Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa Recommend an "All Around .375 Softpoint"

I have my favorites and they have worked for me..

I like the 350 gr. RN Woodleigh and it will work on Lion, Buffalo and Leopard..It will stop on the off side skin of a buff well expanded and sometimes give you a big exit hole..The 350 gr. PP is a bit better on buff and always exits, but it is a bit tough to use on Leopard..

I also like the 300 gr. Noslers and Northforks, but again they are a tad hard for Leopard..

However, the above bullets will not tear up a Leopard skin and they seem to kill them very well indeed. I suspect that mass alone kills the Leopards as they are a light fragile animal in body.

I also have had very good luck with the GS Customs bullets in 270 gr. HPs...They work on everything pretty darn good.

Bullets that I personally don't care for are Swift A-Frames, Barnes X bullets although I concede they both work well on the heavy animals like Eland and Buffalo.

On plainsgame I believe the Swifts expand into perfect pretty little balls that are too smooth and you recover a lot of them because penetration usually suffers to one extent or another, and as a result I have seen lighter game go too far and not leave any blood on the ground, on more than a few ocassions.

I have had too many failures with Barnes bullets failing to open. I just do not trust them. When they work the work very well indeed, but they can absolutly fail miserably on ocassion...

However, and in all fairness, I know others that I respect and know they are well versed on bullet behavior and they swear by by both Swift A frames and Barnes bullets. Guess thats why we have Fords and Chevys, Winchesters and Remingtons,horse races and chicken fights...:)

Whoa, a 375 softpoint to take lion, leopard and buff. That's a tall order.

You need a bullet that sets up very fast for the leopard, not so fast for the lion and slowly for the buffalo, all with high retained weight for penetration ...............

Well the TSX will handle them all, but might be a bit too hard for leopard. A- Frames are good, but IMHO the new 300gr TBBC ( with bearing bands ) might well be the perfect choice....more violent expansion than the other projectiles, but a great deal of retained weight......and no smooth mushrooms, nice and jagged but with more frontal area than a TSX............

But if you can't get them, I'd be inclined to go with the 350grRN Woodleigh.......good Aussie technology

Paddler...thats an Interarms Whitworth Express, Leupold VXIII 1.5 to 5...

Same one here....



Ingwe

I'm with Mark on this..I like a bullet that will have burned up its enegry,retain weight but exit on whatever I'm putting a bullet in.
Seems some folks like a bullet that stops in the hide on the other side why is this or is that not the case for some peoples wants??

I like an entry and exit if possible.........

Thats a good question and could start the longest thread in Campfire history!!

I'm no help answering it either..in my case all I can say is " it depends..."

For lighter, non-dangerous game that I'm gonna butcher and eat..I like the TSXs...easily my fave..complete penetration, little meat damage, superb accuracy..

On other stuff, like the Buffalo above, first off that was in the year 2000, there were no TSXs...First shot on a buffalo can often be in a herd situation where an exit could possibly wound another buffalo ,and the Swift always offered me what I considered to be the best compromise between penetration and energy transferal, and if theres a chance it could catch up with me, I WANT energy transfer!!

Obviously with so many experienced guys chiming in, there are merits to both schools of thoughht, and success to both!

Ingwe

I dropped an email to the old editor of Afrrican Hunter magazine who goes by the "nom de plume" of Ganyana. He loves the TSxs and says at 375 velicities it will definitively open up on leopard. For my leioard hunt in 2012 I plan to use my 338 with 21o TSXs@ 2900. Bottom line any of the bullets mentioned will work! jorge

See there, I told you there are some folks out there that I respect, and they swear by Barnes and Swift bullets..I also said thats what makes a horse race, Fords and Chevys etc.

So, would you experienced African hunters recommend sticking with one .375 bullet for everything, as the OP stipulated? Or would you rather take different bullets for different game? Maybe something like the fast-expanding 260 Nosler Accubond for the Leopard, and a stout bullet for the buff or????

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for the discussion!

When shooting buff in herds, I really don't want a bullet to exit and hit a second buff.

And I wouldn't use two different weights of bullet. I might use say a Sierra for a leopard and a TSX for buff if both were 300 grains.

I would be a lot more likely to use an A Frame for both and worry about something that matters...like hitting what I was aiming at.

Unless your bullets shoot to the same POI, switching is asking for trouble. If your rifle likes them, I'd stick with the 270TSXs pushed as fast as I can get them and use them for everything. They absoulutely hammer buffalo and will work for the cats as well. jorge

Jorge,

I reckon that would be an ideal combo for leopard............

"On other stuff, like the Buffalo above, first off that was in the year 2000, there were no TSXs...First shot on a buffalo can often be in a herd situation where an exit could possibly wound another buffalo ,and the Swift always offered me what I considered to be the best compromise between penetration and energy transferal, and if theres a chance it could catch up with me, I WANT energy transfer!!'

No "flies on that" piece of advice, Ingwe. Especially the last sentence!

In response to the OP's list of possible bullets, I would go with either the TSX or Partition and not worry. I have used the 300 Partition on game from deer-size to buffalo and it works quite well. In fact I prefer it to the A-Frame because it penetrates deeper, on average, because it doesn't open up quite as wide, due to the rear end not expanding along with the front, and the latest 300 Partitions (the past 10 years or so) retain around 90% of their weight, due to the placement of the partition being quite far forward in the bullet. It doesn't exit much on really big game like buffalo (not a bad thing when hunting herds) but exits pretty consistently on anything under 1000 pounds, at least on any sort of chest shot.

The TSX works real well too on the same variety of game, or at least it has in my more limited experience with it, compared to the 300 Partition.

I know two people who have used the 260 AccuBond from the .375 H&H on buffalo, and it worked well in both instances. One was a one-shot kill on a broadside shot, with the bullet being found under the hide on the far side, and the other instance was three frontal shots, all getting into the chest. I have also seen it used on some plains game where it did a good job on animals up to 700 pounds or so.

Where else can you get the quality of advice offered here? I've ordered some 300 grain Partitions and 275 grain TSXs (plus some 300 grain Hornadys for practice) and will probably use whichever (a) shoots well, provided that (b) it does not deviate much in POI from North Fork solids.

The .375 is not my primary rifle for buff on this trip. the .458 is. The .375 on buff (or lion) is only if I happen to blunder into some while hunting something else.

There is no such thing as bullet failure with a 375 on plainsgame in that if it does not open it still kills very well indeed, it it over expands it kills super well, so I would opt for a good buffalo bullet..

In your case my first pick would be the 300 gr. Nosler partition or the 300 gr. Woodleigh, even the 350 gr. Woodleigh RN..I particularly like the Nosler because it opens fast but also penetrates more than any expanding bullet I know of..It does this because the expanded cross section is somewhat less than most softs, but it is very effective and usually you get an exit hole, even on broadside shots on buffalo..

If I was limited to one bullet in the 375 or 416 it would be the 300 gr. 375 and the 400 gr. 416...I have had such good luck with these two bullets on everything fro deer to Cape Buffalo that I see little need for anything else..That does not mean that I won't use other bullets because I love to test bullets and experiment with new bullets as they come out..

I would not use the 260 gr. Nosler on Buffalo, it just does not have the base to drive deeply on buffalo IMO...I would not use any conventional bullet of less than 300 grs. or any monoltihic less that 270 grs. on bufflao..

+1
I've never hunted the big cats, but on one trip I used 300 gr TSX bullets mainly for Buffalo, but also shot several Plains Game animals down to the size of Bushbuck. On another hunt I used 270 gr TSX bullets for a bunch of PG animals from Steenboks to Cape Eland.

These were all shot from my .375 Ultra mag with the 300 grainers chrono'd at 2830 fps and the 270 grainers at 3040 fps. In the future, I think I'll use the 270 grainers for everything.

Does anyone have experience with Hornady 300 gr interbond? They stopped making them and I just got their last 300.What about 300 gr DGX?
Shot a 740# moose with a 260 gr Accubond and it expanded to triple dia and 68% weight retention, good for deer or smaller plains game, leopard.
Hoping for another Africa trip in the next couple years, but I may move to south west Alaska first.

This is sort of interesting. Several folks on this thread worried about the performance of the 260 gr. AB on bigger African game. POI in my rifle is very similar on the 260 AB and the 270 TSX. I plan on taking a box each and if the good Lord wills, I'll report the difference on a few head of Namibian game this summer.

300 gr A Frame, hands down.