Mule Deer do you remember what calibers and weights of ballistic tips penetrate like partitions?

If I recall correctly, the 7mm 150; 165 & 180 .30; 180 8mm; 200 .338 (now only available as the Ballistic Silvertip) have the extra-heavy-base jackets. But they may have added others--and in fact now list a round-nosed 220-grain .30 Ballistic Tip, that I suspect would have the heavier jacket.

But the best way to make sure is to contact Nosler.

Thanks John. Did Nosler discontinue the 250gr 9.3 ballistic tip? I remember you mentioned it years ago as tough and deep penetrating. Thanks.

.308 168 NBT was on that list. I have been using them on elk for years now.

The 168gr 30 cal Ballistic Tip is another one.The 220gr 30 cal was designed to be used in the 300 Blackout.

The 168 does indeed have a lot of its mass in the jacket. It's a nice all-rounder for a .30cal cup/core in that weight class.

+1 on the 7mm 150 grain. They are a little too tough for my application.

I have read numerous reviews that indicate the 7mm 120 grain was designed “tough” from the get go for metallic silhouette shooters.

Pretty sure the 120 is the same jacket as the 140 just shortened so it is a little thicker at the mouth.

Yep, they discontinued some of the larger-caliber Ballistic Tips when they introduced the AccuBond around 2007--which is basically a bonded Ballistic Tip. They tested each version in their penetration media, and with some bullets bonding didn't make any difference--but in others it did. The 9.3 250 was one of 'em--though I field-tested the AccuBond version extensively on a cull hunt in South Africa, and it worked very well. Among other things it went lengthwise through a springbok ram on a frontal shot, exiting the rump, and breaking both shoulders a 550 pound gemsbok bull--and also exiting. (The weight came from the ranch scales, not guessing.)

But have had great luck with 250 Accubond since, taking quite a few even bigger animals. Have only recovered one, a rear-angling shot on a 7-1/2 foot grizzly. The bullet entered the toward the rear of the ribs on the bear's right side, and stopped under the hide on the left side of the neck, retaining 81% of its weight.

Thanks Mule Deer. I really liked the tough 9.3 ballistic tips for 1/2 inch groups. When Nosler gets caught up supplying everyone I'll buy three or four boxes of the accubond bullet if they are accurate. I really don't believe we need the 286gr bullets in North America. However, there are those who will disagree with me concerning brown/grizzly bears.

Wasn't the 6mm 95gr BT also a tougher engineered projectile for elk hunting? Mark & Belle

I’ve shot the 150 7MM into game enough to know they act nothing like a partition. They can come completely unglued.

The older 150gr 7mm Ballistic Tips were explosive,the new ones are great. Unfortunately externally you cannot tell the difference between the two and some of the older ones are still making their rounds.

These are not old ones.

I really like the 7mm 150 BT.

It shoots well and has reliably exited and dropped deer. Wouldn’t hesitate to put one through an elk.

While I have used several of these heavier jacketed models myself, I don’t know that I would characterize their performance as being “just like a Partition”. They’re generally very good for non-bonded cup/cores, but I’ve found Partitions to dig a bit deeper and exit more often. I always figured this was due to a smaller typical expanded diameter, not so much overall weight retention. Some may disagree.

None do.

Everybody wants their bullet to work like a Partition. I don’t understand why they just don’t use Partitions to begin with.

Same thing with Accubonds.

Damm good question……

I have preemptively donned my flame proof suit......

I know it's bragging but....between myself, family, friends, and guiding I have witnessed roughly 150 elk killed with rifles over the past 60 years (I started following my dad elk hunting as a kindergardner in the early 60's). Plus I have been in on the field dressing of another 50-60 elk. As Brad suggests it seems a lot of people don't really know what to look for in bullet performance.

In response to similar thread a couple years ago I had two longish conversations with people at Nosler.
The jacket thickness of BT's and AB's don't vary much if at all. Instead Nosler uses different lead hardnesss for the intended application and cartridge the bullet is used for. An example is the 7mm 150gr BT. It is made with the 7RM in mind and does indeed have a more hard lead than usual. Partition lead hardness varies from the front lead to the rear lead portion--that was news to me and something I had never considered before.

"Accubonds are good bullets but they're not Partitions" That's a quote from a late outfitter I guided with for nearly 35 years. The outfitter and his two sons all used 7RM's, and his sons got into longer range shooting and highish BC bullets. They convinced thier dad to try AB's too. He did try them for a few years, saw AB's used on other elk, but went back to his Partitions after a while saying they were more consistent in their performance.

And this is a common theme I see in these conventional bullet threads. Take the recent ELD-X thread. The first couple pages were full of very different results. One ELD-X was claimed to have traveled practically lengthwise through a moose and the another post claimed the ELD-X went splat and stopped in the first lung of a deer. Inconsistent performance among conventional lead core bullets is a common theme and something I have observed time and again, particularly on elk.

Given the info and experience I have some BT's and AB's are definitely better suited for elk, or big deer, than others. But they ain't Partitions. No use trying to make them Partitons when the bullet is easily available at roughly the same price.

Flame away.......

Any bullet that does not have a built in “fail safe” design can absolutely come unhinged. Ballistic tips are no different. Most of my game has been taken with Barnes bullets. The second most with Nosler BT’s. It’s a lot. They aren’t partitions.

I can vouch for the 8mm 180gr ballistic tip. Shot a few game with them on hard quartering shots and penetration was excellent with most exiting. Even caught a bullet and you can clearly see the thick jacket construction.

8x57 180gr BT w/ H4895 at 2740 fps out of a 22inch barrel.

No flames here, actually makes an awful lot of sense.

A few comments:

First, I didn't object to the OPs question comparing the heavier-jacketed Ballistic Tips to Partitions--but as several have noted, they're not Partitions.

However, my experience with the .338 200-grain is very extensive--partly because they were the first heavy-jacket BTs. I actually started using them shortly before Nosler announced them, when the late Chub Eastman (then the writer contact for Nosler) asked me to try some in 1993.

The first thing I did after working up a handload (which was easy) was test their penetration by shooting one into the "media" I'd been using for a few years to test big game bullets, a stack of dry newspaper. I've listed the reasons for this choice both here and in articles and books, but one of its virtues is being able to shoot more than one type/brand of bullet into the same stack, to compare penetration depth. I did that with the 200 Ballistic Tips and 210 Partitions--and the Ballistic Tips penetrated 90% as deeply.

The first animal I took with one was a bull caribou in northern Quebec, which is still the biggest-bodied bull I've killed out of a dozen, about as large as a typical 5x5 bull elk. He was standing broadside at around 200 yards, with his near front hoof maybe a foot in front of the the far one, and I put the bullet in the little pocket behind the near leg.

At the shot the bull dropped straight down and never moved, legs already folded underneath him, ready for the trophy photo. The bullet scrambled the chest cavity and then broke the big joint of the far shoulder before exiting.

After that I used that load on a bunch of other game both in North America and Africa, and also gave some to local friends with .338s who took deer and elk with them. One used it on a 6x5 bull that was quartering away at around 150 yards. Same sort of deal: The bull dropped right there, partly because that bullet also broke the shoulder joint on the way out.

The only one that was recovered killed a gemsbok bull that was almost facing me at 150 yards. That one broke the near shoulder going in, and then took off the bottom of the spine before ending up under the hide of the rump on the opposite side. It retained 60% of its weight.

Our fellow member Shrapnel has killed more than one elk with the heavy-jacket .30, one a cow that stood facing him when he was carrying his .300 Weatherby. Can't remember whether it was 165-grain or 180-grain bullet, but that bullet also ended up under the hide of the rump.

No, they're not Partitions, but the heavy-jacket BTs are pretty stout bullets.

I've also discussed bullet construction with the Nosler folks at their plant in Bend, which I've visited several times over the decades. One thing they do is tweak construction of their bullets after they're introduced, sometimes more than once. They do use different lead alloys for the front and rear cores, and have been since the Partition appeared in 1948, but they don't always use the same lead alloys in Partitions of different calibers for the front and rear cores.

During one visit they told about how they'd recently tweaked the 300-grain .375 Partition (the later, extruded version that appeared around 1990) by not only using a harder rear core, but a thicker rear jacket. Both tweaks not only helped the bullet hold up when hitting heavy bone, but also resulted in smaller groups in their indoor range.

More than one other bullet company does the same sort of tweaking, or even massive redesigning as Barnes has done with their various X-Bullets over the decades. But companies that make more conventional lead-cores also often tweak them.

338-06's. Left bullet is 200gr Ballistic silvertip pulled out of this deer. Jacket only 97.2gr.



Bullet on the right is 200gr NAB pulled out of this bear. 143gr



Examples of one, so take it for what it worth.

CRS,

Thanks for the info!

Have found "empty" Ballistic Tip jackets in several animals--but the animals were all dead, and the jackets were found on the far side of the animal. In the heavy-jacket models the jacket itself usually contains more than half the weight of the bullet, up to around 75%.

Might also mention that the recovered Partition that lost the highest percentage of weight in our collection was the 150-grain .270 that Eileen killed a medium-sized Shiras bull moose with in 1989. The bull was quartering away at around 125 yards, and at the shot took a step and a half a folded up dead. The bullet had entered the left ribs and ended up in the right shoulder, retaining 54% of its weight, yet penetrated somewhere around 3-4 feet. This one reason I haven't found retained weight the only factor in penetration or "killing power."

What were the details of the mule deer shot?

If I remember correctly.
Shot was downhill, about 130 yard range, broadside. Went through the top of onside scapula and lodged in off side shoulder. Took the high shoulder shot as I did not want him running down hill into the river breaks any farther.

Went down right there, which was good. Did slide down about 10 yards due to snow and steep hillside.

I remember being surprised that I found the bullet and it had not passed through. Bone obviously had something to do with it. I also attributed it the the 1:9 twist I now run in my 338-06's vs 1:12, or 1:10. Thinking the faster twist could possibly put a little more strain on C&C design.

Dunno about the twist-rate, but since the shot was "high shoulder" assume it also went through the spine. Is that correct?

I mentioned an ELD-M that exited on a frontal shot on a big bull moose, but that was not an ELD-X. Very different bullet.

Here is a pic of the entrance.

Thanks for that photo. It looks like the bullet went not only through bone on both shoulders but also the heaviest part of the spine--which is some of the thickest bone on deer (and elk, etc.)

I am not making "excuses" for the bullet, but just noting you never know what might happen when you pull the trigger. One of the oddest bullet recoveries that I have personally witnessed was a 340-grain .416 Woodleigh Weldcore bullet from a wildcat round. Muzzle velocity was around 2400 fps, and the animal was a female fallow deer around 100 pounds live-weight, which was angling not quite directly away at around 100 yards. At the shot the deer staggered around 25-30 yards and fell dead.

The bullet angled from the rear right ribs to inside the left shoulder. The base was found protruding through the skin, after the expanded bullet tumbled and the "petals" hung up on the skin. It retained around the typical 90% of its weight.

MD,
What has been your experience with the 25 caliber 100 and 115 BT’s? I have been using the 115 a good bit the last few years and have been impressed with the penetration on deer and hogs. I haven’t been able to catch one yet. Thanks.

GreggH

MD, that 340gn Woodleigh .416 was a very soft bullet so I am not surprised at the result on a fallow doe.

I tested them when released in my .416 Weatherby and because it was a spire point, loaded them up to over 2900fps. At that velocity they literally tore a feral goat in 2 and sprayed the neighborhood with carrion. When I told Geoff McDonald about it, he told me they were intended for a maximum velocity range around 2500-2600fps.

It was a better bullet for longer range as I found out on other animals but up close, the velocity needed to be kept down a bit. Geoff tests his bullets on game before release but as you say, I am sure they get tweaked where improvements can be made.

It's a shame my articles arn't available on the net as I am sure people would love to read them.

MD,

No excuses, deer ended up in the freezer. I was certainly pondering the bullet performance after the hunt in 2019, but you put your no nonsense opinion on it back then when I originally posted about the bullet performance.

Also curious about this, at Roberts velocity in comparison to the monos from Barns. My guess is both options likely get stuff on the ground and in the freezer. But these discussions get us through the long off season. And keep the wallet exercised as items get production runs for the fall.

115 Ballistic Tips are all I run in my 257Wby. Strictly anecdotal, but imo, these bullets have held up very well shooting thin skinned game at Weatherby velocities(3400 fps). Ranges have been between 90 and 300 yds. Usually complete penetration, but recovered bullets have almost always been intact. I've found them to be very assured killers and exceptionally accurate in every 257Wby I've owned.

Here's a 115BT I recovered from a medium bodied whitetail shot at 160 yds. Bullets was found underneath the skin on the offside. High shoulder shot. Deer dropped at the shot.

Bt’s in 6mm in particular the 55 grain and the 50 and 55’s in 22 cal are about the best coyote bullets you can get. The little bit of copper in the base will drive through shoulder enough to strike something vital. However I have found bt’s to generally not shoot as well as Berger Sierra or Hornady offerings. They are one of my first try bullets when working a coyote load.

Yeah, I'd sure like to read them!

Thanks for the info on that 340 WL. The wildcat that was used on that fallow doe, if I recall correctly, was the .416 WSM, and the velocity was in the 2500 range. I might still have a photo of the bullet and round, and will check later.

I started using the 115s soon after Ballistic Tips were introduced, and they were soft even from the .257 Roberts. The first animal I shot was a mature whitetail doe that was facing me at around 100 yards, and I aimed for the "dimple" at the base of the neck. She dropped right there, then stumbled to her feet and started walking off broadside. Another one in the ribs dropped her.

Turned out the first one had really opened wide, and lost the core, and deflected on the front of the chest. Told Nosler and they told me about how they were beefing up many of the BTs.

Didn't used the 100s until I knew they'd also been beefed up, and shot several deer and antelope with them, encountering no problems. One of them was a really big whitetail doe, quartering to me at around 125 yards. Aiming for the near shoulder and she wanted about 30 yards and keeled over. Found the expanded bullet under the hide at the rear of the ribs on the far side. Will look it up later, but seem to recall it retained about 60% of its weight. That was from a .257 Roberts at 3150 fps or so.

Do a search for Dogzappers information on the 100 grain Ballistic Tip.

I am thinking it is fairly stout for what it is.

My go to bullet in the .257 Roberts had been the 100 grain Hornady Interlock but I don't know that they are available any longer. Might have to try a BT now.

Thanks John. After 62 years I've decided the 8mm is my new pet project as I have neglected the .323 JS for these many decades. Hope I have good results. Have you ever used the round rubber dohickeymagigger that slides up and down the barrel and is supposed to work like the Browning-Winchester Boss System? I purchased one for less than $10.00 at Wal-Mart. Maybe this will help with my old semi sporterized 8 x 57 JS.

My last run on black bears was four in a row from 2012 to 2015. And three of those on the same private property in 2012, 2013 and 2015. The other was in 2014 on Crown Land. The three on private property (old farm land) were taken with my Tika T3 Lite in 9.3 x 62. I used 3 different bullets. The first (2012) was a 286 Hornady SP-RP at +2400 fps. It had been wounded by a young friend, and I had to chase it down, going away, with a shot to its short ribs on the right side and the Hornady came out its back behind its shoulders taking out 6 - 7 inches of vertebrae. The Hornady went off into the trees beyond leaving no traces of metal behind. Impact would have been ~2300 fps.

A year later, I killed my own bear (over bait) from a tree stand using the same rifle with a 286 Partition at 68 yds to the bait barrel (lazered). The bear was standing off to the side of the barrel about 15 ft, eating something from the barrel, looking up at me. In the 28 - 30" tall grass, weeds and bush, I could only see his head and top of shoulders. I aimed just below his chin and fired. He disappeared in the weeds and grass. My partner at another bear-bait setup 2 miles away, called to see if I needed help. I said: "Yep!!" It took him about 15 minutes to get there. In the meantime I found a dead bear at the bottom of an escarpment, which was 20 yds from the bait barrel and 20 more yds to the bottom. He gave a hand in field dreessng and it was a challenge in getting the bear up out of there. It was dark by then and we hung it over night on a big limb at the back side of the tree my stand was in. Next morning, early, in skinning, my left hand felt something hard, just poking through the hide in front of the right hip. I thought it was bone, but the bullet fell out to the ground. I picked it up covered in blood and fat, brushed it off and stuck it in a jacket pocket. Next day I cleaned it up and weighed it. MV was +2600 with impact about 2500 fps. It had tumbled with some "wings" pointing forward, slightly bent with front core missing. It retained 211 grs or nearly 74% of initial weight. It was a 6' bear from nose to tail.

Two years later on the same property (different location in 2015), I shot another 6' boar bear from my tree stand at 85 yds. That bear would not come to the bait when I was there (I was using a trail cam behind the bait barrel, and identified 11 bears had been visiting the site in a week. 3 sows - one with 1 cub, another with 2 cubs, and a 3rd with 3 cubs - never at the same time. Plus two good size male bears - always alone. The one I shot was the largest of those two). Same rifle (9.3 x 62) but the bullet was the Nosler 250gr AB at ~2700 fps (RL-17 for both Noslers). I left my stand one chilly evening to go across an open pasture to my van for a sweaater and some food. When I returned this reluctand bear was on the bait barrel. I shot him high in the back (right side) behind the shoulders and the 250 AB made exit in the left-side chest, low, taking a chunk out of the left leg. That 250 AB went off into the ground somewhere - in one piece. Bear went 20 yds with massive blood loss that a near blind person could follow. Impact velocity would have been about 2600 fps. That bear was 7 ft from top of head to heel.

That was the most accurate load in that rifle at SUB 1/2 MOA. Other loads were the 232 Oryx and 320gr Woodleigh PP at +2400 fps for each - they shot into the same group at 100 yds.

That 4th bear was killed in 2014 on Crown Land using my .458 Win Mag (CZ 550).

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

In my experience the "improved" Ballistic Tips tend to retain about as much weight as Interlocks, about 40% to 60% of their original weight, and work very similarly on game.

Of course, these days many hunters--even deer hunters--think bullets need to retain at least 90% or they won't kill well. This has not been my experience, even on larger game. One of the African PHs I've hunted with more than once mentioned during a discussion that he thinks 40-60% weight retention is just about perfect for all but the largest game. His favorite all-around load for culling, or backing up plains-game hunters on any game smaller than eland, is the 130-grain Interlock Spire Point in his .270 Winchester....

my grandson age 11 used his 257 Roberts last year with a 75 gr. Hammer Hunter bullet deer was side shot thru the lungs , bullet went thru the deer then tipped over about a 90 yard shot . the main reason i loaded this size bullet was less recoil but still had some zip too the bullet. son`s sweetheart shot a huge doe with my 220 Swift bullet was a 60 gr. Nosler Partition went thru lungs and out the shoulder on back side bullet kept going , was a 100 yard shot doe went 20 yds. and piled up. i kinda am starting to wonder maybe a smaller good bullet shooting faster might be all is needed ?