Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 225 grn TSX through an elk shoulder

I shot an elk this week. A medium sized 4x3 bull. Shot him in the shoulder, but didn't mean to. A few years ago I killed an elk with a 30 cal 180 grn partition and it ruined almost an entire shoulder. I told myself I would avoid that in the future if I could.

This time it was with a 225 grn TSX fired from a .35 Whelen. The wife was butchering the shoulder this afternoon and found the bullet, lodged just under the skin on the far side. I was kind of surprised it didn't exit, but it killed the bull where it stood. It did not take even one step. And I'll bet that we didn't cut away more than one big handful of bloodshot meat.

I have a new Apple and I cannot figure out how to keep this new post window open and then open Photobucket to copy the image link, so I'll make another post that shows what the entry wound to that shoulder looked like, and then the bullet

You can see that the bullet made a small entry wound through the far shoulder. You would think that the bullet didn't expand much going through the first shoulder (which we've yet to process).

And here's what the bullet looked like. Retained 216.5 grns weight. You can see that one of the four petals broke away which I guess accounts for the 8.5 grns of weight loss.

This is the first big game animal I've shot with a Barnes bullet, and I'm impressed. It did its job.

Pretty typical...in my experience there is almost always very little blood shot area with TTSX's!

Congrat's on your bull!

Looks like it did it's job perfectly. Congrats! I have seen a TTSX do a great deal of meat damage, but that was a .338 cal hitting at just under 3k fps.

I've got the same recovered 225 TSX from my Whelen as well, went corner to corner on a medium black bear. Two days later I ran one through a 4x4 bull. That bullet went right on through.

The bullet did well, but I was surprised the TSX lost one of those big petals since it was only driven at around 2700.

Congrats on the bull and love that Whelen!

My first Barnes X - a 225 XFB fired from a 340 Weatherby- looked very similar to yours:



It (second from left) took out both shoulder balls and blistered the far side hide.

love that pic with the bullet hanging on the meat!!

Congrats on a successful hunt.

Mike

I had similar results, on a similarly placed shot, with the old 225 X bullet in my Whelen. I'd use the 225 TSX exclusively if I didn't have so many standard 250's to shoot up first. But the Hornady and Speer 250 gr lead core bullets do the same job in my opinion, used on about 15 or so elk.

Same bullet from my Whelen recovered from a BC moose. Centered the near shoulder and found a bit behind the off. Similar minimal meat damage. Same hunt, a decent 6x6 elk facing at 150 yards. Dropped at the shot but did not find the slug.

I bet the internals were shredded.

The bullet passed above the heart and liver which were intact, and below the backstrap, but everything in between was mush. We butchered the front shoulder this afternoon and no bullet hole in it, so it must have entered just behind the front shoulder and angled into the back shoulder.

And here's the weird thing - in my memory I have a perfect picture of that bull in my crosshairs. I shot him in the left side. I would have bet my life on it. But the bullet exited his left shoulder. I guess when people are under an adrenaline rush sometimes things can get crossed in their brains. That's all I can figure. Has that ever happened to anyone else here?

I shot a 6x7 bull elk Sunday morning with a 180gr TSX fired out of a 3006. First shot went through both lungs and exited, about two inches above the heart. He was still standing so I sent one into his neck, it broke the neck and exited. That surprised me since I haven't seen an exit from a dead center neck shot before with my 3006. Distance was 225 yards.

They are great bullets for elk. I shoot a 338 Win Mag and the only ones I have recovered were full length shots on a bull and a cow and a frontal neck shot on a 6x6 at 65 yards.

Perry