Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Another Partition Failure

beretz �

Construction of the 300g I used was a Uni-Core design that has since been dropped. Too bad, they shot very well. Thought maybe they would be in the �Deep Curl� lineup but looking today that doesn�t appear to be the case either. I�m bummed.

The 350g were designed for the .458 Winchester and present some loading issues. In my Marlin 1895 I have to seat them pretty deeply and use a Lee crimp die to make a crimp above the cannelure. Trimming the cases a bit would fix the problem but I�m not willing to do that. If you load them, make sure COL is short enough to cycle from the magazine and eject unfired cartridges. My loads only have a few thou clearance (around .004�, if that) when ejecting unfired.

At close range the 350g open up fine but I�d be worried about longer ranges. They are good penetrators but slow openers at .45-70 velocities and slow opening would be exacerbated at longer ranges.

Here�s another pic of some of the recovered bullets shown in my first photo above. From left to right:

350g North Fork, 6x6 bull @ 213 yards
160g Speer Grand Slam, 7mm RM, 5x5 bull @~110 yards
162g Hornady BTSP, 7mm RM, spike bull @~110 yards
180g North Fork, .300WM, 200 yard steel



Some notes on the performance:

1. The .45-70 North Fork hit the left front leg obliterating a section of leg bone, obliterated a section of near side rib, shattered a far side rib and came to rest under the off-side hide. Mike Brady, creator of the North Fork bullets, believes the �helicopter wing� was created when the bullet came to a sudden stop at the far rib. He said he had seen similar results when using a steel stop plate behind gelatin. Needless to say, the bull didn�t take a step � just stood there for a couple seconds and tipped over as I was getting ready to fire a second round.

2. The Speer Grand Slam is the only one I ever recovered from game and that took 20 years and the destruction of both shoulder joints of a 5x5 bull. It was recovered from under the hide. Retained weight was just under 71%.

3. The Hornady 162g hit dead center on the near side rib of a spike bull, missed or slightly nicked a far rib and stopped under the hide. Retained weight was under 48%. I switched to Grand Slams the next year.

4. The 180g North Fork from the .300WM was the ONLY bullet to survive contact with the steel at 200 yards. Most simply made a dent of various depths, fragmented and shredded paper targets several feet away. The North Fork made a deep hole and expanded to lock itself into the hole, although it lost most of its lead core. (This sample was the only one that would come out of the steel.) Barnes 180g MRX made a deep hole and left a gorgeous copper plate finish in it, but there was nothing left except the plated hole that we could find. We found a jacket from a cup-and-core .22-250 bullet, flattened like a pancake with fingers reaching out from the base like an octopus.

What do all these results mean? I�ll let people decide for themselves, but steel plate tests are not very indicative of anything when it comes to flesh and blood. (They are fun, though.) Water jug tests seem to roughly correlate to what I�ve seen in the field and what common sense (or at least thoughtful analysis) would lead one to expect. The most surprising results to me was the penetration of the slow moving 300g Laser Cast bullets � 11+ jugs and still going, but without a lot of damage. Wasn�t surprised by the deep penetration, just didn�t think it would be that deep. (Very light recoil, too, half that of many factory .30-30 loads, and very accurate. Does anyone else think they might be good home defense loads?)

I�ve got a lot of jugs saved up for testing bullets with next spring when it warms up. Ballistic Tip, Scirocco II, AccuBond, TTSX, Hornady FTX, and some others. If anyone wants to send me a few VLDs in .257�, 6.5mm, 7mm or .308� I�ll be happy to test them, too.

CH, just for your heads up, Speer changed nothing with the 300 grain .458 bullet. They changed the label on the box to say "plinker", but in my testing in jugs show, it is still a bonded bullet, that really holds together, really well. It is just horribly misleading to the shooter. This one retained about 280+ grains of weight and the mushroom speaks for itself. It is my preferred 300 grainer for a 45-70.









The only bullet I like more, is the 300 grain PT.. I am saving those for something special though. I am still not sure if they are "better" than the Speers, but I like them.

Awesome tests and write ups though, thank you very much for posting them up.

FYI, I think the 300 grain Speer went 7 jugs. That was at about 2200 FPS, 20 yards from the muzzle.

If you recovered any bullet from an animal im guessing that critter was dead? Shedding weight is delivering energy to the critter not to a hillside.Partitions cover all the bases all the time period.

180 (SPS) Partition, 30-06 (Ruger M77), 57.5 Hunter, �300 yards, � -20�F; 162 grains/92% recovered weight.

Great recovery! Thank you for posting.

Nice catch!
What was the specimen you shot and how much penetration did you get.

JD338

Fun thread.

John, I used the 7mm 150 NP from a 7-08 for all my blacktail for a number of years there... maybe 8-10 deer. All were at close range, say 15 yards to 70 yards. MV from that rifle, a 20" M7, was perhaps 2600 fps.

I say all that because in the end I was underwhelmed with them on small deer. In particular, one buck i shot was very hard to find because he went a very long ways after being well hit. The lungs looked like someone shot a bullet through them; they had a relatively well-defined hole and so on.

Perhaps it's because as you mention doing yourself, I really hate pegging them through the shoulder. I'm drawn like a magnet to the pocket just behind the shoulder.

Not dissing the bullet per se but in my experience it's not a particularly fast killer used as I was using it.

Moose; pretty classic broadside, angled some, in behind the left leg, centered through a rib; thoroughly drained the heart, exited the chest cavity through another rib, on through the muscles of the leg and lodging against hide.

Use a 140 and drive it 2800+.Deer I have hit with it from the 7/08 and 7x57 have not gone anywhere to speak of...


The 150 will manage 3150 fps on about anything....dumbing it back to 2600 in a little cartridge won't help bring out the best it has to offer.

.

Making up rules are we? If that's the case FMJs are awesome deer killers :rolleyes:

Paul.

The case everybody is missing is very simple... The Partition kills just fine... But it does so at great "expense" in several ways. Driven fast enough it loses lots of mass which is distributed through the surrounding meat as particles of lead.

It generates a tremendous amount of bloodshot meat, far beyond what a monolithic would under identical conditions. Coupled with the lead particles it wastes a lot of meat.

In discussions with multiple cardiologists and anaesthesiologists coupled with my personal experience I have come to believe exit holes are far more important than a "sign of energy wasted" in killing efficiency.

Dropping blood pressure is the single biggest motivator in inducing critter cratering.

The NPT is priced up there with true Premium bullets yet I have a large collection of them recovered from game... I have exactly one monolithic bullet recovered from game I shot. I have only shot dozens of critters with monolithics... And maybe a hundred with NPTs.

To put that in perspective, I was slow to come around to the "light for caliber" mantra and usually used either 7mm or 30 caliber bullets of medium to heavy weight for big game. A caribou bull in October of last year at twenty feet took an 85 grain TTSX from a 25-06 stepping out right pronto, in the neck. Caribou die fairly easy, but have really hard bone, perhaps rivaling any ungulate.

An NPT of heavy for caliber proportion will do a fine job of killing most anything... But compared to a monolith it will not shoot nearly as flat and it will destroy a significant amount of meat.

Sometimes it is very important that critters die very fast. If you have to wonder about "when" you need to question why you are asking "why"...

When Nosler developed the partition over 60 years ago, everybody tried to play catch up for good reason. Partitions just work, period.

Don't flatter yourself Sitka. There's an awful lot of experienced hunters here who don't need an anatomy, metallurgy, or ballistics seminar. Shouldn't you be working on Splatter's stock or something anyway?

The following is the continuation of the same quote with my added commentary in color.

"It generates a tremendous amount of bloodshot meat, far beyond what a monolithic would under identical conditions. Coupled with the lead particles it wastes a lot of meat.

It can, but only sometimes. Certainly I've never seen a significant difference on animals the size of moose. Hitting large bone mass is the single significant place where there seems to be a monolithic advantage, blood-shot-wise.

In discussions with multiple cardiologists and anaesthesiologists coupled with my personal experience I have come to believe exit holes are far more important than a "sign of energy wasted" in killing efficiency.

On animals the size of moose, there are no guarantees of exits, even with monos. While I agree that exits can be a useful significant factor, the holes I've seen from monos on the big animals tend not to be generally as useful for ventilating the rib cage (and deflating the lungs) as bullets which erupt more significantly.

Dropping blood pressure is the single biggest motivator in inducing critter cratering.

The NPT is priced up there with true Premium bullets yet I have a large collection of them recovered from game... I have exactly one monolithic bullet recovered from game I shot. I have only shot dozens of critters with monolithics... And maybe a hundred with NPTs.

To put that in perspective, I was slow to come around to the "light for caliber" mantra and usually used either 7mm or 30 caliber bullets of medium to heavy weight for big game. A caribou bull in October of last year at twenty feet took an 85 grain TTSX from a 25-06 stepping out right pronto, in the neck. Caribou die fairly easy, but have really hard bone, perhaps rivaling any ungulate.

An NPT of heavy for caliber proportion will do a fine job of killing most anything... But compared to a monolith it will not shoot nearly as flat and it will destroy a significant amount of meat.

Sometimes it is very important that critters die very fast. If you have to wonder about "when" you need to question why you are asking "why"...

Monos which fail to expand tend not to kill especially fast and can consequently end up causing excessive bleeding into edible tissues which have been penetrated. A mono is a fine choice for on-bone shots and drop-right-there results however. On large, heavy game however, that means head, neck, or leg shots. High shoulder (scapula) shots are not reliable stopping shots in my experience."


Monos seem to be fine bullets, ideal for some situations. As the shine fades over time however, many folks re-discover that the Partition is still a legitimate standard by which other great bullets can be compared. Is it better than the others? Probably not, but not bettered either. But it does a broader spectrum of things perfectly adequately or better than most bullets which better it in some ways.

In Spain we have a saying that yo make an omelette you need to break some eggs. Ij other words, to kill an animal you will have to destroy some tissue.

Like everybody else I hate nasty wounds, nut I can�t understand why the extreme worries of some people about loosing a couple of pounds of meat.

Even if it were subsistence hunting, which I understand it is not, I'd rather waste some meat in lieu of a quicker kill.

Otherwise, why not use just solids?

BBerg.