My question is for those who are experienced with the Barnes offerings: Exactly what improvements would we expect if we went to Barnes? How much deader would the deer be?
For me, there is the matter of quality-of-deadness. Since I am a semi-public individual who writes frequently of my exploits, I need a special something that the Barnes product just does not have. I covered this back in 2009:
I'd wonder if copper is all that more environmentally friendly than lead.
This is a wholly ignorant post . From someone who's never killed a deer with them.
I can state from direct personal experience that at least two deer I have killed would have been 100% deader had I used Barnes bullets on them. The first, was when I was much younger and the only Barnes available were copper tubing jacketed bullets that I found lacking in accuracy. I shot the deer quartering away. 30-06 180 grain Core-Lokt.. Borrowed rifle. Hit on a rib at about the diaphragm. The bullet slid around under the hide and stopped under the hide in front of the opposite shoulder. Tore up a little muscle on the onside shoulder. The deer would have survived with little problem barring infection or my second shot. It never entered the chest or abdomen. The second was a wounded fawn about 10-12 years ago. Same shot angle. 30-30 with a Hornady LeverEvolution 160 grain. Deflected off the rib and went up through the back strap. Never entered the body. Slid up under the hide. I my years of hunting I have seen deer hit with cup and core bullets that deflected a pretty fair number of times and some, at startling angles. Of the ones that required a second shot (or more) I cannot speculate how many would have not have been dead enough because of the cup and core but I have not seen one shot yet with a Barnes I have loaded that needed a second dose with the exception of a couple-three that were just plain terrible shots. I have seen cup and cores hit the right spot and "blow up", fragment or otherwise fail to penetrate
I have seen a number of cup and core bullets manage surprising deflection off bone. I have never seen a Barnes deflec enough to notet out of a little over 100 that includes caliber from .224 to .451 and velocities from 1000 FPS to almost 3600. Ranges from 25 feet to almost 300 yards. Never have seen any evidence of deconstruction of a Barnes hitting a deer. Never seen any evidence of failure to expand.. That includes original X bullets, XLCs, TSXs, T-EZs and TTSXs. I have used a couple other ML coppers and E-Tips and GMX, but have only killed a single deer with each of them as far as I remember. They have been the most consistent performing bullets of any I have loaded since I started in 1956. The penetration has always amazed me that it is so uniformly straight line. Deflection has been very small when noticeable, and that includes putting a light for caliber bullet through 8 or so inches of bone. The worst I can say I have seen is a 300 WM caused an XLC to shed a petal after going through the teeth on one at 25 feet. The rest of the bullet went through the atlas and brain stem. I have no idea when t shed the petal.
Today's copper bullets are far and away the best I have ever had available for loading. They are very accurate and have never misbehaved in any way for me. I seriously doubt most people would spend more than the price of a 12 pack on using them in a given year. I might spend $30-$60 tuning a load for the average rifle in order to get the load and a box of ammo. Out of some more than fifty rifles I have loaded them for I had a PH 30-06 that fouled with them so badly t took me 4 boxes and some Ultra Bore Coat to get right and a 25-06 that I have half a dozen boxes into trying to get a 100 grain TSX/TTSX load for and still have not succeeded.
