I know there are a lot of opinions out there on the TTSX's. I only recently began to use them and thought I would share my results.
The week of Thanksgiving, my son and I had a doe and a spike hanging in the cooler ready for processing. We wanted to make sausage so needed some pork. For more than a week we had been hunting for a good sow or several young shoats with no success. The boy had 3 traps set where there was abundant sign but, could only catch a few big boars. Normally, pigs are no problem to find. But after the recent drought they seem to be more elusive. The sign is everywhere but it has been hard see them in the daytime.
On Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving, he and I were driving thru the pasture and I remembered a stand where we keep a feeder going. Son dropped me off about five minutes before the feeder was set to go off and drove down to a creek to see if he could bring home more bacon than me. I crawled into a blind about 100 yds from the feeder and waited a few minutes. About 5 minutes after the feeder went off, a dozen hogs came up. All were the same size about 180 pounders. I waited until all their interest was on the corn and sighted the .308 on a good sow.
At the crack of the rifle not one but 2 hogs dropped. I will not claim to have lined up both hogs for one shot, but I was tickled to find that the second hog was a sow equal to the one that I intended to kill. I had put the crosshairs right below the ear of my target. The 130 gr TTSX exited the off side in the same location and entered the second sow above the eye. The first sow was broadside to me and the second was facing me behind the other.
By the time the young hunter returned to pick me up it was dark, so we loaded the pigs and headed for home. We dressed the critters and left them to hang for the night, temperature being in the 30's. As I gutted the second sow I felt a small knot right at the point of her sternum right below the hide. As I opened her up I found the TTSX.
Next morning we skinned and moved them to the cooler until further processing. Only after we finished did I think to take photos. So as you can see I did the best that I could to reconstruct the scene with the hides and heads. Keep in mind that both sows had their heads down on the corn.
Exit on the first porker.
Entry on number two.
The bullet travelled down the second sow's neck and lodged where I recovered it.
The bullet retained 129.9 gr, is the .1 gr the tip?
End of story: Saturday, we made about 50# pan sausage (50/50 venison/pork), 60# ground meat (~70/30 venison/pork), kept the backstraps and tenders of both species, and 4 pork hams curing (hopefully ready by February).
One last thing on bullet performance. Late that Saturday, I shot another sow with the same bullet, in behind the near shoulder, out thru the off shoulder. A friend butchered her and commented that although the off shoulder was broken there was minimal meat loss. Load is 50 gr Varget.
Have a good one,
Amigo