Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Two Tipped TSX's recovered in a row

Some "old fashioned" Nosler Partition bullet performance. Is this OK or just a couple of freak accidents?

The deer was a very large muley....250ish on the hoof.

The elk was 5x6 bull.

For Bighorn, please read the captions..........I like Barnes bullets, but a few other designs work too.

And 100-125 lb deer don't require premium bullets either, just sayin'.

[bleep], 100 pound deer don't require $1000 dollar scopes either.

I'll stick with the 'premiums' on deer thank you, most especially with 22's.

Where is Savage99? All we need is for him to remind us that JB says that monumental bullets don't kill animals as quickly.

Holy balls.

True on the scopes.......don't have any in that price range anyway. Most expensive I own are VX3 Leupolds.

Agree if I were using a 22 cal for deer, which I don't, but have seen plenty taken with no-premium 22's by others.

MM

I'm not the guy that works up 15 different loads for a rifle.

One load for deer under 125 pounds shot in eastern woodlots

One load for deer shot in Montana at higher elevations, not to exceed 250 pounds

One load for Key deer, should the season ever open.


When it doubt I'll ALWAYS go on the side of penetration. I also made the switch to Barnes bullets in Alaska. Sure I don't need a premium bullet to kill 180 pound blacktails, but it don't hurt to have when you're hunting around 500 pound animals that can eat you.

Never felt the need to switch, have yet to see little deer die slowly because of Barnes bullets. I haven't shot a deer with a Barnes the previous 2 years but have killed 2 with Barnes this year. As always, the deer died quicker and there wasn't much wasted meat in the shoulder when shot with one.

I know, don't shoot them in the shoulder, only shoot them in the ribs, with the sun at your back.


Again, the cost of premium bullets MIGHT be a consideration if I was shooting 650 animals a year, but I ain't.

Hell, to read this thread you'd think I was the one the maker was continually supplying free samples too.

Or maybe that's the problem..

Nothing wrong with that philosophy if it makes you happy, & having any dangerous critters around as real possibility of running into certainly warrants bullet & caliber upgrades.

Today, & for the last 4-5 years, I've loaded more Barnes than anything else........this year I carried a 7-08 with 120 TSX's; except for the use of an occasional 120 BT in the 7-08 for WT deer, I have not loaded a non-premium bullet for hunting in 25 years or so. 270's, 280's & the 7-08 make up almost 100% of the cartridges I use.

But where no mean stuff lives & the game is smallish deer or antelope, for example, in calibers from .24 or so up, C&C bullets will suffice & in those circumstances I won't fault anyone for using them.

MM

And when exactly will this next Moose hunt be Scotty? Or wait, to have a next you need to have a first. Or are we counting tag alongs?

Scott, didn't you tell me you were looking at a Newfoundland moose hunt this year or next?

No tag alongs, but whilst we are at it sheit head, what is your name

Next year Tom.

You have to be a Canuck, can't be that much dumbphuck wrapped up in Yank.

Scott and I don't always agree, but this post hits home pretty good in regards to my views also.

TTSX have given a friend of mine thats shot quite a few different bullets, his fastest kills and shortest trails ever. At least for the last 3 or so years now.

I've yet to see one kill slowly.

They are hard to recover. Sufficiently accurate. Generally leave 2 holes(not 4 or 5....) and generally weigh pretty much what they started out as.

How thats not about the best you can ask for is beyond me.

I'm about done with Sierra game kings. Most deer shot with them have been dead. But the performance from one to another has been too erratic for me. Their SMKs perform much more consistent than their game kinds fwiw.

There are others but when you find one that works why look further typically.

And for those that think Barnes are to expensive.... I run Lehigh in my 300/221 same reason as barnes.. they work... who cares they are 80 per 50 for bullets only... By far cheap enough.

When it comes to cost... those that worry evidently have never slung 20,000 Sierra Match Kings down range mixed with a bunch of berger and jlks too in a year... year after year.... including quite a few cheaper sierras for practice....

Now if I was shooting 4-5 cases of duck loads a year at the same cost per round, then it might become significant.

Just recrunched my hunting notes from the past 20-some years of using Barnes X's and similar bullets, such as the Fail Safe, Hornady GMX and Nosler E-Tip. I included the other bullets because they have always seemed to work about the same, and crunching the numbers bears that out, but also separated the Tipped TSX's, and the E-Tips and GMX's. The animals weren't shot by just me, but were killed by hunting companions. Around 40% were taken by me and my wife.

I didn't include any animals that were hit through the spine, just animals hit through the ribs with typical heart-lung shots. The distance they went before falling was paced off to the best of our abilities.

Here are the results:

Total: 164 bullets (57% Barnes)

17 Cartridges:.22-250, .240 Weatherby, .257 Roberts, .257 AI, .25-06, .257 Wby., 6.5x55, .270 Win., .270 WSM, 7x57, 7mm Rem. Mag, .308 Win., .30-06, .300 Win. Mag, .338 Win. Mag and two wildcats, .338 WSM and 9.3 BS

17 species: whitetail, mule, fallow and axis deer; pronghorn, elk, moose, feral pigs, nilgai, hartebeest, gemsbok, blue wildebeest, zebra, springbok, Cape buffalo, blesbok and warthog

Average distance lung-shot animals went after shot:
Barnes X�s overall: 47.0 yards
TTSX only: 40.7
Fail Safe, E-Tip, GMX: 55.7
E-Tip, GMX only: 44.0 yards

The "tipped" bullets do seem to kill quicker than the hollow-point bullets, whether the original X or Fail Safes, but my notes on other bullets show lung-shot animals falling quicker, on average. The quickest-killing bullet among my notes is the Berger VLD, which so far has averaged 18 yards with heart-lung shots.

If I have time soon, may break out the numbers on deer-sized game from the rest.

That's impressive record keeping.

Do you have Nosler Partition data that you could include too?

MM

This is pretty close to where we are with today's bullets:



I have had around 10% of the moose I've killed tip over immediately up impact; one with a 190 Interlock out of the 30-06, one with a 225 XFB w/ 340 Weatherby -(he obviously wasn't going to stand only on his two hinds since both fronts were taken out), one with a 250 GameKing and the 340, and one with a 220 Core-lokt an the 30-06. All the rest taken with Core-lokts, Interlocks, Partitions, A-Frames, Grand Slams, TSXs, XFBs, Hot-Cors, NBTs, etc all stood there for awhile or went a short distance before keeling over.

I'd prefer to update it, as I did this data, but right now don't have the time. May do it in the next few days. What I remember is animal lung-shot with Partitions averaged about 35 yards before falling.

The basic indication of the data is that the more weight bullets lose the quicker they kill, assuming penetration to the other side of the chest. This correlates with what many (but not all) forensic ballisticians believe, because more weight-loss results in more destruction to the vitals.

It also correlates with extensive field-testing from several bullet companies, including those in Europe, where a lot of hunting is done on small properties. An animal that dies on a neighbor's property belongs to the neighbor.

One well-known company over there once killed over 500 animals in testing new bullets, and the one they decided to sell as their "stopper" of smaller game such as roe and fallow deer, or mouflon sheep, was a semi-fragmenting type.

This doesn't mean bullets that don't lose weigh won't kill well, but as many of us have noted, they often kill quickest when shot into shoulders, partly because shattered bone then acts as secondary fragments, damaging more tissue.

Thanks..........looking forward to seeing it when you get around to it.

MM

John

Can you refresh my memory on shot placement with bergers.

As you know I thought I was hunting wiht the target ones... and evidently mine were so old I was hunting with the hunting ones before they were...

I"ve not seen any deer shot in the ribs, no shoulders, but lungs, from 308/185s go short like 20 steps. Only thing I"ve seen do that is 257 wtby and ttsx.

Though I rarely have seen anything with bergers go further than wiht barnes. usually its about the same, sans the 257 examples.... More or less 50 steps give or take.

Jeff,

Of course other factors have an effect as well, such as velocity. My guess would be that 185 VLD's at a typical .308 muzzle velocity just aren't going to do the amount of damage as when started at higher velocity.

The Berger kills in my notes are with bullets at higher muzzle velocities. Many are with the 185 .30 but only from the .30-06 at 2800 and the .300 Winchester at around 3050. The other Bergers have been started at velocities in the 2900-3000 fps range, whether 115's from the .257 Roberts, 140's from the 6.5-06, or 168's from the .30-06.

I've found Tipped TSX's (or other monos) to kill quickest when relatively light small-diameter bullets are started fast, and I don't mean 3000 fps but as much over that as possible. Eileen and I have had very good luck, for instance, with the 90 E-Tip at 3400 out of the .240 Weatherby and the 100 TTSX out of the .25-06 at 3350 or the .257 Weatherby at 3550.

At moderate velocities have also had good luck with big, heavy TSX's of at least .33 caliber, again probably because they make bigger holes. Even then, however, have had quicker lung-shot kills, on average, with bullets that lose some weight, say up to 20%. But 20% fragmentation from a bullet of 250 grains amounts to as much shrapnel as a 40% loss from a 125-grain bullet. Of course, big bullets are probably going to be used on game bigger than deer, too.

I need to emphasize that I LIKE Tipped TSX's, and have since they came out. A big percentage of the animals Eileen and I have taken this year were taken with them, though I've also used some Hornady Interlocks and Nosler Partitions. May use something else next month in South Texas. Dunno what it will be yet, but there's always something to learn.