manual data in the by guess and by golly era and his loads were right on for the most part. He also advocated getting barrels a thousandth or two over size to maximize velocity with the BBC in addition to the faster twist. Both maximized terminal performance.

I just wonder if I had pursued it as a business if I could have made a go of it and kept to Stiegers high standards? A pretty tall order.

I remember talking with Jack Carter about the Trophy Bonded Bear Claw and he was of the same ilk. And the standards did drop once they were commercialized though still a good product.

Both of these gentlemen have brought about the plethora of good bullets we have available today thanks to their pioneering efforts. Thanks and amen to old curmudgeons that had a goal and impeccable standards and stuck to them.

Tejano you're spot on about the oversized barrels. I had several in calibers 270, 7mm,30,and 375; and all of them were faster than "normal" twists. i still have a 1/10 375 Krieger. friends had so many other oversized barrels I sort of lost count.

The first few were a revelation of sorts and you quickly learned that they took heavier charges than "normal" barrels but were also non temperamental and easy to work with.

Along the way we also discovered more or less by accident that a good many pre 64 M70 barrels were oversized. I had a 375 M70 I bought from Champlin Arms that Bill Rhiny (sp) measured at .378 through the grooves. Bill Steigers told me that was pretty normal to bump into this. I sometimes wonder if some of this was intentional on the part of Winc hester.

Bill's theory was that a bullet in an oversized barrel encountered less resistance to passage down the bore than in a tight barrel; and that faster twist helped facilitate expansion of his bullets which had very thick, tough jackets. He also felt the SS machined smoother than CM so tended to use that. But he also used CM as well. Most of what I saw him use were Krieger or rebored pre 64 barrels.


How the business would have gone is speculation but the Bitterroot name was certainly gold as the bullets were in very high demand,and had a great reputation as a vicious killer of BG animals. The followers were like a "cult", and in a day and age when there were no premium bullets other than the Partition (the Bitterroot is a solid notch up over the Partition) people fell all over themselves to get them.

So they would have sold....no question. But Bitterroot flushed out Jack Carter, Lee Reid at Swift, Mike Brady at Northfork,and maybe even Randy Brooks at Barnes, as they all clamored for bullet products that could with stand higher impact velocity without being blown to confetti in the process.

I think they were all catering not so much to your average deer and cow elk hunter, but guys who hunted larger animals here and abroad,and understood the advantages such bullets offered.

Bob:

I have some regrets that I didn't give it a go as the BBC would still be one of the top bullets around for larger game.

You asked what the Kodiak looked like as far as expansion. I have only recovered one and don't know where I put it but it looked just like the BBC fired into shale. This was on a Hill Country buck hit straight on in the Brisket, the bullet angled upwards and raked the length of the spine, smashed some pelvic bone and was sitting on top of the top round bulging the skin out. Brisket to Ham penetration with a good bit of bone thrown in is pretty good performance. The only other bullets I have seen penetrate as well were the TSX and the wound channel and devastation was much less for the TSX.

Could someone still "take over" the Bitteroot production? Is Steiger alive, or someone who knows his secrets?