Gentlemen,

I will be taking my Whitworth .375 H&H to RSA in July for cape buffalo and other game. This rifle loves 300-gr bullets and I plan to do most of my shooting with the Nosler Partition.

I have a good supply of old style screw machine Partitions as well as the newer extruded versions. My rifle shoots both bullets inside of an inch.

I have taken a brown bear in Alaska with the new bullets without complaint, but nostalgia is whispering to me that I should try the old bullets on the buffalo. It probably is much ado about nothing, but do any of you veteran hunters have any feelings about the suitability of the old style Noslers vs the new ones?

Looking at the relief grooves on the two bullet styles, the partition on the new bullet appears to be positioned farther forward than that on the old style. This may favor the new bullet as far as retained weight and theorectical penetration.

I know that I'm largely swimming in a sea of esoterica here, but do any of you have any experience with old Noslers in buffalo?

take the old bullets in the old caliber and kill an old dugga boy.....
done

Ha! Well put, AFTERUM. Hemingway or Ruark could not have said it better!

dawaba I have not used them on buff but have used the screw machine 270 gr on brown bear,as has a friend.

They did a bang up job both times.

Couple of touring African pro's tried to buy our stash of 270 and 300 gr screw machine bullets back in the day....apparently they thought highly of them.

Back in the early 80s, I believe, before Nosler resumed manufacturing the 300 gr Partition, I had a good friend offer to buy two boxes of the old bullets from me for a dollar each (that was back when a dollar was obscene money to spend on a bullet). I declined, because I was unsure if Nosler would ever make any more 300-gr PTs. About a week later, he upped his offer to a buck-fifty each. Still, I declined.

Later, Nosler started making the bullet in the new style, and my buddy bought a truck load of them! He still shoots them in his Sako .375 Holland.

I know old Africa hands who paid $2 for screw-machine .375 Noslers during that period. Which just shows what serious hunters thought of them, long before some of the modern super-bullets ever appeared.

Yes that was the trend back in the 80's....there just was nothing out there for premium 375 bullets once Nosler stopped making them....I guess they had switched over to impact extrusion to manufacture bullets and the biggest were 338's.

JB has written about this. I know I'm getting old when I lived through it.

My pal hit the mother load....apparently this guy had for some reason lived in India and hunted there,had a large stash of 270-300 gr Nosler Partitions, about 700 in total,and wanted $1 each for them.We split the cost down the middle.

It was my first experience paying a buck a bullet....but I got used to it real fast when I started buying Bitterroots so now my attitude is.....Oh well

I have never used the partition on buff, but have had excellent success with the A-Frame and Barnes TSX in .416 Rigby. Both look like catalog pictures when recovered.

While on a recent leopard hunt, I shot a 55" kudu with a 225 partition out of a .338 WM. We recovered the bullet. There was no lead left and very little of the base. It did, however, kill the Kudu from about 180 yards. The Kudu is a "soft" animal. Cape Buffalo are "hard" animals with no sense of humor. For "hard" animals, I prefer "hard" bullets. YMMV.

I remember building a 375 Taylor in the late 70's after finding a stash of 300 grain Noslers in a store. Bullets first, then the rifle to shoot them. Never recovered one, even from grizzlies, yet the wound channel was always impressive. Still own a few of the bullets as they are interesting conversation pieces.
Sold off close to 1,000 of them in the middle 1980's to a guy going to live in Africa for $2 each. Not sure who got the better deal, me or him. I rarely use a 375 anymore though since getting into double rifles.

Yeah but you are rich Bob.....That's just a drop in the bucket for you ....My question is: Aren't the new nosler 300 gr. partitions almost just as good as the old??? I phucked up and didn't buy a bag of them at a table last weekend. The guy wanted $30.00 for them......