Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Accubond vs. Accubond Long Range

Not 7mm, 6.5mm.

Last weekend, my hunting bud and I each killed a WT doe, he with a 130 gr. NAB at 3,400 fps, me with a 140 NAB at 3,300 fps. Both kills showed small entrance and small exit wounds, fair amount of messed up tissue in between, no blood trail. Mine was hit perfectly behind the shoulder at 100 yds, but due to position, the bullet angled back thru the lungs. His was a low lung shot, too far back, so bullet placement wasn't that good on either doe. They weighed around 130 #'s.

Both ran without blood trails and had to be found. We were shooting our newly built 26 Noslers.

From this series of two dead deer with less than great bullet placement, it seems that the 130 and 140 NAB's may be a bit hard for lung shooting WT's. It's been reported that the 129 ABLR may be slightly softer than the std. NAB. I can't find any ABLR's, they're all on backorder. If they're slightly softer than the regular AB's they may be OK, even for high velocity, close shots.

My bud told me he wants to load his 26 with 140 NPT's. From what I've read, the NAB and the NPT perform pretty close, but he thinks he gets more frag effect from the soft NPT nose than he got from the NAB. He could be right.

DF

One difference I've noticed between AB's and Partitions is recovered AB's often end up with a wider frontal mushroom, due to the tapered jacket supporting the bonded core. With Partitions the front core partially or completely disappears (which is what they were designed to do), and the remains of the front jacket peel back along the sides.....

DF: What you may be seeing is that the AB is not tough enough to maintain a broad mushroom under the high impact velocity and rpm's of 3400 fps at close range.The expanded petals are being torn off,leaving a bullet diameter shank to punch on through.The base is tough enough to resist being torn up.

A couple of friends are texting me now saying they see more damage from the Partition on elk than the AB....interesting.

Might be fun to see what those bullets do past 300 yards after they have slowed down a bit.

DF,

I have shot several deer with the 130 AB out of my .264. The jury is still out for me. No bang flops and all ran a short distance - less than 50 yards; not much blood either. I am not handloading right now and my factory 264 choices are very limited. The 140 grain core-lokts are softer than you would think (at least at 264 velocity) and I have found a couple under the hide that were a mangled mess of metal and nothing like the pic of the deadliest mushroom in the woods. The WW Powerpoints are even softer, but they do kill pretty dramatically.

I wish Nosler would load the 264 in a 140 BT. I think that would be about perfect for my hunting.

Which is why Elmer Keith said some 80 years ago that muzzle velocities between 2400 and 2800fps give the most consistent performance.

Not much has changed.

Which is why Elmer Keith said some 80 years ago that muzzle velocities between 2400 and 2800fps give the most consistent performance.

Not much has changed.

Scotty: Interesting to compare tat bullet to the one's recovered from Matt's elk. I recall they seem to have had more frontal area left,even though, given the different starting velocity (3050-300 Weatherby vs 300 RUM 3200)the impact velocities were roughly the same,both a bit over 2300 fps if I read the tables right (400 vs 530 yards).

But the thing that's different is the rpm's being higher with the 300 RUM and I wonder out loud if that causes the difference in the expansion and what's left of the bullet.Tough to tell from a sample of three...

Doesn't matter really as your bullet resembles an expanded Partition and that ain't a bad place to be.

What about a Nosler E-Tip? Those seem to have a broad frontal area when driven hard and retain it well. That might be something in the 26 Nosler since it has pretty decent BC as well.

Great info DF. It is tough being a looney someday with all of these choices...

This was pulled from the ball socket the scapula rides on, on another spike elk. 300 Win Mag, 150-175 yards, 180 PT. I would have almost best money this bullet would have flown right on through, since it didn't hit much of anything on the near side.













[img]http://i723.photobucket.com/al...-A6E4-AC165AD6B47E_zps173vzspr.jpg[/img]

Not much left of the bullet, the rear core went somewhere else, most of the frontal area is gone, but the bullet worked as it was supposed to and the elk went no where. I almost wouldn't beleive it was a 180 PT if I didn't know the shooter, but I skinned, quartered and butchered the elk, so there you have it. Bullets do funny things sometimes...

DF,

As has been stated, at those speeds the front portion is tearing off leaving just the base to exit. The Accubond's are not "too hard" for deer. Look at the entire wound channel to see the story.

You know, for LR, I see the merits of high vel rounds. For our kinda local hunting, I'm not so sure.

Like the 80 gr. .240 at 3,600 fps. It's really not a LR round because that little bullet loses knock down at extended ranges, doesn't hold velocity and KE well enough to be a LR contender for deer sized animals. Smaller critters, maybe so.

The 26 Nosler with 140 NAB's, 142 and 150 Matrix VLD's, 140 Berger VLD's, etc. should be a good LR round with fairly adequate wallop way down range.

I don't think these hyper vel rounds offer much over std. rounds for 200 yd. and under everyday deer hunting. And, bullet selection isn't that critical; most any good C&C projectile will do the job at 2,800 or so fps.

Learning as I go; that's my current thinking on the subject. As always, appreciate input.

DF

Seems to me, there is more blood flow from entrance/exit wounds when the projectile is fired at 2,800 fps or so, vs. 3,400 fps. I guess hyper vel hits cause tissue shock and trauma such that wounds don't bleed as freely as from lower velocity hits.

DF

Shedding pedals is fragments that create secondary wounds.