Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game A premium bullet does NOT guarantee premium results.

This was recovered at a claimed 2300 fps. doesn't look good enough to me.

http://www.thediyhunter.com/images/...arnes-270-wsm-tsx-555yards-cow-elk-l.jpg

Rest of the article.

http://www.thediyhunter.com/big-gam...bullets-tsx-ttsx-243-wssm-270-wsm-rifles

I'm not sure how much it matters, because I don't shoot Barnes, but that 130 is named a TSX in the article. I hear that the TTSX do open more readily and with a far lower failure rate. And I wouldn't trust Barnes' BC numbers. That bullet looks like it hit at more like 2K fps. I guess if the drops were right...

Well, it is a great video anyways, I am glad when hunters put these up for us to argue over, lol.

Thanks everyone for your input.

It looks like the deer died from bleeding lung(s) and suffocation from the combined effects of the pneumothorax and blood in the lung(s).

I would very much like to have been present when it was gutted. My tests on TTSXs have me believing that the bullet should have expanded in pretty ad copy fashion at 2100 FPS. As high as that hit was, full expansion should have ruptured the descending aorta which would have put the deer down in 50 yards or so. I have deliberately shot deer at roughly the same height to prove that, but at substantially higher velocity, and that is exactly what happens. Rupture or even just a good nick to the descending aorta and they'll bleed out at about the same speed as a heart hit deer.

Maybe a little further back than it looks. Maybe a steeper down angle then it looks. Maybe a little more broadside than it looks. Maybe a little slower than the shooter thinks.

Add some or all of those things together and you can wind up with a poorly expanded bullet clipping the bottom end of the lung(s). That makes the result a lot less surprising.

Bottom line: the shooter needed some insurance. ie more speed, less range, better hit, better angles. Lung hits alone with enough bullet speed to cause good cavitation will bust the lungs completely. The time it takes to run fifty yards is all that leaves them.

I'm not sure what the video tells us about "premium bullets",other than one deer was hit on the edge of the vitals at almost 400 yards,at one velocity level and ran a couple of hundred yards (or whatever) before expiring. It happens.

Before condemning tougher bullets we might want a weighted average on lots of animals shot at various distances. Also, judging bullets based on hits around the fringes of vitals never made much sense to me because I have never seen it make much of a difference,whether premium or C&C if hits are on the edge or out of the vital zone. Bad hits are bad hits regardless of the bullet used.


I have seen smaller animals like doe antelope literally disemboweled, their tiny bodies and thin skins exploding like popped balloons from rapidly expanding bullets.They went as far as a woodchuck hit with a Swift..but that's the exception; hardly a "rule " to live by.

I'm not sure what "premium results" are,since the shot that dumps them in their tracks at close range may take longer to be affective at longer distance,due to less dramatic expansion,less cavitation , smaller would channel.

The advantage of many "premiums" is frequently reliable penetration coupled with adequate expansion across pretty broad velocity ranges but expansion will diminish as distance increases. I bet that same bullet planted a bit further forward, lower,and angled through the center of the lungs into the off side shoulder/upper leg bones would have ended things right there,or at least more quickly.

The problem with faster and more frangible expansion is that it may be too fast, and too frangible on closer shots...we may leave penetration on the table.Hard to get everything "just right".But a good rule is that animals are killed best with surgically placed bullets.

Bullet performance is sometime pretty mysterious! Lumping premiums together under one generic code is dicey business today, too,since even they vary in materials, expansion and penetration characteristics,etc etc.

Some incidences beeak all the rules. That doesn't change the rules.

I once video'd a nanny goat of around 120 pounds take 5 or 6 chest and shoulder shots from a 6.5x55 with my handloaded ammo at under 50 yards and it stood on its feet until the last shot.
John

Next time I shoot at an elk at 555 yards, I'll have to see what is in my magazine.
This 130g Barnes Triple Shock, TSX bullet was recovered from a cow elk near the hide in the rear of a hind quarter. This shot was from a 270 WSM, Model 1885 at 555 yards with a muzzle velocity of 3400 FPS. At this range and an altitude of 7,000 feet the impact velocity was somewhere near 2350 FPS. This bullet went from a shoulder in the front end to a hind quarter on the opposite side passing through and crushing the femur in the hind quarter. This was the first shot and although the elk was messed up she didn't appear to be falling over anytime soon so I sent a second shot through both front shoulders and out the other side and she dropped.
He is also putting a lot of faith in his ballistics program.

JMR40,

As Huntnshoot already noted, that was a TSX, not a Tipped TSX, and it did open even thought the animal was shot at much longer range than the mule deer (though with a little faster cartridge). Barnes BC's for TSX's, in particular, are a little high, one reason for the introduction of the Tipped TSX.

The other reason (or at least my guess about another reason) is that some TSX's don't open much, if at all, though that isn't the case with the one in the photo. I've seen over 100 animals taken with the original Barnes X, TSX's and Tipped TSX's, including a bunch my wife and I have shot. The hollow-point version sometimes (rarely) fails to expand, usually in calibers from .24 to .30. One of the guesses as to why is the hollow-point sometimes gets battered partly or completely closed due to recoil while in the magazine. This is why it doesn't happen (or at least I haven't seen or heard of it happening) with .22 caliber or over-.30 caliber TSX's: The recoil too's light in .22 centerfires, and the hollow-point is a lot bigger in bullets over .30 caliber.

But I have yet to see this in Tipped TSX's, probably because the tip increases BC, but more importantly because there's a huge hollow-point where the plastic tip is inserted into the bullet. Have heard of one instance where a TTSX didn't expand, apparently because it hit a bone at an angle, bending the tip over, but so far I haven't seen it happen. Also haven't seen it happen with Nosler E-Tips or Hornady GMX's, which are of similar design, and plenty of all three have been shot into various animals at distances where velocity had fallen to down around 2000 fps.

Maybe the bullet didn't open--but I doubt it. It looks to me like shot placement was the big factor. Hits around the edges of the lungs with bullets that don't send off any fragments just don't kill all that quickly.

This has been an interesting topic so far, but when we went from what premium bullets guarantee to what constitutes killing power we at the moment got into some pretty controversial territory. Hard evidence is really difficult to come by for most of us because no two cases are ever exactly alike. Additionally, we bring our prejudices to whatever we see causing poor observations and faulty conclusions. All of us who have taken lots of game animals have seen deer and such hit with the same bullet from the same rifle in the same part of the body react in completely different ways. Also, we've seen an animal with a less than perfect hit go right down. Then at other times, we have shot the holly sh*t out of a buck only to have him refuse to stay down. Five years ago I shot a large bull elk with my .280AI at over 300yds. It was a classic broadside shot with the 160gr NPT hitting him a little high but right behind the shoulder, drilling both lungs. He went straight down and never regained his feet. A few weeks later, with the same rifle and load I took a shot at a nice buck antelope at about the same distance and I hit him with the same high lung shot. But, after the shot nothing was the same. That damned antelope ran almost half a mile. Now lets suppose those were the only two BG animals I'd ever shot and I based killing power of the bullet and or cartridge on those two experiences. I'd be in a real dilemma.

Hell, I had a deer take a ballistic tip through both lungs at 40 yards then run off a couple hundred yards. Watched him for 5 minutes, blood trickling out the exit hole, before he finally wobbled and fell over dead.

When I cut him open there was a perfect 35 caliber hole through both lungs and a same size hole on the offside. If that bullet expended you couldn't prove it by me.

The high lung shot placement is what I believe to be the primary reason for the time it took the buck to expire. I probably could have worded my original comment better than I did but I didn't mean to imply that the bullet didn't open since it was traveling significantly faster than 2000 fps which is why I pointed out the velocities to begin with. I meant to imply that maybe it didn't open as fully as it could have if it had gone through some bones. Or perhaps it did open sufficiently, but not before it had penetrated a fair amount of distance before doing so. Did the bullet punch through a rib or slip between them on the way in? We lack some details really. I have no experience shooting Barnes bullets of any stripe to date and would take Mule Deer's word for it that they open nicely at 2000 fps. His description of lung tissue in his earlier comment describing smaller blood vessels and lower air pressure at the fringes of the lungs make a whole lot of sense to me.

I had a somewhat similar shot on a whitetail buck last season. It was similar in that the buck started quartering away to his right just as I pulled the trigger on my .358 Win BLR with a Hornady 200 gr SP over IMR-3031 at about 40 yards range. The buck ran about the same distance of 40 yards before piling up with no blood on the ground until he fell and crawled about 6 feet more into a little depression underneath a log where I found him. I was disappointed that there was no exit wound but I can't say the bullet didn't do its job. The bullet entered towards the rear of the rib cage on the buck's left side like the subject shot of this thread, but it was centered, not high. It shattered the offside scapula and lodged in the ball socket without penetrating it. Retained weight was 149 grains. See pics of the recovered bullet below. I'm thinking a Barnes bullet would have exited in my case.

For a shot that is too high and too far back, with low retained velocity on a comparatively soft animal a Barnes would be close to my last choice. Just about anything would have worked better and most of them are fairly ordinary.

Turn the situation around to a large animal shot through major bone and muscle mass at close range with the associated high velocity and the same Barnes bullet is very good, equal to any and probably better than most.

Everything is a compromise, but soft rapidly expanding bullets at high velocity have gotten me out of more situations than they ever caused, and the harder expanding bullets have caused more blood trails than they saved by being able to shoot through animals lengthwise. That doesn't necessarily mean that they failed to work as designed, it that I am often less than thrilled by what they do when they do work as designed.

ooops

If you look at the picture carefully you'll notice that while the buck's HEAD is turned.....his body is not much turned at all.

That's why the bullet didn't really range forward much at all.

That's why it just clipped the edge of one lung.

Of course he didn't drop dead quickly.

Would have been a miracle if he had.

The first mule deer I killed was also a fork. It was a very big deer. I got it broadside just above the heart from a range of about 100 yards with a Nosler Partition 7mm 175 started at 3,150 feet per second from an STW before they were called STW. It also traveled like that one did.

The first elk I killed was with a Nosler Partition 7mm 160 started at 3,200 feet per second. It took that long to die, but it just stood there after moving about fifteen feet. Just enough that I couldn't get a second shot off. Finally it fell over. I ranged it at 400 yards.

I've taken mule deer with that same shot (one 400 yds) (high lung) shooting a 280 AI using 140 Nosler BT's.
It dropped them in their tracks.

Super T, your scenario proves antelope are way tougher than elk.

I'm not impressed with long range shooting. I prefer to hunt. The big advantage to premium bullets is the ability to hang together on high velocity impacts and still expand on low velocity hits. 400 yards and further, to me is a hunter failure.

Here is another great video in slow motion. One of the best I have seen, besides shot placement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dzozi5Tmpg

In regard to this video, I agree with you. If they blew their stalk or just bumped the buck w/o seeing it, they could have shot it while it was much closer, or at least attempted to put together another approach. Not shooting a closer shot when it is straightforward, and half the distance irks me a bit. Then they made a marginal shot. Don't know what the hell they were doing, but it looked screwy to me.

I don't, however, concur that as a rule shots 400yds and farther are hunter failure. Trying to get closer can take up over a mile and a couple thousand vertical feet, depending on where one hunts. If it is a confident set-up, I see no ethical dilemma with shots past 400 on game. This is more the rule than the exception where I hunt. I don't shoot hard bullets either. To each their own.