Yeah right . . .

Cutting up a couple of bucks this weekend and recovered this one. 308 Win, 150 Nosler Partition Gold Moly, 47.7 gr RL15, MV = 2,800-2,850ish. Buck was quartering towards me @ 75 yds, or so, and shot thru the leading shoulder. Bullet found in one of the hams.



Pics of the buck, which is good sized by our standards.



If anyone from Nosler is listenting, why the heck did you discontinue this bullet? Please bring it back as a reloading component. I only have ~75 of these left and they are as hard to find as hens teeth.

Nice lookin buck.Well your good for 75 more critters.I can't see the PT Gold coming back.

I feel your pain brother....

The PT Gold wasn't a huge seller around these parts.Nobody wanted a moly bullet.Next time at gun shop I 'll see what they have left.If they have the 150's you guys like I have no problem buying some and shipping them to you fellas.

But like I said not sure what cals are available.

Yep, definite failure. That buck ran all the way back to your stack of 6X6's(?)

MuskegMan,

Nice blacktail!

My bet is that if you'd shot him with the 150-grain "standard" Partition the results would have been very similar. This is based on shooting similar animals with similar Partitions (both Gold and standard) and finding quite a few a long way from the entrance hole.

Two standard Partitions that come to mind are a pronghorn I shot at 300 yards with a 100-grain .25 caliber started at 3200 fps or so. The buck whirled just as I shot, to challenge a buck coming up behind him, and the bullet hit the right hip joint. The buck dropped and died right there, due to the little Partition going all the way through him to the left shoulder, where I found it.

Another was a mule deer buck about the same size as your blacktail. Shot him at about 35 yards with a 140-grain Partition at 2900 fps from a 7x57, right at the base of the neck, hitting the bottom of the spine. He also dropped at the shot, and though I looked for the bullet while field-dressing couldn't find it, though did trace the path through the lungs and diaphragm. Assumed it ended up in the gut-pile, but somewhat later bit into a round steak and found the expanded bullet, which had obviously gone lengthwise through the buck into the ham.

As I posted on another thread, I never could tell any difference in penetration or anything else between the Partition Gold and the old standby, except a little more retained weight for the Gold on the rare occasions either was recovered.

I sectioned one of the partition golds and it struck me as being like a barnes x bullet with a lead filled hollow point. There really wasn't alot of lead but there was a lot of jacket.

Nice blacktail! Looks like the Partition did it's job well.

Nice deer!
I'm also a big fan of the Nosler Partition. When I was in High School I shot a big (300lbs+) feral hog with a .45-70 loaded with Nosler Partitions. Both shots penetrated over 30" while going through some serious bones. Needless to say, he didn't run very far. Both bullets looked almost exactly like the one you recovered when I dug them out.

Its a real shame Nosler discontinued the 300gr Partition. It was my favorite bullet out of a 45-70

I agree. I took a couple of deer, feral hogs, a Gemsbok, and a Red Hartebeest with 300 grain partitions. I guess the round wasn't "sexy" enough.

"Failed" or not, you won't win any dinkathons like that!

Great recovery, I have 200 of the 150 PT Gold's that aren't coated and man, they shoot really well out of my 270WSM at around 3130. Haven't sunk them into anything yet, but I think they would be excellent. Probably no better than a regular PT, but they are still pretty awesome.

quartering towards at 75 yards...
Any bullet placed in thesame spot would have worked. Hell, I have killed deer with 130 gr sierras and had them bang-flop.

Nice buck! How did you get out with all this wind. It's been blowing for weeks!!

Honest question of all the premium bullets, do partitions seem to kill the quickest? In my experience they do.

Nice buck, and great looking bullet. Always fun to recover one!

Nice buck but it is hard to figure what 150gr bullet out of a .308 would not have worked well with your great shot placement.

I realize you would like to keep everything the same but from where I sit the .308 is very flexible in regard to bullets and it seems hard to find a bad choice if the shooter does his part, ( as you did).

Take yes for an answer???

I hear you on partition performance, I recovered one from a buck I shot at 410 yds with a 280 I used to have. DRT, did not even get the chance to trail it.

Nice buck you got!

Bullet performance is generally measured in percentage of weight retention from new to recovered bullet. In this case, the Partition bullets lost the top half of their lead core....not what you want for optimal bullet performance.

Congratulations on the nice buck, but your Partition bullets underperformed for you at least in this instance.

We have a comedian in our midst

Agreed... one of the 308's many beauties is it's just not that tough on bullets.

Very funny!!

Nice Blacktail but looks under dead.

The PT Gold are almost the same as some of the standard PT that have the partition a little more forward. The steel failsafe thing did prevent the mid drift bulge but that is about it. They do seem to retain more weight and track straighter but hard to say for sure. I would always buy them on closeout and then remove the moly coat. Seemed to run up pressure but otherwise would be in the same group as the standard PT and load.

I think the 165gr PT has a longer shank and the 200 does for sure.

You expect this, or what?

Good job, Musky - and Nosler.

With the thread titled as it is I almost didn't open this thread, I was thinking that this whole board was really going down-hill if someone was seriously trashing a partition as a game bullet. You got me, man...

Dawgin'it,

Several other people have already commented on your post about bullet performance being judged on weight retention, but I still have to make a couple of comments.

First, I judge big game bullet performance by how well any bullet kills animals, not by some after-the-fact statistic. I've been using Nosler Partitions for around 35 years now, and have seen what they do to big game well over 100 times--and that's game from pronghorns to Cape buffalo. They kill VERY well, whether they lose the lead in the front end or not. In fact, overall they've killed at least as quickly and often quicker than bullets retaining more weight.

Two, I have yet to observe a Nosler Partition that didn't penetrate sufficiently, even though some hunters didn't use as much bullet as some experts generally suggest.

Now you can return to entertaining the rest of the posters.

Dumb post of the year from a very inexperienced poster.

If an animal drops in its tracks you got the bullet performance you paid for.

Stop making sense. A few posters were this || close to putting up girly pics.

John is describing exactly my experience. Heck I think the front of a Partition coming apart is why they are so deadly. I've used lots of Partitions in 22, 24, 25, 6.5 and 30 and they are really effective. Now I've only used a TSX three times and a Scirocco once so far so I have limited experience with these bullets, while they killed fine the Partition still seemed to kill quicker.

Muskeg Man, nice buck.

It looks like the 150 PT Gold has more of an ass end to it than the standard .308 cal 150 PT.



Here's one from a (very dead)pronghorn. Broadside, 150-200 yards, 300WSM.

It does seem like the shank portion of the 150 grain .30 caliber is a tad short, doesn't it?

IMO, it is. The 150/30cal NP is one of those I just don't use.

Course the OP is talking about the Partition Gold with the partition more forward. Different bullet really.

The 30 cal Noz 150 PT is one bullet that's given me some challenges in terms of accuracy. Not that me being challenged is anything out of the normal...grin

Dober

Mark,

I've always seen the 150 Partition as something for the .300 Savage and .308 Winchester and others in that class. It often shoots quite well in those rounds. Eileen used one from the .308 to kill a BIG pig in Texas a few years ago. She put the bullet through both shoulders and the spine--and the bullet exited, that other modern measure how well a bullet works.

Must also comment that John Nosler actually designed the Partition's front core to disintegrate. This was because he wanted an all-around bullet, one that would kill deer quickly yet penetrate on bigger game. He was an experienced hunter who'd seen how "softer" bullets killed deer. The front core of Partitions is made out of a relatively soft lead alloy, with less antimony than the cores of all the cup-and-core big game bullets I'm aware of, in order to help it break up and do more damage to the chest cavity.

This also, incidentally, makes Partitions a very effective prairie dog bullet for those who simply must have pass-throughs on PD's, in order to conform to the modern mantra of always exiting. Meanwhile the front core does a pretty good job on the "lift-off" part of prairie doggin'.

Partitions are low BC, but if you can put them where you want them, they are nasty killers.

I've not killed anywhere near the number of animals with them that some here have (maybe 6 or 7), but the ones I have killed all went down quickly.

This year I shot a blacktail buck with a 160gr Partition out of a .280AI. My shot (shooting off-hand) went farther forward than I wanted. The bullet broke the onside humerus in half, broke a rib in half, broke an offside rib in half, broke the offside humerus in half, and then exited. (And it probably only retained 63% of it's weight.)

I don't get the science of it, but I do understand the results. Several experienced shooters have tried to get me to dislike the Partition, but I just can't.

A rather nice summation.

I have a confession to make. The only paritition I have actually used on game is the 95 grain .243" partition. That being said, I have recovered one of those, and the front portion is completely gone. Does this bother me? NOT IN THE LEAST. The deer dropped in it's tracks and was shot directly in the chest. The bullet was recovered in the right ham.

I was taken to task by a fella that used to post here about using the partition in that particular application. He opined that partitions weren't necessary in bulets under the bore size of .30 if I remember correctly. My own convition was that penetration was even more important when hunting with bullets .277" and below.

I really wasn't trying to be a smarta$$, But I couldn't convince him otherwise.

Partitions work when it comes to putting meat in the freezer. They work near and far and they work on animals large and small.

Waaaaaay too easy on him.

P

Muskeg Man - congrats on a fine buck!

Just based on my own favorable experiences with the standard Partition, I think you'll do just fine with them when your supply of treasured "gold" partitions runs dry.

Regards, Guy

AMEN! Except for the heavy weight hardcasts I couldn't think of a better all around 45/70 bullet.

Great buck and that is a beautiful picture, wish we got snow like that!

Well, I sort of agree - any bullet recovered has underperformed IMO... Tho on a raking shot like this I'll allow that it is OK. I used Partitions ( and several other Premiiums) for quite a few years on various game and in vrious calibers. I can recall only one which I recovered (other than into the skull "insurance" shot at close range. Looked just like the OP's, too- and performed exactly as designed to. Hardly an "underperformace", when it meets design goals... and kills the critter dead.

I've largely gotten away from Premiums myself- just don't see the advantage of the extra cost in my hunting, unless their accuracy is significantly better than any plain-jane.

In the last month I've broadside shot 3 caribou (see Alaska Forum)- a cow about the same size as those dinky deer - - and two pretty good sized bulls with a .260 Rem 725 SA, using 140 gr factory Corelokts from 200 yards to WTFOT beyond my 400 yd rangefinder's range. Of the five hits (there were a couple ranging shots in there.... ) two did not break bone either entering or leaving or both . One bullet broke TWO large bones (humerus, just below the shoulder blade joint) on the way thru, at just over 300 yards. On the latter, I recovered two equal sized bits of lead about half the size of a pencil eracer each on either side of an exit wound presumably caused by the jacket, remaining lead, and possibly some bone exiting. That was the only bullet recovery I had and instantly dropped the animal, all others exiting the animals. Weight retention was maybe 20 % - probably less if one added the weight of the recovered pieces together.

I suppose to you that "failure" of the Corelokt is an indictment against ever using it again.... I have to admit tho, the other non-bone-breaking bullet did "fail" as a bang-flop (it would have eventually killed) on the previous shot on this animal. Read the account....I'm too embarassed already to repeat it here.

If plain-jane bullets performed as well 40 years ago as they do today due to since improved constuction and quality control, the NP might never have been invented.

.....NAW....gun nuts being what they are....

In everyone of my NPT kills the bullet has FAILED

To stop. So I really don't know what they look like afterwards.

I would guess I have at least a hundred big game kills with the Partition, from little stuff to Kodiak brown bears. They kill just fine, most of the time. They do not have any magic in them and they have failed to exit way too many times to please me.

And I could live with that if they truly made a spectacular difference in killing. But they don't.

I want every bullet to leave the carcass so I have two vents to drop blood pressure as fast as possible. Several Docs have made it clear thay is key... and my experience backs that up.

But then another huge issue comes up, IMO&E, involving meat loss. On average, a C&C creates a wicked wound with a lot of meat loss. The Partition is right in there with them.

I insist on more with a bullet that I am paying "Premium" prices for. I have shot a ton of stuff with Core-Lokt and Speer bullets... I know what I am going to get when I unzip a critter. The Partition is right in there with them.

Monlithic bullets have shown me a clear and nearly consistently reliable difference. Far more than enough to make me look at the Partition as a good bullet, but far from a Premium. My rather large collection of recovered Partitions tells me they are not the same.

OlBlue shot his Kodiak bear in front of me with a NPT. I shot a Kodiak not very far from his bear with the same bullet. I have shot several more since with Barnes bullets. There is no way I look at them as equals after looking at real world results.

To be certain, they are not bad bullets... but they are not in the same league with the best bullets, either.

There are no "best bullets", only bullets which are better in some situations than others. And, while monos are the better bullet in some ways, the Partition is still the gold standard in premium bullet performance where overall situations- high/low speed, near/far distances, big/small animals are concerned. I think the TTSX may be knocking on the door too, but the monos do not have the same consistency over the broad range that the Partition has proven for decades. That said, when the monos work as they are ideally intended to, there is nothing that exceeds them. But I have collected plenty of copper from animals, all dead obviously, but not all impressively holed or killed.

And I wonder about the part played with very cold temperatures might be. I have shot a lot of 308 Barnes in every iteration they produced and had very uniform performance. I have yet to catch one...

I have shot them in 30-06, 300H&H, 308NM, and 300WM with more than a few of each and in virtually every choice they produced. I have a ton of recovered Partitons in the same range from the same rifles.

I am not saying the Partition is a bad bullet, but it is not close to the expectaions of a "Premium" bullet IMO. The fact they are consistently "caught" and the excess meat damage make them less than "Premium" IMO. With as much real world experience as I have had with them I will be mighty hard to sway...

The barnes bullets I have recovered are .257, 80gr, TTSX from a 25-06 into a Sitka blacktail (my son shot it) at over 200 yards lengthwise. Same bullet and rifle, I shot a caribou bull last month at 20' in a large herd.

Lead has a known and proven track record at low temps. One would think that a space of 100 degrees would be nothing when we're talking a melting point dozens of times greater than where we exist, but perhaps copper does begin to act tougher at a certain reasonably common hunting temperature? Perhaps the Partition doesn't fit some definitions for premium bullets, an obviously arbitrary definition anyway. But it works well in a very wide range of situations. Very few bullets match that. For those of us who frequently encounter a wide range of possible uses, the Partition is, consequently, hard to beat. I load a variety of bullets and, quite frankly, I don't worry about whether I will be successful with any of the ones I load including monos or cup and cores. I do know that sometimes I'm going to get results I don't favor with any of them if they're not ideally matched to the conditions. The Partition does tear things up more than monos nearly always tend not to. Given that, and given that heavy animals can stop just about any bullet, I still like possibilities the Partition affords. It has a bigger 'window' than most of the rest.

I'm happy to be so entertaining to you gentlemen. Nonetheless, I haven't changed my opinion.

From my own experience the majority of Partitions I've recovered from game have looked exactly like the one posted missing the forward half of their lead core. Aparently many of the posters on this forum only look at the recovered mushroom bullet and think the bullet has performed great......but I'm looking at it and asking what happened to the lead in the forward half?? At what point in the wound channel did the lead separate from the core?? And of course, is a bullet breaking apart optimal performance in a big game bullet? Criticize all you want but at least to me the answer is no.

I jumped on the Partition bandwagon not long after they were introduced and have killed a number of deer and elk with them. The biggest reason I left them behind however was their frangible nature......they do have the tendancy of breaking into two pieces particularly if they hit a heavy bone. Again, the bullet pictured at the beginning of this thread is an illustration of this frangible tendancy. I understand the argument that the bullet still killed the deer, and yes, that is the ultimate goal. Perhaps I have higher expectations in a premium bullet however, in wanting one that not only kills the game, but also gives me a perfect mushroom and isn't going to shed half of it's weight along the way. In this regard, the Partition bullet has let me down.

There you have it boys, fire away.

I've recovered Partitions in 25,270,30,and 375.Although I've used them a lot I can't seem to grab any 7mm's in 140 and 160 gr weights,which for me seem to behave "tough", particularly the 160's.But over all not a lot of them.

In comparison to some other bullets out there today, I think of them as a "soft" premium,because the only thing that separates them from a C&C is really that partition, which as we know stops expansion, leaving enough shank to drive forward.They don't retain as much weight as some others,and don't set up as large a frontal area(maybe they do in 40 cal and up, I don't know),but thats OK because they were designed that way,and make up for it with a deep but narrower wound channel.

IME they expand reliably out to 500 yards,and won't quit on shoulders of stuff up to at least elk size if you make a sensible choice in weight and caliber.If I pick the right one,I know that I can take a quartering on or away shot and expect tey will break heavy bone on the near side and still reach vitals,yet still break the same bones on the far end of the wound channels.

I consider them almost ideal for the biggest whitetail and mule deer I hunt and the places I hunt them,always reaching vitals from about any reasonable angle,yet are "soft" enough to expand reliably as far as I have used them.Elk,too IME.

Today there are lots of bullets that provide competition for them and are tougher, carrying penetration,frontal area,and expansion to the next level but I still think they are a safe bet on about anything.The only animals I can think of that might have me looking elsewhere would be Cape Buffalo(never shot one);or for very LR shooting beyond 500-600 yards but I don't do that anyway so for me it's a moot point.

Friend Allen Day killed two Cape Buff with his 300 WM and 180 Nosler Prtition's.

brad yes I remember him mentioning that.

I also remember a couple of touring PHs visiting the states back when there were no 375 partitions being made,and falling all over them selves when they found out a friend and I had about 700 of them.

Things sure were different back then

Yeah, crap... how naive can a bunch of guys be fawning over an obsolete bullet.

Last year I hunted and took an antelope and a good sized bull elk on the same ranch. I used one load for both animals. My favorite, a 160 Nos. Partition out of a 280AI(sorry about that Bob)and it worked well on both. The antelope was DRT, the bull took more than one, but that's because the angle on my first shot was not perfect. The bullet took him at about the last rib and ended up under the skin on the off side shoulder. He was unable to run but still on his feet, so I gave him another. This load is my go to combo on all cud chewers big or small near or far good angle or bad. I have been using this bullet almost exclusively for the past 20 years though not always out of the 280AI and it has never let me down.

I wish they still made the 250 gr 429 Dia Partitions.

Same here. I have about 30 of them saved for a special occasion in my 444.

My 44 shoots them amazingly well.

I've began keeping notes on all my big game animals, as well as those of my companions where I witnessed the shot, 40 years ago. The information always included the cartridge, bullet, scope, range, how many bullets were required for the kill, the path of the bullet (or bullets), and the weight of the animal, whether actually weighed or an estimate.

About a dozen years ago I started on a conscious bullet-testing binge. I'd tested quite a few before then, but eventually decided to really pin down how expanding bullets work. As a result they were all tested in at least two kinds of media, and then on game. As a result I also started including how far animals went after the fatal bullet, as best could be determined.

The notes now list hundreds of animals, ranging in size frm under 100 pounds on the hoof (mostly pronghorn and springbok) to around 1500 (mostly moose, water and Cape buffalo, and bison).

When I say Nosler Partitions kill quicker than bullets that don't lose any or very little weight, it's because that is exactly what the statistics from my notes tell me. I've seen well over 100 big game animals taken with them, more than half by me, and about the same number of animals taken with the Barnes X (in every form since the first model), Combined Technology Fail Safe, Hornady GMX, North Fork, Nosler E-Tip, Swift A-Frame, Winchester XP3, etc.

On average, the animals shot with Nosler Partitions didn't go as far after the fatal shots, and there was also a higher percentage of drop-on-impact lung-shot kills with Partitions.

The quickest killing of the bullets that typically retain 90% or more of their weight turned out to be the Woodleigh Weld-Core, which also happens to typically open wider than most of the other bullets--and also typically loses around 10% of its weight.

I also ran penetration tests with all the premium bullets I could get my hands on. The deepest penetrating bullets were all 100% weight retainers, such as the X-Bullet, Fail Safe and E-Tip--but on average they beat the Partition and A-Frame (which essentially tied for second place) by less than 10%. However, the biggest factor in penetration proved to be frontal area of the mushroom, not weight retention.

On average, the very quickest-killing bullets were those that lost a significant portion of their weight. The quickest killing bullet was the Berger VLD, which often doesn't retain 10% of its weight. After penetrating the chest cavity (which is always did in the animals in my notes, due to its delayed expansion) VLD's often come completely apart. The wound channel is still typically 15-18" deep, which is plenty for broadside shots on animals up to big bull elk in size.

As a result of these hundreds of "field tests" I concluded that retained weight is indeed an indicator of bullet performance. It does increase penetration, but only if everything else is equal. But unless a high weight-retention bullet opens very widely (as with the Woodleigh and, to a certain extent, the Swift A-Frame) that nebulous something called "killing power" is REDUCED by a higher percentage of weight retention. This is because the overall size of the wound channel is smaller, destroying less vital tissue.

Now we have all seen the photos posted here of the damage done by Barnes X's and similar bullets. Believe me, this is nothing compared to the damage done to innards by a Berger VLD. A high-retention bullet punches a hole through vitals, but a VLD blows them apart or turns them into soup. The Nosler Partition often has something of the same effect, especially the lighter Partitions at higher velocities. They're designed to lose the most weight, typically about 1/3.

Many of the Partitions over .30 caliber, especially the heavy models, are designed to retain more weight. This is done by moving the partition forward. Consequently they penetrate even deeper, but still kill pretty damn well. One of the most spectacular is the 286-grain 9.3mm. I've only recovered two of these, one from a big moose and one from an angling shot on a blue wildebeest, but no animal hit with them has gone more than 25-30 yards.

As a result of all this testing, in the past couple of years I've started using more Nosler Partitions again, because I'm confident in the statistics by my notes. In fact this fall I took 7 animals with Partitions, and none of them made it more than 30 feet before falling--and the one that did was a 6x6 elk taken with a 160-grain 7mm, one of BobinNH's favorites.

Oh, Bob, come to think of it, if you ever do go Cape buffalo hunting, Nosler Partitions work fine.

Good post Bob. I always enjoy reading your stuff...

Nothing trumps real world experience. That's why I take MD's words to heart.....he has the facts to back it up. Thanks MD.

BobinNH doesn't talk out his wazooo either like some guys around here. Thanks for that too, Bob.

My local shop has a box of them for $55 I believe. PM me if you want me to pick them up for you.

Thanks John. Great post.

Seems everyone these days is poking Cape Buff with Aframes and BARNES TSX. I know nothing about those 40 cal Partitions at all.Those African guys wanted all the screw machine 375's we had....we wouldn't sell

They were 270 and 300 gr bullets.Back then you could not get any 375 bullets and I know you remember that period because you have written of it.

Over the years I have noticed that 160 7mm in the 7 mag is not as fast a killer with deer sized stuff on lung shots,as a 140...I think its the velocity.But I use it a lot because it's very reliable and digs deep....put it on bone and things happen quicker.

It almost makes one wonder if they are *supposed to* lose the front section, huh?

The front end is supposed to mushroom but if it slips away, you still have the partition and the lead behind it still providing energy to drive that portion of the bullet further and deeper.
Thus, more plumbing gets damaged, the blood pressure drops and so does the animal.
It isn't necessary to re-invent something that is already damn near perfection. But human nature takes over and they keep trying.

John, good post that mirrors my more limited experience. I get a kick out of guys that say mono's drop game quicker than more frangible bullets. I started using Barnes X's back in 1990... I've never seen what others claim.

I've always said the Partition is the "best-of-all-worlds-bullet." Not the best at any one thing (penetration, frontal area, shrapnel effect), but the best compromise of those three.

Who would have thought that more tissue destruction= faster kills? Man that's a real stretch...at least for the eat up to the hole crew,

The mono-crowd are nearly a religious cult... and we all know how far facts will get you with that sort of thinking.

If it was designed to break away and lose the front section, then why do all the expanded Partition bullets Nosler have pictured in their promotional literature still have the forward lead attached?? If what you are suggesting is is true ironbender, then why would Nosler be promoting their under performing bullets that retained close to all of their original weight?? Huh, huh??

Uh, Dawgin'it......you may want to stop while you're just a little behind, if you catch my drift.

Bob,

Yeah, I've noticed the same thing about the 160 to a certain extent. Certainly with anything less than one of the 7mm magnums I have gotten, on average, quicker deer kills from the 140 and 150 7mm Partitions, no doubt due to the higher velocity of the 140's and 150's in sub-magnum cases. The 140 is a particularly good deer killer in the 7x57 and 7mm-08, the 160 not so much.

Have you ever fooled with the 7mm Weatherby Magnum? The factory load with the 160 Partition is advertised at 3200 fps, and gets just about exactly that from the 26" barrel of the Mark V Ultra Lightweight I used some this fall.

JB, I have shot 5 or 6 mule deer/whitetails with 180 PT's from a 300 WSM.

You already know it works great. You know instantly when the bullet hits.


Last deer is still hanging in the garage. Looking at the ribs you wouldn't hardly know what side was entry or exit.

My experience mirrors JB's albeit on a smaller scale. Between my wife and I we have taken around 50 head of big game, half of them with partitions, mostly 30 caliber 165 and 180 grain from 30-06's and 300 H&H's. A few 100 grainers from a 257 Roberts. A lot of deer, several elk, a few pronghorns and caribou. I've taken three caribou with the 250 grain partition in the 35 Whelen, another fell to a 220 partition from my 300 H&H. My only moose fell to to a Remington 405 grain from my 45-70

To date I've recovered a total of one partition, a 35 caliber 250 grain that traversed the full length of a caribou after enter a little high, face on, slightly quartered to. The bullet crushed the spine and ended up in the right ham to be found while cutting the meat into steaks. I reload for a buddy who has taken seven caribou with my 30-06 loads topped with 180 grain partitions. So far no bullets recovered but seven very dead caribou.

I flirted with the Barnes X bullets when they first came out. My first 300 H&H shot them well. No such luck with my current 300 H&H. I went back to the partition and haven't felt the need for a different bullet with the exception of my 400 Whelen and my 45-70. Nosler doesn't make a 411 (I know Swift does but I haven't tried it yet) and the Remington 405's work well in the 45-70.

My limited experience I know doesn't make any kind of empirical study but the body of evidence for the reliability of partitions cannot be disputed. There are lots of great bullets out there but I'll keep to my trusted partitions.

My one and only recovered partition.



Mart

Well there is some real good meals off that buck that for sure . As for this bullet business, I been launching Partitions at big game for a lot of years. They just work as they are intended to do, and at a reasonable price, sure you can get bullets that might retain more weight, if the animal you shoot stops one, but you will pay a lot more per bullet. Some years ago for some reason there was a real shortage of Partitions, so I bought some Swift a frames. 7mm 140 gr. They shot ok and I killed the game I shot with them, I could not tell the difference from those and a 140 gr Partition , its my favorite bullet for the 7 x 57 reliable performance. These days I don't care that much about it, all I want from a bullet is to hold together long enough to get to the vitals and put game on the ground. In 2012 there is a whole lot of bullets that will do that and then some. Its become a mute point at this stage of my hunting life. Right now, Federal Fusions 150 7mm RM Loads have been keeping me in venison with no problem what so ever and they shoot well and they are pretty fairly priced.

John no the funny thing is the 7mm Weatherby is one of those 7mm magnums I never have gotten to for one reason or another.I think that's because I was into long-throating the 7 rem mag years back and lots of times found myself flirting with 7mm WM data.This generally brought me up to about 3125 with the 160 from a 24 inch barrel...since I thought the two cartridges were so similar in capacity,I never got to the 7mm weatherby despite owning both the 300 and 270 weatherby mags.


Butch Searcy built a very lightweight 7 RM for me back in the 80's and I used that rifle quite a bit for over a decade before the barrel went bad,with three bullets....the 140 NPT and Bitterroots at 3250-3300 fps,and the 160 NPT at 3100...it was also a long throat version as suggested back then by John Wooters and Bob Hagel. Friends had similar rifles,maybe a 1/2 dozen of them in total between us and we used them a lot out west,mostly with those bullets.I have had two others since that did a lot of hunting and gave about the same velocities.

The 140 NPT at those velocities was a bomb on the deer sized stuff;like yourself,I used the same bullet from the 7/08,7x57,and 280 also,and found it a consistent and reliable killer.I can recall having some deer in the vicinity of 300 yards just disappear at the shot.I used that 140 NPT load from the 7 mag on the longest shot I have ever made on a companions wounded buck,which was 500 yards and short range today it angled from the hip to just back of the off shoulder and exited.

The 160 we used a lot on elk,big mule deer and whitetails, pronghorns,black bear....the farthest being about 500 yards.I saw one big herd bull just snuffed with the load in mid bugle on that shot by a pals wife.The last bull elk I killed 3-4 years ago was shoulder shot with the 160 at about 180 yards and he collapsed immediately,and rolled down the mountain for about 50 yards.

Two years ago I used the Mashburn with the 160 at 3180fps on NH buck that caught me completely off guard on a power line....no time to range and think as he loped after a hot doe, up hill and away at about 300 yards....I barely had time to grab a hasty sling from the sit and the crosshairs looked so good floating in front of him that I touched off.He flinched at the shot and ran 30-40 yards or so while a maneuvered around a bush for the second shot;I thought I had missed but he stopped there,head down,obviously hit and I shot again from the sit and he collapsed.When I opened him up I discovered both shots had been in the lungs and exited.

I had seen this kind of reaction from the 160 years before so wasn't surprised....it is on the tough side for the smaller stuff but if put on bone at any distance it seems to pile things up.

I am using the 160 NPT in the Mashburn right now at about the same velocities you are seeing in the Weatherby....3180 from the 24 inch Krieger,and not as fast as either will go but these loads are accurate and consistent....the rifle has not budged zero in the three years I have had it.

.Coincidentally with the rifle zeroed 3 inches high at 100 yards,it also puts the 162 Amax a half inch lower at 3160 fps....same powder charge which is 75 gr H1000.They show the same POI on the dots of the 6x36 from 300-600 yards,so this works really well.I will likely stick with the 160 just because I know what to expect of it,and know it will work on about everything.

I think you know why advertisers show things 'favorably', even embellish things in their ads. You might ask why Barnes or Hornady picture TSX or GMX which have been shot into water, or Swift or Woodleigh picture bullets they've recovered from ballistic gel. Very few - maybe none- of the ads show bullets actually recovered from wild game.



These bullet "failures" - failures because they failed to exit the animals that stopped them.......I guess - are a mix of what a manufacturer might or might not want people to think their bullets should end up looking like. I suppose there is some irony in the fact that the three rather plain lead cored bullets: the Grand Slam, Core-lokt, and Ballistic Tip, all look 'perfect'ly acceptable from an end product stsndpoint. Not so much the XFB or Failsafe. I, however, was not displeased with any of them.

To be fair, I did have second thoughts about Partitions early on in my big game hunting based on that which you argue. I am a bit embarrassed by that ignorant period in my thinking. Not surprising, perhaps, I became totally enamored with the early mono craze when they first came out. Not surprisingly again, I began to figure out the fact that they have some issues of their own. Finally, it's probably not surprising that the evolution of the early monos has brought them closer to where the Partition has been all along, rapid expansion and some not-infrequent loss of frontal material. Of course, they don't show that in their ads either.

Ross Seyfried at one point experimented with cutting a grove just ahead of the partition with the thought that the front would completely separate and the shank would continue to penetrate further and more in a straight line.

Never saw a follow up but interesting that he would want to increase the shrapnel effect by completely losing the front end. Much like the RWS H Mantel bullets.

Which is exactly why there are now some monolithic bullets designed so the petals break off.

Randy Brooks wonder many years ago why hunters got upset when they recovered X-Bullets with anywhere from one to four petals broken off. After all, the animal was dead, wasn't it?

Personally I've recovered two of the "magic 100%" bullets with all four petals broken off, one a 120-grain X (pre-TSX) from a shoulder shot on a quartering-on axis deer, and the other a 165-grain Fail Safe from a gemsbok bull my wife shot in the chest as it faced her at 200 yards. The axis buck went 38 yards before collapsing, the gemsbok went straight down. But according to the more-retained-weight theory the animals shouldn't have died nearly as quickly--and if they'd been shot by Nosler Partitions would probably have survived nicely.

I've never shot anything that big with Partitions, mostly mid sized Tsesebee to small African Game, warthogs, impala, bushbucks, etc and out of my 300 Weatherby. All had entry and exit wounds and great performance. I'm still working my leopard hunt and when I do go, my 338 will be loaded with 210 Partitions. I just think on that type of game, the Partitions rapid fragmentation of the front core and penetration of the rear core is just the ticket.

I will continue to use them no question about that. I have had some rifles that don't care for them so obviously I don't use them there. THAT said, I've found the TTSX/TSX to be the most consistently accurate hunting bullet across all the calibers I've tried them in and they kill just as well and with good expansion even on light game (Axis and whitetails).My 375 loves the TSXz as does my 416 and while I would not hesitate one second loading either with a Partition, there is also no doubt in my mind the TSX is a better bullet for the larger game and a better choice if you are running high velocity bullets. No cult here just facts on my limited experience.

Yep, that and bore fouling and inaccuracy were the two major criticisms of the first XFB and XBTs as I recall. And, while I have long been frustrated by the inconsistencies of their products from one order to the next, you have to give them credit for trying to give their fickle customers that which they seem to think that they need. That has to be about as simple as chasing a weighted superball around.

I used and enjoyed several different XFBs early on. Among them were the .338 and .358 225s, the .308 150 grainer, and the 7mm 140 grain offering. I tried a few of the XBTs but I never found them to shot as well as easily. And, unlike the XFBs I liked which had more of a tangent ogive, the XBTs had a secant ogive and didn't seem to open as well. The tangent ogive profile of many of the earlier XFBs gave them a nice broad, flat expanded shape which I liked. I supposed it may have been part of the reason the petals sometimes came off also, but that never bothered me because they did kill well. I stopped using the 150 and 140 in my 30-06 and 7mm-08 respectively when they changed the ogives to more of a secant profile. Previously decent loads didn't shoot worth beans anymore nor did the bullets expand as well. I wasn't going to waste time or money re-developing loads every time I bought another box of bullets, especially not in mid-winter.

The addition of the grooves, a feature previously found on the shank of the accurate mono bullets of a small maker of "ringed bullets" largely corrected the fouling and accuracy problems the earlier designs had. None of the TSX or TTSX bullets I've used typically opens broad and flat as the old tangent designs used to.

Klik,

My experience with the pre-TSX's was similar to yours, though in the 2-3 years just before the TSX appeared Barnes seemed to have licked all the early problems--except the fouling. The bullets from that era shot very well in several of my rifles, and opened up nicely. Even when they lost petals (always due to hitting heavy bone, in my experience) the front of the bullet still expanded some, and was quite flat. The 6.5mm 120 X from the axis deer measures .41 across the front end, a lot bigger than .264!

The problem I've seen with the TSX's is an occasional failure to open, sometimes at all and sometimes only part-way. The animal dies but it can take a long time, and the blood trail is very thin. So far this has only happened in calibers under .30, probably because of the tiny hollow-point.

It hasn't happened at all in Tipped TSX's, or any other tipped mono-bullet I've seen used. The tipped bullets also seem to open a little wider, probably due to the much larger hollow-point under the tip. The tipped monos kill somewhat quicker than the hollow-points, and kill quite well when they hit exactly the right place, such as the top of the heart and both lungs, especially when driven fast.

But one of the reasons I tend to use more fragmentingt bullets these days is they kill well even when put a little behind the shoulder. I am definitely a meat hunter, even when after trophies, and Eileen and I have plenty of fine ways to cook shoulder meat. I'd much rather put a VLD a hand's-width behind the shoulder, and have an animal go down within 20 yards, than put a tougher bullet of any kind right into the shoulder and spine to drop it right there. This doesn't mean I won't use the shoulder/spine shot, but I'd rather not--and a fragmenting bullet behind the shoulder chews up less meat than a tough bullet in the shoulder, and kills quickly.

Thanks, John.

A question, one you may know something about. You mentioned the early problems, other than fouling, being resolved. I previously alluded to a bullet with rings cut in the shank. Perhaps they were even called "Ringed Bullets"; I don't remember. It seems to me that they disappeared around the time Barnes started making the grooved-shank TSX. Do you know if there was any connection between the two events, (other than the obvious logical deduction Barnes might have made)?

That's the problem. I can't see shooting a bullet that expensive. Luckily, the Speer Deep Curls (270 gr) shoot great!

Klik,

As far as I know the grooves on the TSX came about because of conversations betwen Randy Brooks and a noted gun magazine editor. But I wasn't there.

Grooves on bullet shanks have been around for quite a while. Of course cast bullets immediately come to mind, but there have been other "hard" bullets with grooves over the years--and right now I can think of three brands of solid-shanked bullets other than TSX's with ringed shanks.

The same year I started using them Brad and the results were a nightmare on elk.

Out of 40 plus plus elk I've killed, over 30 were killed with the 280/160 NP combo and no recovered bullets. Same goes with the 338/250 NP 30/200 NP's and 6.5/140 NP's.

I have no use for Monolithic bullets.

Check out GS Custom Bullets from South Africa, they have multiple smaller grooves.

Interesting that you bring that up, Jorge... I just turned in a review on a new .338 after testing half a dozen factory loads. The rifle did not like a couple of Winchester loads. With TTSX, it averaged 1.5 in., which of course is perfectly acceptable. No, what really upset me was the fact that the most consistently accurate load was Federal's 210 gr. partition (which shoots just under MOA with boring consistency), followed very, very closely by Federal's 250 gr. partition load.

Now I'm going to have to buy the damn thing -- and just before I spend money on Christmas and SHOT, to boot...

By the way, I tested that 210 last week on a red stag spike for the freezer. Yeah, yeah, massive overkill, but I was careful with placement. Quartering away shot... the partition entered at the last rib and exited just behind the off shoulder, happily sparing meat. Everything in between was pulverized. Clearly another partition failure...

Wow!

I figure for for the 444 Marlin, I will work up loads with the Sierra 250, and switch it for the PT and fine tune as needed. Shouldn't need to use many PT's and I like the insurance. Probably not needed, but it doesn't hurt either.

Dawgin'it: Rest assured the Partition was deliberately designed to perform that way....it is not an accident of a "flawed" design.

From a practical standpoint,and whether a guy likes the bullet or not) the bullet is so well known in BG hunting circles I doubt many have to be told how it works, and I bet Nosler's sales would continue at current rates even if they never spent another dime hawking it.Most users take the cues from dead animals, not advertising photos.

Since you have used them before one thing you may have noticed is that a Partition recovered (when you can find one) from (say0 a 400-500 yard elk, will look almost exactly the same as the one driven at near muzzle velocity into the same animal....ie, both expanded back to the Partition or pretty close, which if you think about it,is really pretty remarkable considering the vast differences in impact velocity between the two.

There are not a lot of bullets capable of pulling this off,and I doubt very much that this is the result of any flawed design.

Well said Bob. It is very unique in that it does the same exact thing, everytime..

A general comment:

I first noticed the conviction on the part of some hunters that retained weight was the "secret" to the killing powder of expanding bullets in the 1980's--not too long after Bob Hagel's book on handloading for big game came out.

Bob was one of the first gun writers to really hammer on premium bullets as the best solution for hunting game larger than deer, but when the book was published only two premium bullets existed, at least in America, the Nosler Partition and the Bitteroot Bonded Core. Apparently the book created the assumption that more weight retention killed better.

In the 80's some other premium bullets appeared, mostly bonded, though one also had a partition jacket. The Barnes X appeared in the late 80's, and a lot of people got excited about the 100% weight retention (at least some of the time) versus the 90% weight retention of Trophy Bonded Bear Claws and Swift A-Frames.

Eventually a great many big game hunters started judging bullets on weight retention and penetration only. 100% and "pass-throughs" became necessary even for killing 100-pound whitetail does, rather than how quickly animals died.
This entire phenomenon is no doubt behind the attitude of Dawgin'it and some other hunters.

But I do wonder what Bob Hagel would think of the phenomenon.

The 150gr 7mm Partition is pretty wicked on large game from STW velocities.Yet to recover any from moose ect.

Yeah, the 150 works real well, but a lot of people forget Nosler makes a 7mm Partition between 140 and 160 grains. The 150 also sometimes shoots more accurately than the 140 or 160 in some rifles.

That reminded me of a few big game kills I've been in on with that bullet. This buck was killed by a pal shooting a 7 STW and 150gr Partition. The range was 406 yards. It was 20* below that morning.

My gunsmith friend says the same regarding the 150's.

Pat,

Looks like a really dead (and pretty good!) mule deer to me.

The first animal I shot with a150 Partition was a good Alberta mule deer at right around 300 yards. (Dunno exactly how far, as it was pre-laser, but that's what the reticle and my paces agreed on.) Broke major bone in both shoulders and exited, so dunno how much weight it retained....

My experience with Partitions is obviously more limited than some on here, but I've never had a "failure". I did recover a couple of 250s from a bull moose shot from my 340 Wby at about 165 yards. They each retained around 70% weight retention.

Regarding the big 7's: I preferred the 175gr in both my #1 Ruger in 7 Rem Mag at a tad over 3000 fps (26") and from my 7mm Wby (24") at the same speed. With a BC of .519 and an SD of .310, it seems to me (and it did seem to me)that you'd be ready for just about any scenario. I really couldn't think of a better load for anything from wolf (or antelope) to moose (or bison), and Plains Game, or grizzly!

Anyway, I never recovered the one I fire into a black bear at 60 yards quartering towards me. It struck at the juncture of neck and shoulder and made exit just in front of the off-side hip. The bear was DRT. That was the 175 from the Weatherby.

On the other hand, I've had what I'd consider a couple of "disappointments" with the Barnes-X and TSX. Neither expanded on bear. The first a 200gr - X from my .35 Whelen at 2800 fps, range 90 yds on a large bear and the second a 350 TSX from my .458 WM leaving at 2750 at the same range that pocked a hole through a 200 lb bear from center chest to just in front of hip that by all evidence never expanded either! That bear went 40 yds, the farthest any bear has ever gone on me when hit solidly from a .458" bullet! Most are DRT, even from a hardcast!

A 400gr-X or TSX from a 416 Rigby broadside through the lungs of a trophy lion did not kill it! Ganyana (Don Heath) had to finish it with his 9.3 X 62 using a 286 Norma Oryx. The photo clearly shows they both penetrated the lion but the exit hole made by the Oryx (sp) was at least 2X the diameter of the Barnes-X. I have no trouble believing it! Ganyana wrote in an article that the Barnes X was too tough for lion and he wouldn't recommend it in the larger calibers.

BTW, I'm now using the 286 Nosler Partition in my 9.3 X 62 based on the word of MD and P. Shoemaker, and my own limited experience.

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

I know for sure I was one of those people...

Looking back, like John said, we never had the range and selection of bullets then that are available now.There were basically C&C's and Partitions;in factory stuff the CoreLokt was considered good and the WW Power Point,in some calibers.Magnum calibers were popular and you did have to watch what you shot because what Hagel noticed,along with some others was that certain designs would break up under high velocity,and penetration sometimes suffered.

When the Bitterroot came along(really it had been around since the late 60's or early 70's)it was treated like a phenom because it was one of very few bullets that could handle high velocity from magnum cases(in fact it was designed to do exactly that).Not only Hagel but John Wooters had a hand in popularizing it through articles in Rifle magazine,where he and Jack Carter took the Bitterroots to Africa and used them on all manner of game).They did what some hunters wanted and indeed do retain a very high percentage of thier weight and expand to a large frontal area;as for me I think it did help with magnum cartridges.

I jumped on the band wagon hard,much like Barnes fans do today.

Only problem was that the bullets were scarce and very hard to get....they were hand made one at a time,and in batches for a caliber. With small output,you might not see any given weight and caliber for several years,and you could only buy a max of 200 at a time.So,you sent Bill a check,sat back,and waited.This lack of supply and high demand created sort of a black market among Bitterroot users,and they traded among fans like cocaine or precious gems....it was fun and in pre Internet days you corresponded with many hunters from all over. I still have friends today from other parts of the country whom I met trading Bitterroots, RinB being among them.

In any event,it was apparent there was a void in the market place and this caused the invention of the original TBBC by Carter and the Swift Aframe by Lee Reid.Both these bullets eventually found their way into factory ammo, especially for big African stuff and led the way for new cartridges like the 416 Remington.

As to the killing part,I think the weight retention part of the whole deal was just a by-product of the way the bullet worked,not the reason for its' effectivness(kinda like we expect a Partition to expand back to the Partition).The BBC was made of pure cooper, very heavy jackets,and pure lead cores.Steigers was fussy about material.They were very tough,and you rarely saw a petal shear off...under extreme stress from high velocity the expanded portion would tend to fold back along the shank before it fractured and came off...in fact that is exactly what Steigers wanted,and why he recommended minimum velocity levels and fast twists...each helped bullet expansion.

They are good and reliable killers;sometime spectacular....like the Barnes, they can handle as much velocity as you can give them,expand to a generally very wide frontal area and maintain that through the wound channel.And also it was recommended to drop down in size one notch...you could use a 180 from a 30/06,and it would "work",but generally you were better served with a 165 that started faster.

Like John mentions above, many associated the high weight retention with the killing ability but I have come to realize(after using them for 3 decades) that it was not the weight retention that "killed";it was the large frontal area engendered by the construction and high impact speed.By "large" I mean 7mm's expanded to over .60 caliber, and 375's to over 3/4" inch.This created what JeffO refered to as a lot of "blunt trauma".....I can't think of a better description.

At one point I ran about a dozen kills on animals from pronghorn to elk in size with that instant DRT, lights out effect.Looking back, these were all from cartridges generating high velocity,ie 300 magnums,7mm mags, the 270 and 280.I have opened up deer and elk hit with them where you could not really ID the lungs,everything having that soup effect.At long distances where velocity has fallen off,the effect is not quite so dramatic;nor from standard cartridges,as I have noticed the Bitterroot works better from magnum cartridges than standards, expecially as distance increases.They still kill,just not as dramatically.

Some will disgaree but I think that a big portion of the killing effect of some of the softer bullets, and those great big exits and massive trauma we see,is due to large frontal area being generated;no doubt the shrapnel contributes to all this as a secondary effect,but I bet if we could do visuals of the passage of some of these bullets like the VLD,BT and maybe others through animals,we would see the soft cores and thin jackets creating a large frontal area that rapidly dissapates in the animal,but nonetheless is causing the bulk of the damage....of course the difference betwen these and a BBC is that the BBC is built so that we can "see" the frontal area that is left, and the "retained weight",while things like the Berger will have ground itself to almost nothing...evidence of the frontal area has dissapeared.But I am willing to bet that some of those massive exits we see are not due to secondary missiles, but rather to a bullet that has expanded rather widely;and the lengthof some of these heavy, high BC bullets means they have enough bullet material so that even as they collpase into a mushroom and shed weight, here is still enough material and momentum to carry through and make those rounded, nasty exits we see....I think it's the shrapnel that causes the goo efffect around the main wound channel.

Forgive the rambling....what was the question?

:thumbs_up: .....every word!

Good post Bob

Klik/SU: Thanks....bullets like the Berger and other soft skinned,but long high BC bullets have been counter intuitive to me, but there is no denying the effectivness.

I have never used them but trust John Burns and Johnny B in what they say about them....I may be wrong in figuring them out(I have never used one);but at least in my mind the way I described it makes sense, at least to me..

That BBC is interesting from an historical perspective, and how we got from "there" to "here"...but not many people would use them today because they are not a real LR bullet.But I still use them because I'm not real good at long range...

Bob,

I believe you're right about the way Bergers work--because it can be "seen" after they're shot into the right sort of media.

One of the most interesting ballistic test materials to come along in recent years was the Test Tube. This used a semi-soft wax that left a permanent wound channel, instead of the temporary channel seen in many other kinds of test media.

This wound channel also matched up very well with what happened inside animals--or at least it did when the wax was at 70 degrees, the temperature where it was designed to work.

The typical Berger Hunting VLD wound channel in the Test Tube begins with a narrow entrance about the diameter of the bullet. After a couple of inches or so the wound channel expands suddenly into an huge crater, which over the next foot or so dissipates as the bullet comes apart.

The wound channel from a typical "premium" bullet, on the other hand, begins to open as soon as it hits the wax. There's a relatively small (compared to a VLD) expansion crater for a few inches, then a much narrower channel as the expanded bullet continues through the tube. The size of the expansion crater depends on several things, but if bullet weight/diameter and muzzle velocity are equal, bullets that lose some weight create a larger crater. Those that expand wider and RETAIN that width create a larger post-crater channel.

Thus the Berger VLD expands the most (and does more damage) a a few inches deeper inside the animal than conventional expanding bullets. The expansion crater also eventually dissipates as the bullet comes apart--except at much longer ranges, where velocity drops off, and the bullet retains a more conventional mushroom shape. Even then, however, the shank of the bullet (if recovered) ends up much shorter than in most bullets.

Thanks John. That's a good explanation and makes sense.

You know another thought on the issue of penetration and bullet fragmentation is one of inertia. If a bullet losesa significant portion of it's total weight (as the Hornady on the picture below shows weighing just 79 out of it's original 180 out of a 300 Weatherby at 80 yds), deceleration happens qucikly and penetration is arrested. On the other hand if a bullet retains all or nearly all of it's weight, but mushrooms into a huge frontal diameter, penetration also suffers. Such is the case with Swift Aframes. All four of these were recovered from medium to large African Game eland 175 yds, zebra 125 yds and wildbeest 65 yds). Shoulder shots on the eland and zebra and frontal on the Wildebeest. Caliber was a 3735 H&H,

I have no TSXs to show because they all exit and all left larger than caliber holes, clearly indicating expansion. One particular animal comes to mind, a Zebra I whacked squarely on the shoulder with a TSX out of the 375 that broke both shoulders and exited. From this limited and empirical observation at least to me, the TSXs had the best of all worlds, penetration, expansion and two holes. Thoughts?

jorg good points. I have never used a mono of any kind on anything but paper so I can't play....but I would only say it depends on what you want from your bullet,ie,exits or maybe a somewhat larger wound channel.

Something funny I have seen(at least with the BBC,which is somewhat similar to Aframe)is that they penetrate quite well in animal "internals",so that say on quartering shots I have recovered them about as far back as I have a Nosler Partition;and have had them exit and blow large holes through a brown bear.On broadside shots it seems resistance of shoulder bones has the bullet pretty well spent and the rubbery hide then has that trampoline effect which combines with a broad mushroom to stop them.When velocity is down,expansion is not as great,and they tend to exit.

I assume the sharp,scything action of the Barnes expanded wings (assuming it does not blow the petals ad create a smaller frontal area)offers less resistance,and allows it to cut through the off side hide.

A pal showed me two Barnes TXS 235 gr he dug from an eland and kudu;the eland at 325 yards, perfectly expanded and had broken shoulder bone at 325 yards,dumping the eland right there.The second from a kudu at 80 yards was found against the off side hide as well....maybe a 270 gr TSX would have made it through on both shots?

I don't know but the extra momentum might help

Bob, another bullet (and oh, sorry for the thread hijack to the OP) that is rapidly gaining a sterling reputation in African circles (in addition to the North Forks) is the Cutting Edge Technologies Non-Conventional. Designed similar to a TSX (monometal), the front end is designed to "detonate" rendering it's front part asunder and thus increasing collateral tissue damage and the remainder of the core keeps on pushing. On a recent Buffalo hunt a friend of mine (he has a great video over on AR) shot a buffalo head on with one of those out of a 577-not known for penetration, and the core was recovered near the pooper. That's a LOT of penetration. jorge

I have recovered a few TSXs: 62gr .224s, 120gr .264s, 150gr .284s ... It always surprises me that some people have had opposite experience, never recovering one... I ask myself if they have shot them enough.

Respectfully.

Plastic tipped bullets -

At high speed the plastic becomes hydrolic and starts the expansion as soon as it hits.

COOL.

It would be interesting to put no-compressible / hydrolic like oil in the front of a berger (provided there is a hollow shaft) and watch them blow up.

jorg yes I read the whole section on the Cutting Edge bullets on AR.....those things seem to penetrate like crazy!

My thoughts are that I rather enjoy my recovered bullet collection...so I actually like it when the bullet is mushroomed and against the hide on the far side. Over penetration may produce blood trails, but rather few recovered bullets to look at.

Jorge,

The larger caliber TSX's do perform well on larger game. This is partly because they penetrate deeply, but also because they're larger caliber in the first place, and the hollow-point is also much larger than in smaller calibers, especially below 30. The big hollow-point provides much more reliable expansion, and the wider bullet more damage.

They also work very well when started fast in medium-caliber magnums, say from 7mm to .33. But I don't find they kill better than various lead-core premiums, and often not as well. They do exit more often, but as Bob hinted at, that might be due the tendency of the petals to cut through hide--which the rounded mushroom of a lead-core bullet often doesn't.

I certainly haven't found any Nosler Partitions stopped in the middle of animals, rather than under the hide on the off-side. As a matter of fact, in looking at my hunting notes on hundreds of animals, a higher percentage of Partitions have exited than the petal-type bullets.

This might be due to using heavier Partitions than the petal-type bullets, though, or shooting a lot of deer-sized game with Partition. I haven't broken down that aspect as much as I could yet--but will note that the last Cape buffalo I shot had a good-sized exit hole from the 400-grain .416 Partition. The 400 Partition is one of those designed to retain more weight. The two I've recovered in the past decade averaged 89%.

I haven't noticed all that much advantage in the TSX (or other 100% weight retention, petal-type bullets) in game from elk-size down. Here, once again, I'm talking about how quickly they kill, not how much weight they retain or exit holes.

In calibers from .30 down I've become more fond of lead-cored bullets in the past few years, even plain old soft-points, as they ALWAYS expand, unlike the monos.

One of my editors recently made this comment on the Cutting Edge Non-Conventional: "So they reinvented the Nosler Partition." I wouldn't quite go that far, but have been testing some of the Cutting Edge bullets and hope to come up with some firmer conclusions soon.

By the way, I have shot lengthwise through animals with Nosler Partitions, on several occasions. Sometimes the bullet didn't exit but it ended up at the far end of the animal.

Funny you say that, 'cause that's what I was thinking when I read the brief description above. And I find it rather ironic that Barnes seems to have arrived at somewhat the same end in evolving their mono design to where the TTSX is sometimes inclined to lose part(s) of the front end. Whether people like to admit it or not, there seems to be a standard discovered first, commercially anyway, by John Nosler in the form of the Partition. Lots of variations to improve upon that theme have landed awfully close to the same outcome. From there there's a lot of picking and choosing one can do that amounts to not a whole more than flavor preferences.

Yeah, they sure ruffled my feathers with the discontinuation. My 280 JDJ loved the 160's, PT Gold Moly.

As I noted before in this thread, the Partition Gold was designed by Winchester, not Nosler, when the two company's partnered up on some projects.

That's why the bullet was called the Combined Technology Partition Gold. Nosler could never see why there was a need for the steel cup over the rear core--and guessed the reason Winchester put it there was because they hadn't worked out the geometry of the partition, and so were experiencing bulges of the rear core--just like those that occur with the Swift A-Frame, or today's Winchester XP3. You almost never see those bulges with the Nosler Partition, because they worked out how to prevent them with jacket geometry many years ago. Hence the steel cup was unnecessary, an uneeded expense.

The higher retained weight of the Gold (which wasn't much) could have been done by simply moving the partition forward--as Nosler does in many of its heavier bullets.

I tested a bunch of the Golds, on media and game, and could never see what they brought to the table other than more expense. If somebody out there still really believes in moly, it's easy to moly-coat regular Partitions.

Nice deer muskeg and like the "failed" bullet pics too.

"Re-invented the partition"..... OH boy, what a statement that is.

Sounds more like a sales pitch.

I like lead in my bullets and retrieving partitions against far side hide or opposite end....with 2nds, golds or regular partitions.

My pleasure goes up a little after I'm admiring my downed animal when I cant find a bullet exit, it's almost like a treasure hunt sometimes.....

Me either, save one reason. My 280 JDJ loved them but would not deliver a run of the mill Partition to any appreciable accuracy.

Hasn't someone already tried explining to Mr. Dawginit the original design of the Partition? Perhaps he isn't reading; John Nosler wanted the front half to open easily which is why it's softer than the rearward half of the bullet. Second, he wanted the rear half of the bullet to keep driving. The result is precisely what you see with the OP's pics - i.e. the front half is gone and the rear half acts in some respects like a solid. Incidentally, one of the bonuses of shedding the front half is the fact that the bits of the front half each create their own separate wound channels thereby offering futher damage to an already damaged vital organ system.

It's clear you have an opinion regarding the Partition but it's simply not an informed one. The OP's bullet worked as designed. I love Partitions and I think they work even better at somewhat reduced rather than hyper velocities.

John, I agree with the premise of your post overall and obviously my experience is very small compared to yours, but in the 30 cals (H&H, 7MM and 257 Weatherbys I've had stellar one shot kill successes and as I said previously, clear evidence of expansion. I also like cannelures on my bullets and I don't know why . I'd also like to say that all the animals I shot with thw 180 Partition I had complete penetration as well. I like Noslers but a few of my rifles just don't like them and for the 375 and above, I much prefer the TSXs and even in my 450 Double I've switched to the Non-Con bullets and solids. jorge

Jorge,

My understanding with DRs is that they are regulated to a specific load/bullet combo. When switching to something new is it a hassle to re-regulate?

bluefish,

Yes, the concept of the Partition's design has been previously explained to dawgin'it on this thread, but apparently he'd reading impaired.

jorge,

I've had a lot of one-shot kills with Barnes TSX's (and Tipped TSX's) too, and some spectacular kills, especially from the .257 Weatherby. But once in a while one of them doesn't open correctly. Have seen that with other petal-type bullets as well. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it can make for a very long day....

I've yet to see a soft-point fail to open. Have had some not open quite as widely as the might have, but a quarter-sized hole through the lungs beats a .25 caliber hole.

Jon, fortunately I've escaped that TSX malady and I've since switched to the TTSX in the hopes of avoiding that. Given the small opening in the >30 cal TSXs I can see where that can be an issue. As to the rest of your post, I agree completely but one thing I'll NEVER use again are Hornady Interlocks in anything above a 2700 MV.

Bluefish you are correct but with a little work and research you can often-times find the doubles' sweet spot without re-regulation. For example, my double was regulated with factory 480gr Hornady DGX/S and it shoots them superbly. I picked that because Hornadys are the only current manufacturer other than Kynoch that loads the 450 NE 3 1/4. With Kynochs one has to floar a loan to shoot and Hornadys are "reasonably" (90/box) affordable. I called Horndady and obtained their load which incidentally was very mild and started from there as well as using Greene's book and of course the internet. I came across the Combined Technology bullets on another forum that's very Africa oriented and they develop less pressure and barrel strain than the Hornadys which as a result of their design are very high pressure/strain loads. The end result was a charge of 100gr of H-4831 and a 215 Fed primer and voila! regulation.

If anyone remembers,Noslers first bullets out were hollow points.They worked okay but people around here could not get used to using a hollow point on Elk same as Ballistic Tips to old timers although what I saw,the 180 Nosler(hollow point) did just fine.

I have used just about every bullet made in factory ammo and always come back to the Partition.

Jayco

62gr TSXs from Oryx and Warthog


150gr .284 TSXs. recovered from Blue Wildebeests and Zebra (the one on the right). The other bullets are 139gr Interbonds recovered from Blue Wildebeests


120gr .264 TSXs recovered from Oryx (2), Hartebeest, and Wildebeest.


If you shoot them enough you may even recover Lutz M�eller's KJGs... These two were shot with my 300 Weatherby and recovered from two Blue Wildebeests.


Here you have two that did not expand and tumbled upon impact. A good friend of mine recovered them from an interior Grizzly bear. They are 180gr TSXs and where shot from a 300 Winchester.


And here are some 350gr .416" TSXs. recovered from Hartebeest, Buffalo, Nyassa Wildebeest and Buffalo (L to R).


As I said.

BBerg

BBerg good stuff thanks for posting!

Great post BBerg makes me feel even more confident about continnuing to use the T/TSXs. jorge

As I noted earlier on this thread, I've recovered a higher percentage of TSX's than Partitions, and the percentage receover is higher for the Tipped TSX's.

My guess is that's because the tipped model tends to open wider than the original, especially in calibers from .30 on down, due to the bigger hollow-point under the tip. This has also been my experience with the Nosler E-Tip.

This doesn't mean the Tipped TSX and E-Tip don't penetrate plenty. They do, but in my experience not all that much deeper than Nosler Partitions.

"Here you have two that did not expand and tumbled upon impact. A good friend of mine recovered them from an interior Grizzly bear. They are 180gr TSXs and where shot from a 300 Winchester."


These two have a more brass/bronze color to them then the other more copper colored ones. Probably doesn't mean anything. But they do look like the Barnes bronze solid bullets.

I have not heard any rumors of inconsistent metallurgy since the earliest days of the X Bullet.

I have also never had this happen to me or at least where the bullet could be recovered.

Tejano,
It is just an effect of shooting the camera under a yellowish artificial light. The bullets are the regular copper TSXs.
BBerg

Thanks for the clarification. It's easy to make erroneous speculations from internet info. Good post.

Not sure if I still have it but the only Barnes "failure" was from an old 7mm 160 grain X that took out a couple of ribs and a shoulder on a smallish bull Elk. The bullet looked like an expanded wad cutter. Same bullet may have mowed down a 100 yards of grass too before it hit the Elk at about 325 yards.

The only negative I have ever heard about the Nosler Partitions was on a Giraffe where it took a bunch of .375-270 grain bullets to bring it down. Apparently they didn't track well (straight line penetration) and I suspect some bad shooting was involved too.

I haven't heard any rumors either but I have heard it straight from the horses mouth just 4 to 5 years ago. In a Wolf publication Brooks stated he had problems in buying copper. Different lots brought different results in bullet performance.

That is what I consider perfect performance.

693 yard, pass thru with a 140 ttsx out of a 280ai.
Ill stick with Barnes bullets thank you. It was a drt.


Exit.

I got a started box of 180 grain partitions from my local gun shop. I loaded them in my .300 Win mag and went hog hunting. I shot 2 hogs behind the ear at about 200 yards. Both of them rolled over in their tracks. Not an "oink" out of either one of them. When I walked up to them, neither bullet exited. I thought they would. They say a pig's head is hard. Like shooting a log I guess. Well, they had a commercial meat saw and "inquiring minds want to know," so we split their heads down the middle and there were the bullets. The front half of one bullet had disintegrated and the back half had been squished flat. The other broke up and the base was in tact. I thought the bullets took it quite rough. Not like in the pictures, you know, the perfect mushroom. They did their job though. I never shot anything else with them though. I shot all my deer with Sierra Gamekings and Nosler Ballistic Tips. They come apart too though. I don't know. If I ever rifle hunt again. I'd so some work with the new Barnes bullets.

rob p,

You may end up being surprised. I have seen TSX's stay inside pig's skulls.

Hola, John.
We once found one at the back of the skull of a Nyala that one of my clients shot in the Eastern Cape. I was a 300gr .375 TSX, and the shot was taken from 170yds or so, to a perfectly broadside animal with his head turned on to us.
The nyala fell down like a ton of bricks and when we got there and after the photos I started looking for the bullet holes, for the entry hole at least, and no matter how harde we all looked we just could not find it.
Later on, at the skinning shed, out skinner unveiled the mistery finding the bullet sticking out of the skull when taking the cape off. It had entered through the lacrimal, in the corner of the eye and dailed to break the skull wall and skin on its way out.
Alvaro

Hi, Alvaro,

Interesting! Especially considering the size of the bullet and an nyala. They aren't any bigger than mule deer.

I've had one verifiable "failure" of a TTSX. I say verifiable because I recovered the un-opened bullet (elk). I've seen others un-opened recovered from friends animals.

I know I've had other mono failures by just observing the wound channel, ie a pencil hole in and out. Both animals died (a mule deer with original Barnes X, and elk with Failsafe), and both didn't go very far, but each were lung punched as well so that's usually a dead animal regardless.

I wonder how many of these expanding mono's don't actually expand, but because the animal dies and the bullet isn't recovered the hunter doesn't give it much thought?

What I do know is I've never had an expanding lead core bullet fail to open... count me as Partition fan. As I said before, not the best at any one thing (penetration, frontal area, shrapnel effect), but the best compromise of those three.

Because when you have a caliber sized entry hole and an exit that is significantly larger, it would be intuitively obvious expansion occurred, not to mention "jellied" interior damage.

WTF?

A pencil hole in, though, and out tells the story of an un-opened bullet.

Sorry if that offends your particular religious perspective.

The opium of the masses? no thanks, but yes you are correct, my mistake, a pencil hole in an out "could" indicate that although my Partitions, caliber sized holes in and out are not uncommon, and that is because the front end disintegrated somewhere after penetration, which accounts for that bullet's long-standing reputation. If you bothered to read my posts I've used them on a lot of game and they are one of my favorite bullets, but I do prefer T/TSXs for larger game or velocities exceeding 3000 fps.

I wioll attest to that. On my only antelope hunt I was loaded with 160gr Partition on a 7mm RM, that I plan to use for elk too. I guess I used for elk, just never able to shoot it an elk.
Anyway, the 160gr Partition dropped an antelope on the spot, on a running shot, so quick I almost pulled the trigger on another one thinking I had missed. Anyway, completed pass thru, but DRT.
Coming to the PD part, I shot one a longs way out wanting to verify zero prior to the goat shooting and the groundhog was lifted off the ground, and torn in shreds. This is by a 7mm 160gr Partition flying at 3000 fps on a small creature. So yes I do think partitions work near of far out there, creatures big or small. I like them for my all around bullet.

BobinNH and Mule Deer - It was interesting to read your comments on the 7mm Partitions, and especially about the 160 being quite a tough bullet. I have a fraction of the on game experience as you two, but I have shot well over a dozen big game animals with the 7mm RM. I used to use the 160gr Partition but moved to the 175gr at some point +20 years ago. I find that the 175gr seems to work quite well on all sizes of beasts - from Racoon to Moose.

This year I shot 3 Sitka blacktails with the 175 Partition and was very happy with the performance. The two that were hit in the lungs dropped on the spot. Do you think the 175 is a little softer than the 160? Is the newer spitzer version different than the old semi-spitzer?

Arac,

The 175 is a great bullet too. I have no idea whether the semi-spitzer varied in any signifiocant way from today's bullet, other than nose shape, but do know that all the Partitions in today's lineup use the same relatively soft lead alloy in the front core.

signifiocant [sayn-If-Iok�nt] adjective - technical term. Vernacular of montana gun writers for

relevant, cogent, sententious.

Partitions, Partition Gold, Swift A-Frame, Trophy Bonded, take your pick....all leaded, all rock...

Arac I have never used a 175 gr Nosler Partition on anything except paper...so from personal experience with it, I know nothing.I have read what Ingwe and Mule Deer say about it.....I have also talked to D'Arcy Echols and RinB on here, both of whom have used it some in Africa and they both say it's very good....lots of trauma,and good exits.Hard to recover one.D'Arcy told me he felt as if it killed more like a 300 Weatherby.He used it in a long throat 7RM at over 2900 fps IIRC.

Like many 7 RM users I have used the 160 alot.But what I noticed over the years is that many experienced hunters who hunted with magnum capacity 7mm's like Page, Hagel,and even some guys who were necking down and blowing out 404Jeff cases to 7mm back in the 80's,all said the same things....they all liked the 175gr Partition the best from those larger 7mm's.

Very good thread!....Does anyone have any expirience with the 160gr. partition in .277 cal.? My rifle shoots them too well to ignore.....thanks in advance....bearit..

My one trip to Kodiak for deer had me carrying my 300 H&H loaded with 150 grain Partition Golds! They worked pretty good on deer- two jumps and then piling up! I was really hoping I would have to shoot a bear at like 10 feet- well not really but it probably would have worked.

Terry Wieland used a .300 Weatherby Magnum when he hunted brown bear on Kodiak, and was also hunting deer. He brought two loads, one with 150-grain Partitions for deer and another with 200-grain Partitions for brown bear. He was surprised by a big brown bear when the 150's were in the rifle, and they didn't work very well. As I recall, the first one disintegrated on the bear's shoulder. Terry came out of it OK but as I recall the guide was eventually shooting too. Maybe 150 Golds would have worked better on a frontal shot on a big bear, but I wouldn't want to have to find out.

John, where does this conversation leave the Acubond? I am beigining to think it is the best compomise of all the bullets out there.

Good idea to roll with just one load per hunt.

Same here. I haven't been disappointed by them..

Not for me...YMMV.

Sakoluvr,

The AccuBond, like the Partition, is a great all-around big game bullet. I've used them in calibers from .270 to 9.3mm on game from deer and impala to grizzly and kudu, and have seen my hunting partners use them in calibers from .25 to .375 on an even wider array of animals. They've always worked fine, with plenty of expansion and penetration.

Their big advantage over the Partition is ballistic coefficient, though in some rifles they're also more accurate--though I've rarely had problems with getting Partitions to shoot well.

There were some problems with one early batch of AccuBonds losing their tips. This was traced to one stage in the manufacturing process an employee was trying to speed up. I've never had any lose their tips, and as a matter of fact have never had any plastic-tipped bullets of any brand lose a tip, and I've shot tens of thousands of 'em at various varmintgs and big game animals. Maybe I'm just lucky--though my experiences with a bunch of self-breaking riflescopes seems to indicate otherwise....

I was going to take my 260 Rem and you talked me out of that! Maybe the 200 fps loss and the "Gold" partition would have made a difference. It was the combination I was willing to try and it worked out fine. Saw something like 43 bears that week- mostly cruising in Art's boat.

Thanks John. I just started to use the NAB's this season in my .257 Weatherby. I could not get the 100gr TTSX to shoot, so i gave the 110 NAB a try. My groups went from about 1.5-2" to .7 inches. I quit there because I wanted to hunt the rifle. I will play with another powder or 2 after the season. BTW, I could not get the 100gr partition to shoot either. I was begining to think it was the rifle until using the NAB's.

I have a small sample size, but I killed 3 deer at 300 yards (shoulder hits, DRT with pass-throughs) and one small black bear at <100 yards. Again with a pass through. The bullet nicked one shoulder and came out behind the off shoulder.
Thinking I hit that bear around 3300 fps.

I will continue to use them and see how they do as the sample size increases.

Bob, please elaborate.

My experience with Accubonds is, typically, they're LESS accurate than Partitions of same weight. I've never had any rifle that shot Accubonds better than Partitions. A few shot as well, but mostly Partitions shot better.

That said, I like Accubonds... if I can get them to shoot.

Brad,

What I've found is that Partitions are more tolerant of differences seating depth than AccuBonds. One thing I learned from an old Nosler tech was that often a slightly faster burning powder helped. The way he explained it to me, Partitions shot better when "booted in the butt a little" to bump up the rear core to fit the bore tighter.

On the other hand, with Accubonds seating depth seems to be more important.

I don't wanna....

Seriously here's how I look at it...others may disagree.

The only advantages I see to them is the plastic tip for a slight gain in BC...Some think this is a huge advantage....I don't......And from the actual shooting I've done with them,they are accurate, but out to 600 yards from my rifles I can't detect a noticeable gain in any material way between them and a Partition started at the same velocity.

I have used them but once.I trust the guys who say they work well on game....some say about like a Partition.

Well,if that's the case I simply can't find a compelling reason to use them when I have been killing stuff with monotonous consistency with Partitions for decades.I very much doubt the AB is going to kill anything any deader, or quicker, or more dramatically for me,than the Partition.

And whatever very minor advantages might exist for the AB,is not,for me,worth the trade off.I simply don't believe they will do anything for me that a Partition will not.This does not mean I don't think they are a good bullet....it's just that the bases they cover, for me,are already covered...

Fair enough and logical.

Can't believe we got that many bears to come along for the cruise...

And a TSX or TTSX would have done a better job at either weight... Certainly not worried about meat loss on a brown bear either... But if it is possible to make a bigger mess of deer than with a really fast, light NPT I have not seen it.

Bob and John, I have experienced similar happenings between the 140 & 160 when shooting deer here in the lower 48. However, I used the 160's in a 7 STW up in Saskatchewan and the damn things were very impressive. I would guess it's that velocity thing again.

the 150 NP .308 out of my little short barreled Mannlicher at about 2600 fps sure makes whitetails sleepy.

Randy

rta: The 160 NPT does a pretty fair job at about anything,and from a magnum 7mm just might be as a much a universal game getter as a guy is likely to find.

But 140 NPT's do work on Canadian whitetails very well also.

Not at you Bob.

All bullets work,some are just better than others at certain things.All bullets have the ability to fail also whether a Nosler/Barnes or whatever pushed to there limits.

The '06 and .375 H&H are famous for factory velocities not mach 3 reloads pushing bullets to the extreme and possible failure.

Jayco

Have you tried North Fork or Trophy Bonded? They get my vote for best compromise, followed very closely if not equaled by A-Frames.

All three have a bonded front core that expands very well and, IMHO, the mono-metal rear section of the North Fork and Trophy Bonded is a somewhat more reliable design than the Partition's rear section. The North Fork and A-Frame have been very accurate in every rifle I've tried them in and my hunting buddy has had excellent accuracy with the Trophy Bonded. (Wish they were still available as components.)

The only drawback to the North Fork and A-Frame is their lower BC but that has yet to be a factor for me in the field.

Not disagreeing with you at all, as I have wanted to try out Swift's or North Forks a few times, but everytime I think about trying them, I wonder how much better they could work than a same weighted PT.

Do they penetrate furter? More accurate? Again, I am not questioning you a bit, just wondering how they work better. I love the PT's, but I have wanted to try the NF's and Swifts a few times and I cheaped out.

CH

How many animals have you shot with factory ammunition and standard bullets such as corelock/silvertip/sp/pointed sp/bronze point/pointed soft point and on and on.....They all work at factory velocities.....

I doubt there is one of the old ones out there I haven't used or seen up close and personally used.

Hunting has changed a bunch since the old days,now it is speed first then SD then BC then and always,the energy fiasco.......

Did any of that matter back when coke was a was a drink and a smoke was tobacco?


Didn't then and doesn't now.

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Jayco

For big game:

Factory ammo == 0
Cup and Core == 3 == elk/162g Hornady BTSP/7mm RM, antelope/220g Hornady/.375 Winchester and mule deer/Speer 240g SP/.44 Mag

Merry Christmas to you and yours as well.

Federal 160g Partition ammo was my backup ammo for 20-odd years. Grand Slam bullets were less expensive and I used them with zero complaints. Never did fire a Partition in the field although I still have loads for them in my .257 Roberts and .30-30. Friends that used Partitions had no problems with them.

When Speer changed the Grand Slam design I went to a true bonded bullet, the North Fork. Accuracy was superb and in they were the most consistently consistent bullets and loads I'd tried. They passed the water jug tests before going into the field and I've been using them for about 10 years now. And will continue to do so.

Below is a picture of some recovered bullets. From left to right:
7mm RM/Hornady 162g InterLock (spike elk @ ~110 yards) (hit onside rib)
7mm RM/Speer 160g Grand Slam (6x6 elk @~110 yards) (destroyed both shoulder joints)
.30-06/ North Fork 165g (cow elk @ ~25 yards)
.45-70/North Fork 350g (5x5 elk @ 213 yards)
.300WM/North Fork 180g (200 yard steel)



Here's another picture. From left to right:
.30-06, 165g North Fork @ 2800fps, 500yds from dirt, 145.0g retained
.30-06, 165g North Fork @ 2800fps, ~25yds from cow elk, 133.2g retained (same bullet as in previous picture)
7mm 140g North Fork @ 3200fps, ~150yds from buck mule deer, 131.2g retained (ham to sternum penetration)



They aren't for everyone but they do what I want - provide reliable but controlled expansion with high weight retention over a very wide range of velocities. Of the 5 elk I've taken with them 4 went straight down at the shot and one made it about 25 yards.

Works for me. They look really good to me.

Thanks for that tidbit John... veddy interesting.

Was the tip for "fast powder" for the AB or Partition... I know you said Partition, but thought you might have meant Accubond?

Thanks.

He/they have generally referenced the Partition in that regard - the open base apparently allows the bullet to 'bump up' a bit, something the snappier kick of a quicker powder can do a bit better. (I've always been intrigued by the impression of powder kernels on the open lead base of the fired bullets! )

Same here, took me a few years to figure out what it was!

Here's another pic of recovered bullets. There were shot into water jugs from close enough to get showered (10 yards). From left to right, with the number of jugs penetrated:

4 jugs == Sierra 200g FP .458" @ 2390fps, 81% weight retention (left group of five, front row center)
6 jugs == Speer 300g Uni-Cor .458" @ 2247fps, 59.6% to 72.5% weight retention, 68.8% average (remainder of left group)
8 jugs == Speer 350g FP .458" @ 2147fps, 87.6% weight retention
6 jugs == North Fork 350g .458" @ 2189fps, 97.4% weight retention
9 jugs == Cast Performance 460g WFNGC .458" @ 1812fps, 76.5% weight retention
5 jugs == Hornady 220g FP .375" @2230fps, 65.7% weight retention
7 jugs == Barnes 180g MRX .308" @ 3100fps, 93.4% weight retention



Some that weren't recovered or aren't shown:
11+ jugs (exited last jug) == Oregon Trial 300g Laser Cast .458" @ 1167fps
9+ jugs (exited side) == Speer 500g African Grand Slam (AGS) .458" @ 1554fps
1 jug == Hornady 50g V-MAX .224" @ 3650fps

Note that the damage done was NOT directly correlated to the number of jugs penetrated. The jugs were sitting on 5/16" plywood with the lead jug aligned with the front edge. The plywood was resting in turn on plastic sawhorses.

The North Fork bullet was by far the most destructive, blowing a hole in the plywood the size of the jug's base (~6"x6"), breaking the top rail of the saw horse and violently exploding several more jugs.

The least destructive were the .224" V-MAX @ 3650fps (1 jug) and the .458" Laser Cast @ 1167fps (11+ jugs). The V-MAX blew up the first jug. The Laser Cast blew up the first jug and drilled through the rest leaving them intact but leaking.

CH: Great rundown on the bullets....very interesting. Thanks for posting that!

CH, awesome report man. That makes the Speer 350 look pretty good. What are your thoughts on that bullet in the 45-70? Seems alot like the 300 grain bullet they make. Tough bullets, without the extra cost.

beretz �

Construction of the 300g I used was a Uni-Core design that has since been dropped. Too bad, they shot very well. Thought maybe they would be in the �Deep Curl� lineup but looking today that doesn�t appear to be the case either. I�m bummed.

The 350g were designed for the .458 Winchester and present some loading issues. In my Marlin 1895 I have to seat them pretty deeply and use a Lee crimp die to make a crimp above the cannelure. Trimming the cases a bit would fix the problem but I�m not willing to do that. If you load them, make sure COL is short enough to cycle from the magazine and eject unfired cartridges. My loads only have a few thou clearance (around .004�, if that) when ejecting unfired.

At close range the 350g open up fine but I�d be worried about longer ranges. They are good penetrators but slow openers at .45-70 velocities and slow opening would be exacerbated at longer ranges.

Here�s another pic of some of the recovered bullets shown in my first photo above. From left to right:

350g North Fork, 6x6 bull @ 213 yards
160g Speer Grand Slam, 7mm RM, 5x5 bull @~110 yards
162g Hornady BTSP, 7mm RM, spike bull @~110 yards
180g North Fork, .300WM, 200 yard steel



Some notes on the performance:

1. The .45-70 North Fork hit the left front leg obliterating a section of leg bone, obliterated a section of near side rib, shattered a far side rib and came to rest under the off-side hide. Mike Brady, creator of the North Fork bullets, believes the �helicopter wing� was created when the bullet came to a sudden stop at the far rib. He said he had seen similar results when using a steel stop plate behind gelatin. Needless to say, the bull didn�t take a step � just stood there for a couple seconds and tipped over as I was getting ready to fire a second round.

2. The Speer Grand Slam is the only one I ever recovered from game and that took 20 years and the destruction of both shoulder joints of a 5x5 bull. It was recovered from under the hide. Retained weight was just under 71%.

3. The Hornady 162g hit dead center on the near side rib of a spike bull, missed or slightly nicked a far rib and stopped under the hide. Retained weight was under 48%. I switched to Grand Slams the next year.

4. The 180g North Fork from the .300WM was the ONLY bullet to survive contact with the steel at 200 yards. Most simply made a dent of various depths, fragmented and shredded paper targets several feet away. The North Fork made a deep hole and expanded to lock itself into the hole, although it lost most of its lead core. (This sample was the only one that would come out of the steel.) Barnes 180g MRX made a deep hole and left a gorgeous copper plate finish in it, but there was nothing left except the plated hole that we could find. We found a jacket from a cup-and-core .22-250 bullet, flattened like a pancake with fingers reaching out from the base like an octopus.

What do all these results mean? I�ll let people decide for themselves, but steel plate tests are not very indicative of anything when it comes to flesh and blood. (They are fun, though.) Water jug tests seem to roughly correlate to what I�ve seen in the field and what common sense (or at least thoughtful analysis) would lead one to expect. The most surprising results to me was the penetration of the slow moving 300g Laser Cast bullets � 11+ jugs and still going, but without a lot of damage. Wasn�t surprised by the deep penetration, just didn�t think it would be that deep. (Very light recoil, too, half that of many factory .30-30 loads, and very accurate. Does anyone else think they might be good home defense loads?)

I�ve got a lot of jugs saved up for testing bullets with next spring when it warms up. Ballistic Tip, Scirocco II, AccuBond, TTSX, Hornady FTX, and some others. If anyone wants to send me a few VLDs in .257�, 6.5mm, 7mm or .308� I�ll be happy to test them, too.

CH, just for your heads up, Speer changed nothing with the 300 grain .458 bullet. They changed the label on the box to say "plinker", but in my testing in jugs show, it is still a bonded bullet, that really holds together, really well. It is just horribly misleading to the shooter. This one retained about 280+ grains of weight and the mushroom speaks for itself. It is my preferred 300 grainer for a 45-70.









The only bullet I like more, is the 300 grain PT.. I am saving those for something special though. I am still not sure if they are "better" than the Speers, but I like them.

Awesome tests and write ups though, thank you very much for posting them up.

FYI, I think the 300 grain Speer went 7 jugs. That was at about 2200 FPS, 20 yards from the muzzle.

If you recovered any bullet from an animal im guessing that critter was dead? Shedding weight is delivering energy to the critter not to a hillside.Partitions cover all the bases all the time period.

180 (SPS) Partition, 30-06 (Ruger M77), 57.5 Hunter, �300 yards, � -20�F; 162 grains/92% recovered weight.

Great recovery! Thank you for posting.

Nice catch!
What was the specimen you shot and how much penetration did you get.

JD338

Fun thread.

John, I used the 7mm 150 NP from a 7-08 for all my blacktail for a number of years there... maybe 8-10 deer. All were at close range, say 15 yards to 70 yards. MV from that rifle, a 20" M7, was perhaps 2600 fps.

I say all that because in the end I was underwhelmed with them on small deer. In particular, one buck i shot was very hard to find because he went a very long ways after being well hit. The lungs looked like someone shot a bullet through them; they had a relatively well-defined hole and so on.

Perhaps it's because as you mention doing yourself, I really hate pegging them through the shoulder. I'm drawn like a magnet to the pocket just behind the shoulder.

Not dissing the bullet per se but in my experience it's not a particularly fast killer used as I was using it.

Moose; pretty classic broadside, angled some, in behind the left leg, centered through a rib; thoroughly drained the heart, exited the chest cavity through another rib, on through the muscles of the leg and lodging against hide.

Use a 140 and drive it 2800+.Deer I have hit with it from the 7/08 and 7x57 have not gone anywhere to speak of...


The 150 will manage 3150 fps on about anything....dumbing it back to 2600 in a little cartridge won't help bring out the best it has to offer.

.

Making up rules are we? If that's the case FMJs are awesome deer killers :rolleyes:

Paul.

The case everybody is missing is very simple... The Partition kills just fine... But it does so at great "expense" in several ways. Driven fast enough it loses lots of mass which is distributed through the surrounding meat as particles of lead.

It generates a tremendous amount of bloodshot meat, far beyond what a monolithic would under identical conditions. Coupled with the lead particles it wastes a lot of meat.

In discussions with multiple cardiologists and anaesthesiologists coupled with my personal experience I have come to believe exit holes are far more important than a "sign of energy wasted" in killing efficiency.

Dropping blood pressure is the single biggest motivator in inducing critter cratering.

The NPT is priced up there with true Premium bullets yet I have a large collection of them recovered from game... I have exactly one monolithic bullet recovered from game I shot. I have only shot dozens of critters with monolithics... And maybe a hundred with NPTs.

To put that in perspective, I was slow to come around to the "light for caliber" mantra and usually used either 7mm or 30 caliber bullets of medium to heavy weight for big game. A caribou bull in October of last year at twenty feet took an 85 grain TTSX from a 25-06 stepping out right pronto, in the neck. Caribou die fairly easy, but have really hard bone, perhaps rivaling any ungulate.

An NPT of heavy for caliber proportion will do a fine job of killing most anything... But compared to a monolith it will not shoot nearly as flat and it will destroy a significant amount of meat.

Sometimes it is very important that critters die very fast. If you have to wonder about "when" you need to question why you are asking "why"...

When Nosler developed the partition over 60 years ago, everybody tried to play catch up for good reason. Partitions just work, period.

Don't flatter yourself Sitka. There's an awful lot of experienced hunters here who don't need an anatomy, metallurgy, or ballistics seminar. Shouldn't you be working on Splatter's stock or something anyway?

The following is the continuation of the same quote with my added commentary in color.

"It generates a tremendous amount of bloodshot meat, far beyond what a monolithic would under identical conditions. Coupled with the lead particles it wastes a lot of meat.

It can, but only sometimes. Certainly I've never seen a significant difference on animals the size of moose. Hitting large bone mass is the single significant place where there seems to be a monolithic advantage, blood-shot-wise.

In discussions with multiple cardiologists and anaesthesiologists coupled with my personal experience I have come to believe exit holes are far more important than a "sign of energy wasted" in killing efficiency.

On animals the size of moose, there are no guarantees of exits, even with monos. While I agree that exits can be a useful significant factor, the holes I've seen from monos on the big animals tend not to be generally as useful for ventilating the rib cage (and deflating the lungs) as bullets which erupt more significantly.

Dropping blood pressure is the single biggest motivator in inducing critter cratering.

The NPT is priced up there with true Premium bullets yet I have a large collection of them recovered from game... I have exactly one monolithic bullet recovered from game I shot. I have only shot dozens of critters with monolithics... And maybe a hundred with NPTs.

To put that in perspective, I was slow to come around to the "light for caliber" mantra and usually used either 7mm or 30 caliber bullets of medium to heavy weight for big game. A caribou bull in October of last year at twenty feet took an 85 grain TTSX from a 25-06 stepping out right pronto, in the neck. Caribou die fairly easy, but have really hard bone, perhaps rivaling any ungulate.

An NPT of heavy for caliber proportion will do a fine job of killing most anything... But compared to a monolith it will not shoot nearly as flat and it will destroy a significant amount of meat.

Sometimes it is very important that critters die very fast. If you have to wonder about "when" you need to question why you are asking "why"...

Monos which fail to expand tend not to kill especially fast and can consequently end up causing excessive bleeding into edible tissues which have been penetrated. A mono is a fine choice for on-bone shots and drop-right-there results however. On large, heavy game however, that means head, neck, or leg shots. High shoulder (scapula) shots are not reliable stopping shots in my experience."


Monos seem to be fine bullets, ideal for some situations. As the shine fades over time however, many folks re-discover that the Partition is still a legitimate standard by which other great bullets can be compared. Is it better than the others? Probably not, but not bettered either. But it does a broader spectrum of things perfectly adequately or better than most bullets which better it in some ways.

In Spain we have a saying that yo make an omelette you need to break some eggs. Ij other words, to kill an animal you will have to destroy some tissue.

Like everybody else I hate nasty wounds, nut I can�t understand why the extreme worries of some people about loosing a couple of pounds of meat.

Even if it were subsistence hunting, which I understand it is not, I'd rather waste some meat in lieu of a quicker kill.

Otherwise, why not use just solids?

BBerg.