Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters AccuBonds vs. A-Frames in Africa............

It was in the mid 90s hunting "small southeast" deer in Alabama. The rifle was a 7mm remington mag., the bullet was a factory loaded 160gr fail safe, loaded by who I don't remember. The shot was about a 150 yards or so across an open food plot. At the shot the deer ran off. 2 hours later I found the deer with 4 entry holes in it and no exit holes. And that was the last fail safe I've used hunting, so I know where Allens coming from. However does one bullet failure mean people doesn�t use fail safes? Sure they do and they take lots of game each year with fail safes. For that matter I've had Nosler Partitions that didn't exit on southeast deer, did they fail? I'm just saying my experience with fail safes hasn't been everyone elses and Allens with Accubonds hasn't been mine and I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bath just yet. Will I use Accubonds in Africa or for anything bigger than Caribou? Most likely not, but at this point I�ll keep using them for deer.

Sounds like the bullet either broke up in flight or hit something before the deer. That's the first EVER report like that on a Failsafe, yet at last count, there are at least two dozen independently confirmed AB FAILURE TO PENETRATE or overexpansion and another dozen or so over on the other forum. Not a valid measure of effectivess for comparison Mark. In any event, for deer any bullet will suffice, but I have to tell you, I'd be pissed if I had a bullet fail like that on a skinny old bushbuck. Pick your poison. jorge

jorge1,
Here is a photo of a great Hartmann's mountain zebra stallion, taken in Namibia, with a Wby. Mk.V. in 300 Wby, with a 200 gr. Swift A-Frame.
Shot was around 200 yards, and the zebra ended up on his back with all four feet in the air, graveyard dead. Bullet ended up just under the skin on the far shoulder.
Btw- zebra have great shoulder aim points, with those chevrons!

Any factory loaded Fail Safe would have been done by Winchester at that time as they were intro'd to market in late fall '94, IIRC. That bullet almost surely hit something enroute to the target, given there were four entrance holes. I've used Fail Safes since they were developed, and like a partition, they have never failed to perform as advertised for me. They are still the bullet I judge all else by when it comes to deep penetration. They did get some bad PR off and on about failure to expand, or lack of expansion on light game, and IMO that was not the bullet's fault, but rather the user's because they were not designed to open up on 100 pound deer. I'm not one to keep using something that fails to work properly, but even I will give a bullet more than one chance before quitting it.

I have no idea what happened with Allen's AccuBonds, and wouldn't even presume to hazard a guess. I have used them on game in various calibers from .257 to .30, and seen them used in calibers up to .375. The game ranged in size from feral pigs to Cape buffalo. Have also shot a lot into media of various sorts. I have yet to see anything like what he describes, so something obviously went wrong, but guessing what it might be from this distance is not a good idea. Taking them to Nosler is.

Part of the reason I can't even hazard a guess is that the AccuBonds basically are "heavy-jacket" Ballistic Tips with bonded cores. I have shot a LOT of animals with the 200-grain .338 Ballistic Tip and it holds up wonderfully on game up to 500+ pounds. In fact I have only recovered one, taken from a bull gomsbok, shot at aboyt 150-175 yards with a .338 Winchester as it quartered toward me. The bullet hit where I aimed, the point of the shoulder, shattered the underside of the spine, and went through the body diagonally. It was recovered under the skin alongside the opposite hindquarter, retaining 60-something percent of its weight, if I recall correctly.

The reason the heaver Ballistic Tips perform like that is that the jacket is at least 60% of the bullet's weight, so even if the core separates they retain a majority of their weight. I can't understand how bonding essentially the same bullet would cause it to be weaker--which I am very interested in Nosler's response to all this.

By the way, I have had one real bad experience with a bonded bullet, though, and it was the one that "solved" Allen's African problem: the Swift A-Frame. Saw several 300-grain 9.3's fail to penetrate a water buffalo that a friend shot. (I was right beside him and one of the autopsiers.) The first bullet took the bull on the point of the shoulder, and didn't get into the ribcage. It flattened out like a half-dollar, the front core was gone, and the rear core punched through the partition in the middle. Retained weight was a fraction over 50%. Others shattered into tiny pieces on the spine. I showed the remainders of the flattened bullet from the shoulder to Swift and they said it looked like a defective bullet to them as well.

MD

PS--The glowing original write-ups of the Speer Grand Slam when it appeared in the 1970's were almost all by people who read the Speer press release about the construction--but hadn't tested the bullet at all. I know, I went back and read them later, after my sad encounter with the cow elk. Which I why I make it a point to test new bullets on both media and game before writing about them.

OK Picture time and I'llleave it to the forty pound heads to crop it down to size. You are looking at three 300gr Swift A Frames recovered from an eland (175 yards), Zebra (125 yards), and wildebeest (60 yards) respectively. The fourth bullet is a 180gr Hornady recovered from an impala at 80 yards out of my 300 Weatherby. The first two A Frames retained about 98% of their weight and the one out of the wildebeest weighed in at 265gr. I shot him right in the chest. The 180gr bullet, weighed all of 77grs. Now had I shot that eland at the same distance and in the same place (point of the shoulder) what would the results have been?

One or maybe two bullet failures is not an indictment of a particular bullet, but between this site and others there are literally scores of documented AB failures as well as Hornady IBs as well. I'm not that smart, but I don't need a 2X4 to hit me between the eyes to figure out those ABs need some work. jorge

Experiences with bullets vary a great deal, no question about it.

I still don't see one single, solitary, honest, practical, legitimate reason to go with BTs or ABs over Partitions as a big game bullet. Not one. If someone can answer that question satisfactorily, or make a solid point to the contrary, I'd surely love to hear about it. Accuracy surely isn't a good reason in my book, at least out of any rifle I've hunted with, since Partitions have almost always shot into an inch or so (sometimes much less) out of the majority of my hunting rifles, both tuned factory guns and custom jobs.

All I know is, Swift A-Frames totally out-performed Nosler ABs on this safari, and for me Partitions have been totally trouble-free in my experience for some some three decades. And I think that Winchester really blew it by discontinuing the Fail-Safe, which has, in many ways, been the best-performing big game bullet I have EVER used.

Before I ever announce the bullets I'm using, I make it a habit of asking any PH who might be in an African camp as to what bullets he prefers. Almost like a refrain, from Tanzania to Namibia, the answer is Swift A-Frame, Barnes X (or TSX), Woodleigh, Trophy Bonded, Nosler Partition, Fail-Safe, and (increasingly) North Fork. That's a pretty short list, and most PHs I've hunted with have had negative things to say about just about everything else.

Now, I suppose that if Sierra -- out of shear benevolence -- decided to sponsor a safari for the edification and enjoyment of of their own marketing folks and honored guests, the PHs might keep their comments about bullet performance to themselves, but they'd have to bite down hard to stay silent, I'd wager........... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

AD

Awhile back I fired a couple of 180 grain factory "Federal" Accubonds and 180 grain Fusions into an alternating mix of 2-3 inches of wet magazine/ 2-3 inches dry magazine, out of a .300 WSM at 10 yards. The Accubonds made it through about 15 inches and held together fairly well, expanding to just under twice their size. The Fusions traveled about a foot and were quite wider in diameter and looked more disfigured.
I am going to make a new bullet testing contraption (perhaps a 2X10 for the bone and wet newsprint for tissue) this weekend and will pit the "Winchester CT" Accubonds against the Winchester XP3s. I will post results and pictures of recovered bullets this weekend. Sam

One may recall that Keith, Seyfreid and others have been suspicious of boattail bullets on big game. Some of us may have thought that bonding could cure that, but perhaps it doesn't. I am aware some are perfectly happy with boattails. Simple physics would indicate that problems are more likely with boattails.
T

MD,
You mentioned that you couldn't see how bonding would make the AB bullet weaker. Bonding is done with heat and it softens the jacket. At least this what most of us make our own bonded core bullets believe.
John

Depends on the bonding process, not all bonding is done by useing heat.

Guys it was an open food plot. The only thing between the deer and me was AIR.

Allen--

I'm totally with you in many ways on this.

The reasons Nosler brought out the AccuBond are:
1) Many shooters are demanding plastic-tip bullets.
2) Many shooters are demanding boattail bullets.
3) Many shooters are demanding bonded bullets.

Now, from both your experience and mine, all three of those factors are overrated, especially the first two. Right here on the Campfire, some guy recently stated that the "recent" introduction of bonded bullets (he apparently was unaware of their several-decades history) was what made it possible to use smaller rifles on bigger game. He was also apparently unaware of the 60-year history of the Nosler Partition, and the fact that many recent and even "old" bonded bullets (such as the Bitterroot) do not penetrate as deeply as the boring old Partition, which in my tests normally comes in a close second in penetration to the Barnes X.

But that is the way of the world. We have a bunch of hunters out there who firmly believe that plastic tips, boattails and bonding give them a big edge in the field. You and I know this isn't so, especially on the bigger animals where premium bullets are especially useful, but there it is.

I don't know how Nosler bonds the AccuBond, because they won't tell anybody.

MD

Designing a rifle or bullet based on the superstitions of customers about visible features is a recipe for delivering something which works some of the time and displeases a lot of people.

It's a lot easier to make money by selling people what they want to buy. Even if what they want isn't always what they really need!........................DJ

Thank god we have the Nosler Partition.Wasn't a huge fan of parts a couple of years ago.Due to my own ignorance and other peoples here-say.
Now the more I use them the more i like thier design.Big or small it cover's them all.

It's is the "sizzle" as they say in marketing, and make no doubt about it there has been a lot of sizzle about bonded bullets in the last couple of years.

IMO it is the same sizzle that sells the short mags.

For me I've not changed my mind, was always leary about the new bonded bullets.

I've been a partition man since I started loading about 1970 or so and since the TSX came out I gravitated to that brand.

I'll gladly take a NPT,TSX,TB and or SAF or NF and hunt the world. Which of those means little to me, as I have complete confidence in all of them.

Mark D

MD, all of what you've stated sounds about right to me.

I hate to be a harping critic, and the truth is, I'd love to see Nosler succeed in a big way with the AccuBond. The concept is good, and I can only hope that the AB will be perfected in the months and years to come. Knowing Nosler, I just can't help but think that they will get everything right in the future.

I'm not exactly sure who came up with the first successful bonded hunting bullet, but it may well have been Bill Steigers with his Bitterroots.

Bonding bullets so that they stay together and don't shatter CAN work, as evidenced by Swift, Trophy Bonded, Woodleigh, and North Fork projectiles, so I'm certain that the AB can be perfected.

On one of these posts you mentioned Speer Grand Slams. To date, I've taken exactly one animal with the GS (150 gr./ 270 Win.), which was a fork-horn mule deer buck here in OR back in 1979. I shot him from about a 100 yds. out, and he then ran in a 50 yd. circle and folded up. We found the jacket just inside on the entrance side, with the core going clear through. That was my only effort with GSs, and I'v mostly stuck with 130 gr. Nosler Partitions in the 270 Win. ever since.

The Grand Slam has to be one of the biggest bullet disappointments of all time, and it doesn't seem as though Speer has ever made a real concerted effort to perfect it. Why, I'm not sure.........

AD

I will read whatever I can on how bullets work for others as there is no way I can do enough shooting to try everything. There are bullets I loved to use but stopped for various reasons. While I was on the 7STW kick I was impressd at how the 140 gr Swift worked at close range shoting of pigs. I was able to shoot a very large sow through the bottom of the chest bone going through both leg bones with no deviation from path. If you want to test a bullet this area at close range is tough on bullets (it will break down the pig but a finisher will be needed). But I felt I needed more bullet so I went with the FailSafe. It worked great. But I had an elk that I had shot broadside in the chest and put another in the back hip a it was going away. The damage looked suspect in the hip. I could not figure out what happend. It looked like it tumbled but I could not believe it. Then I shot a waterbuck with the FailSafe that entered in front of the on shoulder and exited tight behind the off shoulder. When I got to him he was sitting upright and I shot him again. The first bullet was protruding with the base of the bullet out of the skin with the mushroom holding it in the animal. I stopped useing the 160 grain Fail Safe because of a confience issue. It stopped the animal but I lost conidence in it. It could have had something to do with rifle twist or the bullet. Who knows.
The FailSafe never let me down and its not a bad bullet but I lost confidence in it. I told myself it had to do with the steel insert in back. It had shot alot of stuff with it but I could not try it again. The bullet went through a hell of alot of tough stuff. I was being tough on that bullet

Where I am going is that we ask alot of the bullets at the speeds and bullet weights we want to use. When a large diameter bullet is offered by he factory it is usually the light bullet load that makes it. On the 7mm and 30 cal we try and make rocket ships out of them. These bullets have to work up close to the other side of the moon. They must work on game from little deer to eland and everything that lies between. Kevin Robertson who wrote "The Perfect Shot" a book on shot placement on african animals goes into great detail on calibers and performance. An example he gives is reducing the speed of the 300 grain 375 bulltes to 2400 fps. This was mainly done to make the solids perform better by keeping them from exiting. The softs also worked better because penatration was better. This was an example on buffalo.
What this illustates is by matching the cartridge speed, bullet style, bullet type to a particular animal to get the proper results.
I am a gun looney and I like to use different combos of guns and cartridges on game and the situations that are presented. Sometimes I think we make it difficult by trying to make the bullet the scapegoat.

Why a solid would perform better by not exiting totally eludes me.
Explain, please.
T