Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Question for John Barsness on the TSX

JWP, thats not your pic and being culled off the internet there is no telling the real story....
Even so the pic appears to have one of the lungs pulled back in order to expose the hear thus making the wound channel look worse than it is.
I shot a deer with a AB last week and there was was only a few small pieces of anything resembling a lung left, the heart was reduced a raged strip of tattered flesh 3" wide by 6" long and the exit was the size of a golf ball or slightly larger. Despite breaking a shoulder on the far side it still exited and this was with a impact velocity of 3400fps. I have not seen the same performance from a X or a TSX.
Maybe the TTSX will be different.

Sorry buddy but that is my picture, I took that picture last year. I did not shoot the Zebra an 80 yeard old gentleman from Colorada did and I was there when he made the shot...

Try again

That's a miracle given the amount of times I have seen the thing posted on various forums.

I was also on that hunt and that photo most certainly was taken by jwp, so I don't know what the problem is. Also, I have to ask if you have ever used TSXs as it sounds like you haven't with your assertions here. I haven't seen many bullets that do more tissue damage. But that's from observation, not speculation.

Also, it's well known that the TSX causes exponentially greater damage the faster it impacts. That zebra was shot with a .338 Fed. Imagine what kind of damage the bullet would have done if launched from a .340 Weatherby...

Yes, in fact i am using some in a 25-06AI right now...

You need to observe some more, then....

Most bullets do.
The last deer I shot with a TSX had a impact of around 3400fps and I was underwhelmed with the damage and the resulting 100 yard dash... Shot placement was spot on BTW and invloved bone..
Sort of like JB'S experience with the antelope running the 150 yard dash posted above.

Maybe it's you who needs to open your eyes a bit wider. So that's the only use of the TSX that you've had and you are basing your conclusions on this? Wow, that's credible.

Bwalker,
If you're so underwhelmed with the bullet, then why are you still using it?

That's a great question.

I've been killing deer for 48 years now, and I have done it with everything from a 22lr to 8mm. I have never shot one that I didn't open up myself and look at the damage done by the bullet on the way through.

Someone has to ask this question:

BWalker, are you one of those people who doesn't gut their deer maybe? I wouldn't suspect that being as you live above the mitten, and not gutting deer seems to be a more southern practice but then I hunt with a guy who is about forty and just now learning how to do it.

No, its not.

Because they shoot very well out of this particular gun and I would like to collect a few more animals using them before totally writing them off.

I gut and hang.

Guys, this isnt a hard concept to understand. The Barnes TSX penetrates farther than most other bullets because it has a smaller wound channel, which is caused by its smaller frontal area and lack of fragments acting as secondary projectiles.
In this months issue of Successful Hunter there was a bullet test that measured both distance penetrated and wound channel size. Its no surprise that the only bullet penetrating farther than the TSX was the Win Fail safe. It also wasn't a surprise that the only bullet with a smaller wound channel was the FS. Again, this isn't rocket science and it doesn't take a IQ of 200 to figure out whats going on...
If you want to trade of some tissue destruction for penetration m ore power to you, but don't fool yourself into thinking that it doesn't come at a cost.

You might believe it penetrates further because of a smaller wound channel that is somehow related to a smaller frontal area, but that does not mean you understand the activity going on there.

First, the frontal area is not appreciably smaller than any other bullet.

Second, the bullet not breaking apart is what contributes to penetration and wound channel diameter once the bullet begins to open.

Little bullets have smaller wound channels. Bigger bullets have bigger wound channels all else being equal.

Most of the lost weight in cup and core bullets is in particles neither palpable nor visible. We have well understood this for a very long time. That's precisely why we don't shoot deer with frangible varmint bullets, because they don't penetrate. If you can't penetrate with a 55 grain bullet at 3500 FPS you sure as hell are not going to penetrate with a particle you can neither feel nor see at less velocity. This is simple well understood mechanics of killing game. You can penetrate with a 55 grain bullet at much less speed, but, you cannot get the same energy release. You can penetrate with a 150 grain .308 cup & core bullet but you can just as easily hit a rib and deflect it resulting in a non-lethal wound because it is soft and deforms much more readily than the solid copper offerings.

Solid copper bullets are much harder, much tougher, and thus REQUIRE the hollow point. To develop the same plasticity as a lead bullet would likely require velocity unattainable with burning powder.

That does not mean that the cavitation that creates the wound channel is lessened at all. The cavitation is a function of the velocity and even a small deformation of the bullet nose can produce massive cavitation. Cavitation when compared to a lead bullet shedding weight remains much higher for much longer because the bullet penetrates further. This is because the bullet retains it's weight which means it retains it's velocity.

The slower the bullet sheds velocity the longer it will produce cavitation. The cavitation is a function of velocity, not of mass nor to any significant degree to the shape of the bullet.

For the cognitively impaired, this is most of the reason why a .223 ball round going through a man can be so much nastier than a .308 ball round. Shape or diameter do not as greatly affect the outcome as velocity.

A Barnes not opening at all will function much more like a ball round and produce much less cavitation. A Barnes that opens even a little will produce a lot of cavitaiton like any bullet that opens even a little. The difference will be in how long and how wide and what length that wound channel will be. The ultimate diameter of a wound channel is going to be a function of the viscosity of the medium and the velocity of the projectile as long as diameter of the projectile is reasonabley similar. That's why a .243 can destroy everything inside a chest or abdomen and a 45-70 doesn't just blow deer into multiple pieces.

It penetrates deeper because of having less frontal area and a wound channel with less volume is the result.




While the frontal diameter may be close the frontal area of a TSX is smaller than most other bullets.
The bullet not shedding particles ala a cup and core only serves to make the initial wound channel smaller. I would also submit that Nosler partitions typically lose all the lead ahead of the partition and still penetrate quite well. Some partitions equal or best TSX's.

If you wish to believe in fairy tales go to the Disney site.

If you want to understand what is going on with guns and game stay here and learn. It does require a commitment to comprehending what someone gives you though. I am sorry that I cannot make the physics come out the way you would like, but that's the way physics works. For a microscopic particle to contribute to cavitation you have to accelerate that particle to a velocity well above what we know how to produce today. A particle neither visible nor palpable moving at even 10,000 FPS just doesn't have the ability to penetrate any distance at all.

Our atmosphere is full of such particles and larger. Were your wish to be true we'd never have developed space craft or even high speed military aircraft because they wouldn't be able to carry the armor. Escape velocity is something like 24,000 FPS.

BWalker apparently has an agenda, he never post any pictures top back up his incorrect claims.

Here is the liver hit by a 180 grain 30 cal TSX at approximately 2600 FPS
Destroyed the lower 1/3 of the Liver



Again BWalker states facts that fly in the face of reality of anyone that carefull observe the internal damage created by TSX bullets

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

Sometimes boxing them in with the truth doesn't seem to help either.

I'll step into this Tschitsnami.

I'm primarily a WTD hunter. "Try" to hunt something else once a year. Last year it was moose, year before pronghorn, etc. I hunt deer in everything from jungle riverbottoms to pool table flat fields.

In choosing between a TSX or a cup and core for a particular rifle, I use a MV of 2900 as a rough guideline. If the rifle is going to push a bullet at a MV of 2900+, I'll try to find a TSX load. If the MV is going to be 2900 or less, I'll start with a Hornady Interlock. Then if the rifle tells me to try a different bullet I'll listen as best I can.

The further away from 2900 MV, in either direction, the more pronounced my bias. 100 grainers in a 26" 25-06 at 3300-3400? TSX if it will hold a group. 225 grainers in a 20" Whelan doing 2600 ish? Cup and core unless penetration is at a premium. Am hoping to hunt Africa with the Husky Colonel in a couple of years so will work up copper and cup and cores, but will almost certainly use the cup and core loads for stateside live game practice.

GE

That's a reasonable approach, but simpler might just be to look for an impact velocity of around 2000/2100 FPS. Barnes seems to think that below that TSX/TTSX don't open so well. If they don't open they won't cavitate and then you have problems. C & C bullets have minimum impact velocities for the same reason but they usually are not as easy to get.