are partitions good deer bullets ? ive read where some guys say thats all they will shoot and some guys say stay away theyre only for bigger game that they wont expand enough, etc. im just curious. at 270 and 308 velocities particularly

The front cores of Nosler Partitions are relatively soft lead alloy. I've seen hundreds shot into deer and similar-sized big game animals, at muzzle velocities as low as 2300 fps, and they've always expanded.

Of course, many people apparently don't field-dress their own deer, so assume an exit hole that isn't at least the size of a golfball means the bullet didn't expand. But anybody who's field-dressed a deer killed with a Partition should have been able to recognize interior evidence of effective expansion.

I have killed a pile of critters with a 130 partition out of a 270 featherweight. My favorite combo.

I shot a lot of deer with Nosler 165 grain Partitions out of a 300 H&H before moving to Alaska. My wife shot almost as many with the same bullet in a 30-06. She shot a few with the 150 grain Partition in a 308. Yes, they work fine on deer.

I loaded the 180g partition for in my 30-06 for several years. The load wasn't fast, but very accurate. 56g of IMR 4350. I always got complete penetration on deer and the insides were pretty churned up. You don't need a partition for deer, but it doesn't hurt and it always worked for me.

I probably should listed the Nosler Partitions I've seen used on deer-sized game, with no expansion problems:

60-grain .224
85, 95 and 100 6mm
100, 115 and 120 .25
125, 140 6.5
130 and 150 .270
140, 150, 160 and 175 7mm
150, 165, 170, 180 and 200 .30
210 and 250 .338
225 .35
286 9.3mm
300 .375

Now, some of these killed quicker than others. In general, I've seen the same thing with Partitions as with other controlled-expanding bullets on deer-sized animals: The higher the muzzle velocity, and impact velocity, the greater the effect. But have yet to see one fail to expand, even 250 .338's, 286 9.3's and 300 .375's at 2400-2650 fps.

If I was inclined to shoot animals at long range, I would probably prefer a boattail with a high BC, but since all my game shooting is at 300 yds. or less, the Partition is my favorite hunting bullet for anything whitetail and up.

Some rifles I have owned seemed to dislike the Partition, and for those I have used a Barnes TTSX. They both work well.

130 Partition at 250 yds. Shot him in his bed. He never moved. They work!!

When hunting deer I find nosler partitions boring. One shot kills are too consistient, no opportunity to practice my woodcraft skills while tracking and difficult to catch one to examine and debate performance.

i may try the 130gr 270 i read some article saying the 150gr 270 was one of the finest bullets out there if u reload and can get 3000fps. too bad the federal premium load is a little less. but i may try the 130gr

150s at 2800 are bed medicine out of a .270. I wouldn't lose any sleep over not hitting 3K.

I'd like to read that article.

This has been my experience as well. I had a deer last year make it about 20 yards. So disappointing!

http://www.ballisticstudies.com/Knowledgebase/.270+Winchester.html

theres the article. scroll to where he talks about factory loads and then handloads. he goes thrrough different manufacturers including Noslers

Wow. That is one of the biggest bullschit articles I've read in well, ever.

9/11 caused manufacturers to improve factory 270 ammo, and pre 9/11 factory 270 ammo performed poorly? You have got to be freaking kidding me.

There was a lot of "information" in the article by the kiwi. A lot of opinion as well.

My only complaint is they don't come in light for caliber offerings. Would love to see them offer a Partition in something like a 120gr .284 and 125/130gr .308!!!! Other than that, it really is the old standard by which all others are measured. I know several who went on the whole cutting edge mono and bonded craze, only to come back and say, "really ain't nothing to improve on here". Without a doubt, the "most" reliable expanding of the premium stuff, especially true when used in the slower velocity ammo.

I've mule deer with Partitions. They died. I've killed them with bargain-basement factory ammo. They died. Deer ain't hard to kill. Probably the best deer bullet for the $$$ is GameKing.

I loaned my 300 H&H to my buddy for a caribou hunt. His guns were all stolen the week before the hunt and he didn't have time to buy one and get it sighted in in time for the hunt. He took a small caribou bull, (think large mule deer) with a 220 grain Partition. Had to be one of the fastest DRT's I've ever seen. The bullet was not recovered but the wound channel was impressive. When we returned his guns had been located and returned to him. Lucky guy.

One bullet does not a test make, but I'm quite certain even the 220 grain Partition would open up on a deer.

Agree with roundoak...boring and predictable.I've used them on deer out to about 400 yards,and in various calibers.The 270-130 is a wicked killer.

Where does this "they don't expand enough" stuff come from? IME they expand exactly as they were designed.

Exactly! Too many jump to inaccurate conclusions without proper evidence to back up erroneous conclusion.

if i wanted to try some in my 270 should i go with 130 or 150gr?

Yes!

Either weight will do just fine on deer but the 130 will shoot a bit flatter at normal ranges and recoil a bit less.

I used the 100 gr. Partition on deer for years out of my .243 Win and they worked great, expanding readily even at medium distance when the velocity is getting down to around 2,100 fps.

I shot a doe quartering to me at near 300 yds in a stiff cross wind. My first shot missed, so I aimed into the wind another 8" and fired a second shot which struck behind the wind pipe and exited her off side shoulder. A short run later she piled up, dead. The Partition expanded well enough at that distance that I was able to push a garden hose into the exit wound and all the way up to the entrance hole, where the hole in the hide was too small to let the hose pass through.

Only 2 Noslers ever recovered. First is a 260gr HP muzzle loader. BIG doe quartering hard to me. Hit in the collar bone on right side. Bullet stopped almost at her knee on left side. Probably 40" penetration





From another big doe hit @ 208 yards DRT. This was a light load reduced for my 7yr old son. It almost passed thru the pine tree too. Bout a 4" tree.

I'm with those who say deer, even big bucks, ain't hard to kill. Almost any expanding bullet designed for deer will do. But, I'm also a fan of the great Nosler Partition bullet. If there is a more reliable deer killer under any and all conditions than the 130gr NPT out of a 270Win I've certainly in my nearly 60 years of hunting deer have never seen or heard of it. And as a bonus, lately I have found most NPT just as accurate as their Sierra counterparts.

Love to see the "Nosler failure" threads (not in any way inferring this is one here)....Like others have said, it is boring and predictable, which is what I like to see in terminal performance.

Killed hundreds of deer with em and they work...every time.

I have seen partitions that had nothing left but the base of the bullet and the frame acros the center of the bullet. This particular kill was a 30-06 driven at about 2900 at 50 yards on a 100 pound doe. Shot entered the brisket and was recoverd in the ham....nothing left but a pencil eraser sized piece of metal. I personally wasn't impressed. When pushed too hard that front half tends to just disintergrate and peels back along the shank of the remaining portion of the bulet without creating a mushroom like you see in the pics.

I think they need to make the front half a little more stout and not disintegrate/peel back so quickly but that is pretty much already covered by the Swift A-Frame. There is a reason you can eat up to the hole on a partition wound and thats because it drives through rather than being stopped by flesh and innards. It is the reaction of the bullet after striking flesh that determines the amount of internal damage. Some bullets like the 85 grain Sierra HPBT kill all out of proportion to their size due to their explosivness, but that is not how a partition kills. It drives deep, hard and fast - as it was designed to do.

I think it depends on what you want the partition to do. If you want an exit and a blood trail you will probably get it. If you want instantaneous on the spot kills, you are less likely to get that from a partition than a cup and core bullet just due to the stout build of the partition versus the explosiveness of a cup and core. The Swift A-Frame is merely a partition on steriods, but very few people use that bullet for thin skinned game like deer.

I prefer a happy medium; I like a bullet that exits but also produces massive trauma. I could care less about a little lost meat as there is not limit on deer in S.C and rib meat isn't worth a crap anyway.

The 130 gr will work on deer,elk,caribou,black bear etc...


Or try some of each in your .270 and whichever shoots best,use that one.

Slidekid,

What you describe is EXACTLY how John Nosler designed the Partition to perform. Believe me, the Nosler company isn't going to change the design.

killindeer,

It doesn't have to be either the 130 or 150-grain Partition. Nosler also makes a 140-grain .270.

So, let me get this strait.......for the window lickers among us. The bullet impacts at over 2800fps, travels/penetrates 3/4's the entire length of the dear, and produces a clean kill that apparently didn't need much/if any tracking ..............and that is a failure of design, how exactly???

Sounds like great performance to me. I want any bullet I fire to exit, I know it's not required but that's what I want. I don't want them to blow up, I want broken bones and 2 leaking holes.

I like how the observed velocity is exactly what the manufacturers state. Also interesting is how he describes minute differences among all the bullets without describing any personal experience.

Killindeer, Partitions are fantastic. Use them.

From everything I've seen the Partitions are very good bullets. They often lose the front core but every one of those I've seen was recovered from a dead animal.

They were accurate enough in the rifles I've tested them in but not the most accurate. The exception is my .30-30 - never could get the 170g RN to shoot well enough for me to take it hunting. (Switched to 160g Hornady FTX and got great groups, so it wasn't the rifle per se.)

Partitions have already been called boring, so I'll pile on and call them the lazy man's bullet.

The nose reliably expands perfectly even on medium game at modest velocity. The tail reliably penetrates even on the largest game at high velocity. Thus you need only work up one medium weight Partition load per rifle to hunt everything for which it's suitable.

I use the 125 grain Partition in a 6.5x55 and the 140 grain Partition in a 7x57 with excellent results. While several other types of hunting bullets would certainly work well in these two cartridges for whitetail deer, I prefer the Partition bullet.

Start with the 130. You'll probably never see a need to leave it.

That's what happened to me about 40 years ago.

Brush or open,down they go!

Thing I like about Partitions is you pretty much know what's going to happen before the hammer falls.

Yep!!! Boringly predictable........LOL!!!

John in: One large mule deer took one through the shoulders at 80 yards in mid stride;saw his head snap down as the rifle recoiled,and he was piled up over the canyon rim. DRT(as they say) mid air. Nice exit,but no blood trail required.

A pal texted me frantically after a shoot fest(I heard the shooting)with a buck dodging through the hardwoods after a hot doe.I asked how the last shot felt, he said good,and heard nothing after that shot.

I said,"Well he's dead right up there",knowing the bullet and load (270-130 NPT). He was...had skidded maybe 20 feet.Shoulder shot again, and exit..... another blood trail not needed.

Life's full of too much other drama to worry about bullets and killing effect.

The particular Nosler Partition memory I have of is Wyoming Pronghorn hit on the point of the right shoulder at a paced 390 yards. This was with a 115-grain bullet at ~ 3100 fps from a 25/06, pre-LRF.

The buck took off in a mad sprint, right front leg flailing, for maybe forty yards before dying in his tracks (they all do ). Anyway, the bullet broke the scapula, traversed the speed goat from corner to corner and actually exited the left ham.

That is about perfect performance and, yes, they work that way on deer too.

George with a Partition through the chest they mostly seem not to go far.

Yeah,mostly straight down!

A partition is rarely the wrong choice for big game.

If ever........depending on the caliber and cartridge I guess.

Partitions are often the most accurate bullet in my hunting rifles, I always start load development with them.

I have hit WT deer with 300 gr Partitions from my 375 H&H and DID notice some expansion of the bullet along the length of the very LONG wound channels.

I've noticed this also with Accubond and TSX, a nickel size exit in the hide, but internal devastation. I prefer the partitions to the other two but have had rifles that didn't agree.

Good post. Colonel Whelen has been quoted as saying "the 30-06 is never a mistake". We could paraphrase that to include Partitions.

I figured you would get toasted pretty bad on this thread. "Nothing left but the base of the bullet and the frame across the center of the bullet" was exactly how they were designed to perform. Partitions are the gold standard of terminal performance industry wide. 90% of the time a new bullet design is introduced to the shooting public the first question asked by the public, gun writers, design engineers, etc is "How does it perform, relative to the partition?"

You say you want a bullet that exits but also produces massive trauma? That would be a partition, as well as many more designs out there.

Ive killed over 50 bg animals with NPs. They are still the best and brutal killing bullet. The front half opens up like a Berger causing lots of tissue damage and the rear punches through like a Barnes.

Partitions just plain kill stuff. Period.

Anyone who thinks differently must not have used them.

Only shot one animal with one, a .30 cal 180gn out of a .308 win. through a deer. Textbook performance. Silver dollar sized exit hole and massive internal damage.

any big advantage over a cup and core bullet?

The answer is "NO", USUALLY. The difference is that a Partition will perform at any angle on any critter and do what it is suppose to. The average bullet will kill most of the time without fail and with deer is probably plenty, but if you move up to elk, then I will take the Partition every time.

I have shot elk with Barnes, Hornady Interlocks and Nosler Partitions from a 7 mag. All worked fine, but I always trust the Partition. I shot a cow elk last January at 443 yards with a 160 Partition @ 3000fps from my Remington SPS and it blew through both shoulders like it was nothing.

You can argue that there are many bullets that work for light-duty purposes-and they will. The Partition, however, has been basically unchanged for many years, because it flat WORKS!

My 7 mags shoot the 160s into 1/2 minute.

Long live the Partition.

I've seen it written that NPT's are made to optimal accuracy standards comparable with any Nosler bullet. And, it seems to me, the soft, flat base should expand to fill/obturate a bore easier than a BT or solid base design. So, one would think a NPT may compensate for slightly oversized bores or irregularities that other bullets may not accommodate as well. That could explain why it appears to be the most accurate bullet in certain guns.

DF

I am a "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of guy. For my hunting rifles I generally find a load that shoots well and leave it be. Most of my hunting loads in various calibers are loaded with Partitions. And in more than a few of my rifles they shoot the most accurrate. I never worry if the bullet will do its job as long as I do mine.

I have not spent gobs of time trying to get accuracy with PT's but each time I do try I get mediocre to lousy results.

If I could ever get them to go in my 280 & 300 WSM, there would be no other bullet used.

I made a load for my buddy's 300 that was 3/4 minute right out of the box. 200 NP over one grain off max of 7828ssc. Around 2850 and dead on out to 800 yards. All that I have read tells me that the 300 is very easy to load for. Use Nosler COAL. They seem to be spot on with that.

What have you tried? NPs shoot great in every rifle that I own and half-minute in most.

You guys think this partition load is accurate enough and will it penetrate good enough????:

does the accubond offer any advantages over the partition?

Ask JGRaider about Accubonds, or do a Fire search for his recent African safari.

If one is into plastic tips, the NAB is the ticket. Otherwise, the NPT is the standard by which others are judged.

DF

slightly cheaper, slightly better BC, if that matters to you.

I'd go with which bullet my rifle shot best and not look back.

DF

My 22 year old daughter shoots NP 100 gr. out of her Savage 110, weload 42.4 grains imr 4350 for about 3000fps. It shoots these somewhat hot loads at under minute constantly. She has taken 22 WT deer with it. No misses so far. All very dead. Killed a 500lb Russian cross sow with one heart shot. Also I've done in several varmits harrassing our cattle using it, and several deer and hogs, some big bucks.

Caliber .243 Win, barrell 22 inches, avg. range about 150yds, longest 250.

I've used a lot of the 180 grain Nosler Partition seconds in my .308 for deer for many years. Deer shot anywhere from 40 yards to 140 yards. Most are 1 shot and dead right there.

I have tried 150's in the 280 & 165's/180's in the Short Mag.

Oddly, the 150's produced the best group to date in the 280 but I was unable to repeat it. That load was one grain over Nosler's 7828 load.

I have a "one rat study" with the Nosler Partition. I used a 286 grain 9.3x62mm at 2300 fps and change on a black bear, at about 50 yards. No exit hole, no bullet fragments, one dead right there bear. I would have to say the bullet failed from a necropsy point of view. I plan on deer hunting with my 22-250 in Georgia this fall, or may upgrade to a big bore, the 257 Roberts. My current 22-250 choice will be the factory Federal 60 grain NP. The 257 Rob with be a 100 grain Barnes X bullet descent, handloaded with H414, about a half grain below maximum listed load. And to think I over-killed my first dozen deer with a Remington 700 chambered in .308 Winchester, Remington 180 grain PSPs. Always two holes no matter what the angle. Not a lot of meat wasted, usually a couple of seconds before they fell down where shot. No spectacular tracking jobs, no dramatic stores. Unless you point blank shoot deer with varmit bullets, or overdrive something with a Magnum in the name, everything usually comes out all right. Lets not talk black powder. If I had lived in the 1700s, I would have starved if the vegetable garden didn't come in.

I once shot 2 deer 20 seconds apart with 165 partitions out of a .30-06. Both were DRT. The second deer was one that my son had wounded, but I didn't know that when I shot.