Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Bullet technology for 270

There is a new kind of bullet technology.
It is copper, not completely new.
It is designed to shed nose petals that cut away from the main wound channel, something fairly new.
And it comes in a decent BC. the package is new.
The seal-tight band is part of an accuracy claim, too.

Has anyone tried the CEB Copper Raptors in .277"?

The light one is 90grains. Does anyone have any experience with this?

In a 270Win I figure that it would whiz at about 3600-3700fps. The BC is only .330 but at that velocity a 2" Point-Blank-Range is over 300 yards.

The 115gn looks interesting, too, with a .405BC.
Would it work as an elk round?

I wouldn't use them for Elk.

In the .270 I'd stick with either the 150gr Partition, or 140gr AB.

How do those little copper bullets do when they hit bone?

How do you get penetration when you lack weight.

Sounds a little far-fetched to me.

Great coyote round, no doubt (if it's accurate).

Those were part of my background questions. However, in larger bores the copper bullets penetrate just fine. The blunt cylinder outpenetrates a mushroom. They get added momentum from extra velocity and they retain about 75% of their weight after the petals shear and penetrate outwards.

Just buy an '06

I don't care for any bullet that is "designed" to come apart. Give me a NP any day.

NP is designed to come apart. Just sayin.

Yep

Yep, but the NP will still have more mass after it "came apart" then the little copper bullet did when it was new.

Yep, but the little copper bullet will have more velocity...

FWIW, I have never used, or even seen, one of these new bullets. So my "yep" was not addressing the efficacy of it. I was addressing the comment regarding the design of the NP.

I'll stick with the old-fashioned bullets.

I know they work well enough not to need improvement.

The little copper bullet sounds like it's defying several scientific laws and that always makes me suspicious.

The great thing about the Partition is that it is designed to both come apart causing lots of damage, and to stay together ensuring great penetration. Party in the front, business in the back! Aside from BC, it really is a difficult design to improve upon. I would even argue that bonding the front the way the A-Frame does is not necessarily an improvement. The soft front of the Partition is beneficial for causing damage.

OK, first, CEB bullets have been around for a few years.

Second, Copper bullets have already earned a well deserved reputation for penetration. NPs are comparable, but still a distant second to them. Copper bullets of all the types I have tried will hold together at very high impact velocity. I have not used CEBs, but that is in part because they are designed to break the petals off. I need some convincing that I am better off with a few 8-10 grain secondary projectiles and a decreased mushroom with 100% retained weight.

Even little 53 grain TSX bullets will penetrate through very large deer and take bone with it. There's nothing I would worry about taking with 130 grain TSX/TTSX bullets in North America. I would expect two holes with them on decent shots on moose. Bone or no bone. I have seen a 110 grain TTSX manage about ten inches of bone in a good sized deer and still have plenty of steam to exit at near 300 yards. The only use for heavier TSX/TTSX bullets that I have is in a big 30 and at long range. 400 and in, a 130 is plenty enough and probably better.

My next experiment with .270 copper bullets will be with 80 grainers at >3900 FPS and I'll be setting up to do PBR out to 400 yards and shoot one out there and also inside fifty feet. Based on shooting a bunch of them and thorough testing with Barnes bullets as small as 53 grains and as big as 250 grains I don't expect to see anything I haven't already seen a few times.

Yeah the CEBs can do about the same thing, but because the petals that break off only run 8-10 grains they just aren't going to do all that much additional damage. If any. Remember, the wider front end of a TSX/TTSX is going to go all the way through, hold it's internal velocity better and produce a bigger wound channel than the body of the CEB.

I have seen quite a few deer with the lungs reduced to red soup en toto with Barnes, E-tips and GMXs. I just don't see a bullet that sheds petals doing more. How could it?

Breaking things is a function of momentum, not energy.

The formula for energy is m*v^2, where the formula for momentum is M*V.

In other words, velocity is de-emphasized when it comes to breaking things.

Oh, you found ten inches of bone in a deer?

You sure it wasn't a rhino?

Shedding petals will give a bigger initial cavity, but a smaller extended wound channel. It's a matter of where you want the most tissue destruction, near the point of entry, or on the back end of a long wound channel.

Actually, I've shot quite a few Barnes myself. I've recovered a few. Some are beautiful, 4-petal mushroom 416's, and about three are blunt-end cylinder .416's. I like to send off my 350 grain 416" at over 2800fps and sometimes the petals just come off. My guess is that the boundary is around 2600-2700fps impact speed. At least in .416" if the bullet is going over 2700fps I would expect petal-shearing. That's not a bad thing, but it helps if the petals radiate away from the main projectile at a good angle.

Bullet on left was from a hartebeest at 183 yards. Bullet on the right was from a buffalo, through the face and into the neck from 70 yards.

Six inch wide ribs up near the spine edgewise. 3-1/2 inches of spine. Two scapulae about 1/4 inch thick each.

If you ever shoot a deer you might be able to figure out other combinations to accomplish that much and more.

I have only seen one Barnes lose a petal, 150 grainer out of a 300 WM and into the teeth of a deer at 25 feet. There might have been other(s), but I have never seen evidence of it in a lot of deer shot with them and butchered. That includes close to twenty at short range and into bone. So, thirty caliber and under at >3000 FPS hold together in my experience. Half a dozen ML Barnes with the big hollow point and not one of them showed evidence of lost petals either.

Randy Brooks was kind of astounded when people complained that his first X-Bullets lost petals, because they were obviously recovered from dead animals, and most reported the animals died quickly. But ever since Bob Hagel published GAME LOADS AND PRACTICAL BALLISTICS FOR AMERICAN HUNTERS in the 1970's, retained weight had been the Holy Grail among among some hunters, even if it often didn't have much to do with how effectively bullets worked on game. So Randy gave people what they wanted, more weight retention.

There have been some other monolithic bullets designed for the petals to break off, such as the GS Custom, and they've all proved very effective on big game. But like a lot of stuff, most people make up their mind whether petals breaking off or staying in more effective before they ever shoot anything with any of these bullets. (Of course, the major factor in how well any bullet kills is where it's placed, but that's no fun to argue about.)

I've been pretty impressed with how well the Cutting Edge Raptors kill AND penetrate so far, but my sampling is still far smaller than with Barnes TSX's, Nosler Partitions and many other bullets.