My son just got back from Georgia and brought me this little souvenir. Seems he walked up on a nice 9-point that hung around a little too long. Shot was from about 50 yards by his account, bullet smashed one shoulder, the spine, then the opposite shoulder. Came to rest in the off-side pelt. Put the deer down in his tracks, as you would imagine. The deer weighed between 180-200#.
Cartridge was .270 WCF, 130 grain Partition, stout charge of H4831SC, moving about 3150 fps. Retained weight was 86 grains, or 66%.


I just don't know what I'll do with the other hundred or so that I've got loaded up (and in .30-06 as well)....maybe use 'em for shooting hogs, or armadillos or something.

That's the kind of bullet pic I want, damnit...grin

Gnarly.....Partition?

Bone shocker?

Diameter, impact speed?

160gr partitions fired from 7mag. Recovered from under the hide on the farside of a bighorn sheep and large cow elk.

Just another day in the woods with a hot .270 and NPTs. Can't go wrong.

Alamosa
Recovered bullets just like those (in quantity) are the reason I no longer use NPs... The most over-rated bullet out there, IMO&E.
art

I've used them, though not exclusively, for 25+ years. I have two that have been recovered. In reality the only thing unusual about the above performance (including dying in their tracks)is that the bullet didn't exit.
Despite the "rib", I love those bullets for whitetails.....

Looks pretty typical to me;the results sound typical, too.I have a pile downstairs I've recovered over the years.They all look pretty much the same.Least I know they'll always expand

Pineywoods,

That looks like a Nosler add. Heck I'd see how much Nosler would pay you for it (grin).

The first animal I ever killed with a Nosler Partition was an antelope that I shot last week.
Bullet clipped the shoulder blade on the way in, destroyed the heart and then left the scene of the crime through a good sized exit hole in the far side. Not a lot of bloodshot meat, which I liked.
Course, my hungting partner thought I was silly to use a 250 grain bullet in a 338 for antelope, but, HEY! It worked. LOL

Fred

Fred,

Yeah, I have shot some "too small" animals with the 250 .338 Partition, and it tends to work just like that....

I also have a large collection of failed Partitions pulled from dead animals in a large tackle box in the shop.

Anyone have a load for 160 Partitions for my Cooper 52 in 280 Rem?

If that's overrated, I'll take all of it I can get.

What I want, besides acceptable performance for a given size bullet on a given size animal, is consistency over many instances, and Partitions have had that in spades for me, as well as thousands of others over the years.

Haven't recovered many, but the recovered ones all look pretty much the same, per the 3 below............and the 3 Alamosa showed.

No knock on TSX or TBBC, as I use those as well with equally fine results so far............actually will be using a LWT 7-08 with 120 TSX for elk & deer this year.

MM

I have a few failures just like that with Partitions.........

Damn few because I've only ever found two and one was imbedded in a tree behind the buck that was shot.

A few more "failures"



[#2 is a Barnes Original flavor.]

I recovered a .375/300 gr boolit from a brown bear shot this spring. Found the boolit in the tree behind the bear - what a POS that it wouldn't stay inside the animal.

Can't ask for much better preformance than that. Those partitions are very consistent for sure.

Pinywoods, I�ll tell you like I told SamO, IME that is what happens when you try to drive THEM light for caliber bullet fast thru the shoulders. If�n you�d used a 140 NP that would�ve not happened. Or you should shot them behind the shoulder.

So for all you guy�s that aren�t happy with all those Partition failures, I will take them off your hands so you can go buy some Barnes bullets.
___________
The Ol� Man said, �Son, when you think you�re close enough to make the shot, try to get closer.�

They've been over-rated longer than any other over-rated bullet. Perhaps that's why my collection of recovered X bullets is larger?

Nothing wrong with TSX performance; I use them & like them & when they perform as they should, are probably better than the Partition.

But,

The Partitions are, and, have been consistent, and I personally, have never seen one fail to perform as designed. I've seen a lot fewer animals shot with the TSX, but also have never seen one fail either.

A good friend of mine was a PH in Africa before his untimely death and a friend of Randy Brooks.

When the X came out, they had a lot of clients who brought them and over several years, had great success across the spectrum of African game including lion and buff.

The Barnes is a fine bullet, but that still does not make the Partition over-rated.......to be over-rated, it would have to have a much higher failure rate.

MM

Some lack of experience going on in this thread, there is nothing wrong with any of the NP bullets pictured, absolutly nothing..

You take the same number of bullets of any make and you won't get any better...Some folks live on a different planet and think all bullets look like pretty little mushrooms and if they do not it's called a failure...That is because they have not shot a lot of game nor recovered many bullets.

It is pretty common for the front lead to blow out of a Nosler and the end results is a perfectly expanded mushroom not much different than a monolithic..In fact if velocity is too high it could blow the front of the Nosler off completely but then the core would make and exit hole..Many time honored European bullets such as the Tig, or Tugs RWS did exactly that and they kill like the hammer of Thor..

If someone has a problem with that then they should go to the next heavier partition bullet...just common since should tell you that.

If you shoot an animal at 30 yards with any hi vel bullet it will stress that bullet to the ultimate and penetration will be slowed downed by the bullets own speed and expansion will be at its ultimate, thus no exit hole, extend that range to 100 yards and bingo you have an exit hole with that bullet..

The other thing is a bullet shot into the spine is going to really disturb any bullet, and make it look ragged and off set and in most cases totally destroy it, however I have never seen a Nosler 'totally" destroyed..

My favorite gunwritter, Ross Seyfried, once said in print that anyone that said he has a Nosler that failed is just spewing BS. I tend to agree with Ross on that one.

Ray,

I think maybe one person who has posted here is actually unhappy with Partition performance. The rest are being funny (or trying to be funny) about dead animals and the very fine bullet that made them dead.

Art,
You have to admit a 300 grain .375 NP works pretty good, at lest a couple of them. --- Mel

I posted this some time back. Would this be a failure? I shot a medium sized doe with a 165 grain partition. When I found the bullet (it didn't nearly exit), the lead core had come out of the jacket. There was not one shred of lead in either the front part or the core. I guess the bullet tumbled and the core slipped out.

Why don't they cover the base with copper like other jacketed bullets?

My problem with the 140 grain 7MM partition is that it may cause me to use my 7x57 in places I could use my 35 Whelen.

The rear core is crimped in......the mfg. process would have to be much different and more costly to have in incased.

If the animal died as expected, guess it's technically not a failure, but IMO, I think I'd call it a failure.

JMHO

MM

I've never recovered one from any elk or deer or mountain goat I shot with one. Didn't feel like digging around in the dirt looking for them. Animals all died with little muss or fuss and not moved over a few yards. No complaints here.

Oh, and I generally go heavier like 180s out of my .300 mag (3200 FPS) and 200s out of my 30-06 Ackley (2500 FPS). They're what flies the best and like I said, nothing wrong with the terminal peformance.

Party pooper.

I agree with your assessment. I disagree with the idea that finding a bullet makes it a failure - unless complete penetration is what was expected, but the user does bear some responsibility. I think many bullets might be termed "over-rated" depending on one's point of view. (Should bullet Y be three times better than bullet Z if bullet Y costs three times as much? Does that matter if you are hunting animal ____ which might grind your scrawny frame to pulp? Etc.)

I do think a bullet might be over-rated when it has such a cult following that denial is in order whenever a given specimen works differently than expected. I don't think the Partition is over-rated simply because it has proven what it can and will do over such a long period of time that there are few surprises. And as Ray pointed out, there are rules to follow (like choosing weights per application.) Some of the newer designs have broken some of the older rules. What they don't do is defy physics.

Certain folks might over-rate anything.

The Partition does not forgive sins. Neither does any other bullet. What the Partition did before most others was help to ensure that the bullet would do its job when the shooter did their's. That's really all one can expect. More recent variations in bullet technology seek to continue that theme. It really is no surprise that the Partition is still considered a benchmark by which to compare others.

Mel
I have to admit I was surprised to see the exit hole on that NP... Full length on a Kodiak bear and an exit without hide damage EXACTLY through an earhole is pretty fancy shooting!

... But a couple of them were a tad inaccurate!
art

Ray
The NP is a fine deer bullet where recovery (of the deer) is not an issue. But if you need an animal to die right now bone needs to be broken and the bullet must leave reliably. The NP cannot be relied upon to do that.

I was raised calling the NP a premium bullet and used it exactly like any other, nestling them into the shoulder crease. I have a big bunch of them I have recovered. I want that second hole. When shooting stuff to anchor it the second hole reduces blood pressure far faster than the entrance.

There is nothing wrong with an NP for shooting stuff that does not really count, but they are well behind any X for real work.
art

I find the X bullets poorly suited for just about any thing I might do with a hunting bullet. Not a fan of bullets that tend to either not expand or tumble. I too however use the heavier for caliber Partitions and have not recovered one yet on elk. I have also dropped deer on the spot with partitions which hit nothing but ribs.

If you say so...

You know what I like best about a recovered bullet most? The meat.
If your are recovering bullets that means you have a dead animal,and a dead animal is not a failure,failure to recover a shot animal is a failure.

I love Nosler Partitions.

BBJ

Gee, I've shot game with 22 different diameter/weights of Nosler Partitions, from the 60-grain .224 to the 400-grain .416, and have yet to not recover an animal. Most died pretty darn quickly, even if the bullet didn't exit.

This is only a guess, but probabaly 80% of the bullets exited--including, for instance, a 200-grain Partition from a .300 Winchester that blew apart the big joint on a 6-point elk's shoulder, then went on through the top of the heart and both lungs before exiting the middle of the ribs on the other side. I have seen Barnes X's that didn't exit on the same basic shot, whether on elk or other elk-size animals.

In general however I have found the argument that an exit hole is required for quick kills to be, well, not an argument, since I have seen so many animals die pronto with a bullet still inside them. The big factor is whether the bullet puts a hole in the vitals, not both sides of the animal.

Of course, we have also all heard about how a bullet that stays inside the animal "expends all it's energy inside the animal," and thus produced quicker kills. This can be true of the bullet uses all that energy to make a bigger hole, but is otherwise BS.

Holes in the vitals are what kill animals, not foot-pounds expended or holes in the far side.

If a guy wants his partitions to always exit on deer in his 270,use the 150 grainers. I have never seen one stay in a deer,I even know a guy,ahem,who killed two bull elk by accident with one 150 grain partition from a 270.

The key to getting exits 100% of the time with partions is to go with heavy for caliber bullets. There are reasons why a guy might want an exit,but they are for sure not needed to kill quickly. There may be times when they help you recover game,but even big exit holes do not mean there will always be trackable blood on the ground. Actually some of the heaviest blood trails that I have ever followed were from bullets that had small entrance holes and no exits at all. They were lung shots and the deer were bleeding heavily out of their nose.

These blood trails from the critter's nose are heaviest when a pretty frangible bullet does massive damage inside the chest walls.

Whenever possible,it is far,far better to place your bullet where following a blood trail is not a priority. If you do this,you don't have to worry about tough bullets that tend to exit or soft bullets that tend to stay in the critter.

Because when an animal travels more than a few steps,following a blood trail is never a sure thing in some types of country.

The corollary is that if you don't want to follow a blood trail, shoot them through the shoulders/spine. This works pretty well too--if you can pull it off!

Klik - good post.

Been using Partitions for around 30+ years, and nary a lost animal, or even a long follow due to a Partition(or any other bullet, for that matter) "failing". I can't say that I've ever lost an animal due to any bullet failing. I've failed to recover two animals in my life, and both were due to me failing. i.e. poor shot placement.

I'd say killing critters is 80% shot placement, and 20% bullet/caliber choice. Makes for a good excuse to argue about stuff!

Jeff

What?!?! I don't suppose there is a good reason then that the Nosler Partition is still the standard by which most every other bullet is judged by? I've killed lots of critters, mostly large northern midwest whitetails and mulies with a Partition and I believe I have a total of two recovered bullets in my collection. I find it quite rare that a Partition stays in an animal, even at 300 yds. Most of the deer shot with the Partition were shot with 100 gr. 6mm Paritions or 165 gr. .308" Partitions. If I were to go on a trophy hunt for an animal that "really counts" my first choice would be a Partition, hands down, no contest.
Selmer

One time I put together an ill advised load for my .300 supermag. It was a 200 NP over 98.5 grains of AA 8700. Ball powders don't compress as we all know and this load tested the full case capacity and stretched it a bit. It didn't shoot hot though....well it flattened the edges of the primers a bit.

I didn't have a chrony at the time but from the impact point spread at 100, 200, and 300 yards it was moving out pretty well.

I made a poor shot on a bull with that load the first day I had it in the field. He turned to leave and I took a followup that was pretty near a texas heart shot. Bullet hit him in the ham, shattered the femur, traveled inside the body but barely inside the abdomen, tore through one lung, exited the brisket and then distributed it's remaining energy into the surrounding environment. Despite the shattered femur and the long trip to the exit wound I had what I always got from those bullets, a .30 cal entrance and about a .70 cal exit wound and a dead animal I didn't have to track.

I can't recall recovering a bullet inside a big game animal since my first deer with a 30-30. My 30-06, .270, and .300 mag never have left one in an animal. Neither did my wife's .284 or my sister's .270. My buddy shot a buck with his 7 MM mag through a 6" diameter tree and still didn't get the bullet back.

What do you guys do to stop them so fast?

You're coming awfully close to saying you want a solid, and in the case of dangerous game, that's neither a bad, nor, uncommon thing.

For ANY non-dangerous game, however, that just doesn't wash and, IMHO, is a pretty big stretch.

I will agree, however, as I've said in other posts, all things being equal, I think the nod does go SLIGHTLY in the direction of the X (TSX) for having more potential and maybe, forgiveness, too. But that's a slight nod.................

MM

I couldn't agree more. Placement is the key, whether it's a core-lokt, partition, or X. One thing's for certain with the X, however. You never know if the petals are going to break off or not.

Mule Deer,
I get the impression from several of your posts that you have a slightly negative impression of Barnes bullets. True or false?

I tried the Barnes X when it first came out. I couldn't get acceptable accuracy. I was talking to the smith that built my rifle about it and he said, "I've had to replace three barrels this year that I shouldn't have had to. The only common thing between them was lots of Barnes X bullets down the bore"

Two strikes was enough for me. Got the Noslers flying well out both of my go to rifles and never looked back. I keep toying with messing around with something new and fancy (Lost River, Trophy Bonded) and every time my wife (occaisional hunting partner) says, "What you have works and works well. Why waste the money?"

I've heard lots of '[bleep]' stories about Barnes bullets myself, some from smiths, mostly all from those that have never used them.

Have yet to have one destroy a tube, not shoot, not expand.

Course it's fair easier for folks to guess.

Coworker had a couple X bullets pencil through. He switched to Berger VLDs...go figure.

To each their own.

I don't think Mule Deer has a negative opinion of Barnes bullets, but I think his it trying to dissaude any readers of the idea that Partitions are less than premium bullets that don't penetrate. But I don't want to words in his mouth, I'm sure he will chime in again.
Selmer

Joran Smith,

To the contrary, I am a great admirer of Barnes bullets. My wife and I have shot several pickup loads of game with them, and I've also watched them in action when shot by other hunters. I am also prety convinced that Barnes had solved the accuracy problems of the original X several years before the TSX appeared, because I was getting outstanding accuracy with several origin al X's from 6.5mm to 9.3mm diameter in the 3 years or so before then. I have also never had an X fail to expand, even on small game like prongorn at quite long range, though I have some reliable friends who that's happened to.

But I grow a little weary of people who tell all of us that the X is the only bullet to use, or that it always drops game right there. If you use X's long enough some animals will go quite a ways before dropping. This is precisely because the X does less damage, on average, to the heart-lung area than other bullets that lose some weight or open up wider. Thus the exit hole of the X is sometimes required for a blood trail.

Different bullets do different things. They are alwasy a compromise, and I have found the Partition and the X to be very good tools, though they act somewhat differently on game. The differencse isn't a large as some would have us believe, though.

I use the quote because I am lazy nothing else. I used the old plain Barnes X twice and both times got a pass thru and a small tracking job. Vitals were damaged for sure but I went back to Partitions. "IF" I were to hunt animals that might tear me up I would use the newest TTSX.

My .02

I keep hering about thefailures of the partitions and these statements keep being backed upby photos of spent partition bullets recovered from game animals. Maybe I'm a fool but if you recover the animal, in order to dig the bullet from it's hide, that means you have a dead animal right?. How is that a bullet failure?

BPHC2, a fine - and logical - question. However, emotions and wanting to complain are rarely ruled by logic!
Selmer

The previous four posts above this one are dead on as far as I'm concerned. I have used both X and partitions over the years and both have done their jobs. Anytime I recover a bullet, and I have recovered X bullets as well as partitions from animals, I consider the bullet doing its job. In order to recover the bullet, the animal was dead and was found. As I said in another post elsewhere on the Fire, there are no degrees of dead when hunting.

If you shoot an animal and don't find the animal is it safe to conclude the bullet didn't do it's job?

It's safe to conclude somebody didn't do their job...

If you shoot and animal through the lungs and you watch the critter run 100 yards and than walk for a bit, then stop and finally fall over after being on it's feet for 5 minutes after the shot, cut it open and only find a caliber size hole through the lungs with no sign of expansion, but the bullet exited, is that a failure?

Unless it was a solid/FMJ I'd say yes.

Yep, shooter failure - you shoulda nailed a shoulder.

Well, I guess my opinion would lean maybe more towards the shooter's failure. You don't say which bullet you used. I don't feel you can blame the bullet because, as you stated yourself the deer did expire and you were able to collect it. The basic job of any "hunting" bullet is to do just that.

When I was in college I worked for a commercial vegetable farmer and was licensed by the state to do his crop damage culling. The state issued me anywhere from 5-20 carcass tags a year, thus over four summers I was able to kill aproximately 50 deer. Part of the job was working with state biologists and conservation officers, so I got to see not only basic field dressing which I did but was also able to be present at what basically amounted to a "field autopsy" of the animal.

During those four summers I shot deer with everything from shotguns and slugs to .223 rifles up to a 375 Hand H magum and numerous different bullets. The two consistant things I observed where, deer shot in the shoulder always had some meat damage no matter what bullet or caliber was used, and, Deer hit in the lung/heart area behind the shoulder, did not always drop on the spot, most of them ran between 40 and a couple hundred yards.

one deer that was shot in the head by a .223 FMJ ran for almost three hundredyards before she stopped and offered me a broad side shot. I shot her through the shoulder with a 300 weatherby and she dropped. I learned it wasn't the bullet's fault (even though I agree a FMJ bullet is not a good choice as a hunting bullet, the ammo for the .223 was provided for me by the state and that was what was given), It was my fault two folds one for using that bulet and one for trying a head shot when I could have waited.

Man, that's like waiting for the blaze to die down a little and then throwing a can of gasoline on it...........I've going for another beer and more popcorn!

MM

It was a 35 caliber ballistic tip fired into a 140 pound whitetail at 40 yards.



Yep, all the more reason to hunt with a 22 short and a pack of tracking dogs. So long as the critter dies, the bullet did what is was supposed to do, regardless if you need to track it for 3 days, 2 nights, across 4 counties, 2 rivers and one graveyard.

Gotta like that thinking.

For me, a ballistic tip that didn't expand is not only a failure but an oxymoron.

Back in the '80's, when BT's first came out, I saw several in .277 150 gr that penciled through on whitetails (up close and personal too). At the same time I was shooting .308 150's at 3100 fps and getting stellar results both on game and at the range. They've definitely changed since then.....

The deer was killed in 2003, should have caught up by then.

Mule Deer has stated several times on here and in print that the larger caliber BT's are designed to be much tougher than the smaller caliber BT's. Could be that the lungs of a 140 whitetails didn't provide enough resistance for a .35 cal BT. That might be by design and not a failure.

They did. I think it was in 2001 that I had that same bullet shot into a red fox at similar distance come completely apart...still have the jacket which rattled to a stop on the snow just beyond. The early versions were purported to be soft so they must have toughened them by 2003.

Bullets that have not failed me include the nefarious 150 grain Ballistic Tip fired out of my 7x57 at 2700fps. I have shot deer from many angles and distances with this bullet, all went down pretty fast and I have yet to recover one. My first experiences with the 100 grain partition were a bit spotty also from my 6MM Remington so I used different bullets like the Gameking, Ballistic Tips and various Interloks with good result. The early X bullets from my 338 Win mag, the 225 non coated version caused more trouble for me than any other single bullet. Good thing elk are easy to track in snow and I was much younger then. Really soured me on them and in waiting for the perfect Barnes mono to appear at a somewhat reasonable cost my hair has greyed somewhat. I have had a box of the 85 grain TSX bullets waiting to be loaded in my 6MM for several years but when the 95 grain Ballistic Tip kills so well they will probably be traded off first.

"Dead" deer do seem to run when in doubt - if they can. I was put off by a bullet I used many years ago because the deer ran as far as it did. In reality that animal sprayed blood as if out of a hose initially, then blew most of its trashed lungs out along a well marked trail it left. OTOH, I was surpised again by a BT, a 100 grainer out of a 25-06, which was quite speedy at the short distance it went to arrive, broadside, into the chest of a bull caribou. Tiny hole in; tiny hole out. As "dead" caribou often do, he just walked in circles for a bit and toppled over. Lungs were soup though.

Too funny...

Many people have become confused at to what constitutes success or failure.............

MM

Unless they don't have enough velocity.

Sure; true of any bullet,really.We have to stick within those confounded design parameters.....

They fail very consistently. If they were designed to fall apart, why doesn't Nosler use a picture of a Partition that has fallen apart instead of one with a nice mushroom and integrity?

Nothing like digging up a 14 year old thread to introduce one's self....and then have so much to say about the topic.

He'll it's got so bad some can't tell if their male or female.

JFC.

Does McDonalds sell food by showing pictures of the shiits it makes? Does your favorite auto make sell vehicles by showing pics of one totaled in a deadly crash?

Sales never was reality, you fuucking retard.

Rant over.

Atkinson maybe has it right. So does SD. I too think them over-rated. (But I don't use Barnes TSX or TTSX either, and haven't, except some 120 in .260 factory loads, which gave me 5" "groups". That gun doesn't like ANYTHING but 140's, any flavor....)

I had a 210NP.338WM fail on a moose at 100 yards, the first time I used that bullet on game. Hand load. It blew up on the shoulder blade, peppering the nearside lung with bits of lead and bone, no damage to the far side lung. Never found the base - I think it exited from the entry wound , perhaps just dropping out during the dressing process- or maybe when he stood up when I was 10 feet away. That was "interesting"! I never used them again on game, just for targets.

The 250 weight performed as they should the several times I've used them, as did the 180 in '06. I have never recovered any.

But I still quit using them, for the most part. Less expensive bullets are more accurate in my guns and do just as well on game. Not that the accuracy was out of bounds for the NP- just less so than others.

I have a box of (140?) NP bullets that came with the 7X57 that I will load up and use, after I work up some cheaper loads to get a handle on things in that arena. If they shoot well enough, and I'm pretty sure they will.

I’ve used partitions for 45 years on deer and pigs. I’ve never recovered one, haven’t lost an animal I’ve shot. If I had to get down to one bullet, it would be a partition.

Lol way to pull up a zombie for your first post.

I’m thinking he’s a bot.

Bot or idiot or idiot bot? Wtf is right.

Joined in Dec 2020. 1st post Nov 2022.

Be nice ..... Maybe he's slow in da head.

Lol. Riiiight.