Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 185 grain .338 TTSX on elk?

Anyone used it who'd offer feedback?

A couple years back I had a local gunsmith rebarrel a 700 .375 H&H that wouldn't shoot to .338 win mag with a Lilja tube. I set it up planning to shoot 225 grain accubonds and partitions. It shoots them, and everything else, pretty well at 100 yards but by 200 things are looking sad and at 300 yards, I wouldn't bet on putting 5 consecutive shots on a dinner plate. Not good enough.

I've tried 200s and 210s ... cup 'n' core, bonded, partitions, etc. Equally bad.

I've been fighting with the SOB for almost 2 years.

On a whim, last thing before punting the rifle ... either outright sale or rebarrel ... I got some 185 grain TTSXes just in the spirit of getting clear away from what wasn't working. At 100 they barely outshoot the Noslers, but at 200 the difference is pretty significant and at 300, damn good.

Just not sure they have the S.D. of a bullet I want to put in an elk, even as a monolithic bullet.

So, to make a long story short, I'm looking for input from people who've used these on elk. Do they exit on raking shots, say .. 45 degrees? If I whack one on the shoulder is it coming out the other side?

Tom

I hear that the owner of Barnes wife uses the 185 TSX on about everything with good success.

I have never tried anything smaller than 210 Nosler Partition bullets in my .338 rifles! It is a medium bore and gets 2900-fps using them. In my book that is fast enough and goo for any mule deer etc. I just can't see the sense of going lighter for the sake of velocity.

I can shoot my .300 Win mag or .300 Ultra mag with 180 grain bullets at a velocity of 3130fps to 3350fps respectively in my rifles. I like heavier bullets for medium bore rifles simply put. I have 2 loads for the .338mag.......210 weight and 275 weight in Swift A Frames.

The heavier bullets aren't shooting in his rifle, is the problem.

How fast do you think the little copper bastids are going, Tom?

Coni Brooks has taken several truck loads of big game including elk with a .338 Win Mag and 185 TSXs and TTSXs. Used to be the only rifle she used...

Might want to do a google search on Coni Brooks and big game?

Hey Jeff! I'd guess 3100+.

I tested out the 210 TTSX yesterday. They didn't do real well. I have 20 rounds left of the 185s loaded up. I'm going to pull the barreled action out of the Sendero stock I've been using (can you say free floated?) and put it back into the Bansner/High Tech stock, then see what happens at 300 yards on paper. Make or break.

Tom

I see no advantage to the 185s in a 338. I would guess that the reason Connie Brooks uses them is for less recoil.
If the Accubond and Partitions dont shoot well, I would try another brand of bullet.
Mine likes 225 hornady Interlocks.

She used the 225 for years

I spoke to Randy Brooks some years ago, when he made the muzzle brake for my .475-mag. rifle. He told me that he always suggested only going down ONE bullet weight when using his Barnes X bullets, compared to conventional bullets on the market like Hornady or Nosler's etc.

I tried religiously to get them to shoot well out of my rifles but No Cigar! The one's I did get to shoot decent, were at 30-06 velocities out of a .338 Win mag and I just didn't feel like 2500fps is where I wanted to be velocity wise using a 210 grain bullet, plus having 2.7 inch MOA groups from the bench.

I had to go back to Nosler Partition and later Swift A Frame bullets to get the results I wanted from my rifles at the bench and on big game animals such as elk and moose etc. My .338 Win mag shoots 275 grain bullets into 1.25 inch groups at 100 yards and 210 Partitions under 1-MOA (Nosler Accubonds .770), velocity being 2900fps. The B.C. on the Accbond is .414, S.D.= 250 great for mule deer and elk too at moderate ranges.

I've never been a huge fan of the idea of a .30 caliber bullet weight in a .338. I mean, get a .300 if that's the idea, and you'll get a better BC/SD to go along with it.

If I was going to try to get all Devil's Advocate about it I suppose one could argue that as long as the rifle shoots the 185's well it's not like there's anything actually "wrong" with that and you would have the option of going to much heavier bullets if you found yourself expecting to face, say, big bears.

Personaly I have never had a problem getiing Excellent accuracuy form TSX bullets in any of my rifles

I agree with that. I don't know why, but this rifle flat ass will not shoot any bullet 200 grains or up that I've tried into groups I'll accept. I built it around the 225 accubond. Prior to the 185 TTSX, those shot best. They're pretty respectable, sub MOA at 100 yards, around 2 MOA at 200 yards, and 3.5 to 5 MOA at 300 yards ... greater than linear increase with distance. I just doesn't cut the mustard.

Pretty sure it's going up for another rebarrel or outright sale within a month or two. I need to take it to the range one more time.

Tom

TOM, put in for a spring bear tag and I'll take you out for some field testing!

Shoot it and don't look back. It's SD is still above a 150 in .308. You will be hard pressed to keep it in an Elk. Frontal diameter in the .338 is an advantage no mater what the energy is. Large frontal area plus magnum velocity seems like a good combo to me. People always hate on light weight .338's but seem to love premium bullets in 165's or 150's in .30 cal. Strange.

Rifles is funny critters. My .340 dotes on 210gr TSX's. I've got a batch of 250gr Partitions that I badly need to work up a load for but there's so little that can't be done with a .338/210gr TSX at 3100fps I've been too lazy to try. My "gun guru" I gave the rifle to when I firt got it for the purpose of quickly putting together a load (he's got every powder and bullet you can imagine on hand) went through a few loads and hit the 210/RL19 combo and it's shot little else since.

Good luck!

By the way, have you tried the 160gr TTSX yet?

I was thinkin' I'd put in for that tag, yeah.

I'm guessing though that this .338's fate will be sealed long before that. I'm figuring one more range session will tell me. If it does good, fine .. I think. If it fails me, I haven't made up my mind yet, I might sell it outright but I've also brainstormed a couple possible projects for you to build for me.

Tom

What powders have you experimented with?
Stating the obvious but the same bullet will shoot very differently with different powders even if the velocity is the same.

I bang/flopped a bull in 2004 at 280 lasered yards with the 185 gr TSX from my 338-06. Muzzle velocity was 2950 fps. In behind the quartering away shoulder centering the off shoulder and found under the hide there. It weighed 122 gr having lost all 4 petals.

Dang gummit Tony, ya dun got those WM boyz pizz off! Ya know dem '06 toyz won't get er dun at distance!

Powders in the 4350 to RL22 range produce the velocities I'm after, faster 'n' slower do not. I didn't use every powder in the range, just those I can get readily. I didn't use every possible bullet, only those I'd be willing to use on game.

Each gun is different. In this one I didn't find the sort of accuracy difference you seem to suggest. Yes, there were differences, but the differences weren't enough to change whether a bullet shot well enough to be considered that otherwise wasn't. I usually had 2-3 "peak" powders, not just a single one. I could summarize all the results by saying up to 200 grains it looks like H4350 did the best, at 210 H4350 and RL19 did about the same, and heavier than that, RL19 did the best. But we're only talking about a difference of a quarter inch difference at 100 yards.

In case you missed it or in case I said it badly earlier, I had no issues getting good 100 yard accuracy, the problem for me was that accuracy did not hold up on farther downrange. I found a half dozen or so loads that broke MOA for the first 100 yard, they'd just "fall apart" at greater distances. To focus on a single example, my 225 nos AB load, I typically got groups no smaller than .5" and no bigger than .75" at 100 yards. Pretty fair, right? But at 200 yards, the groups varied from about 3 to 3.5 inches. By 300 yards my best groups were varying from 7 to 10 inches and perhaps 25% of the groups where only 4 of 5 hit on a 12 inch target paper.

So ... even for elk, I ran out of accuracy somewhere around 225 - 250 yards.

The niche this rifle was built for requires 400 yards worth of elk accuracy and should really do 450. Anything less is failure do deliver what I paid for.

I'm done with buying .338 components. I have small supplies of 3 different loads already loaded up to test. One I expect to fail but it's a good yardstick. If it delivers its normal accuracy, then the accuracy of the others, good or bad, is representative of what I can expect of them. One load shot better at 300 for the one group I shot but it's not a bullet I really want to use. The third load uses the heavier brother of that 2nd bullet, but it's the least accurate of the 3 at 100 yards. If it does deliver accuracy, the gun is a success. If not, it is a failure.

I'm not looking for help rescuing this .338. I asked about a specific bullet's terminal performance.

Tom