Periodically I see these threads and people pee down their leg about poor performance of this bullet or that one. With the Barnes, I have a sample base of right on 100 killed animals in calibers from .223 to 50 Muzzle loader and I have yet to see the first questionable wound. I did see a few deer not bleed a trackable quantity of blood, something that a person has to expect once in a while when you blow up the heart or take out the vessels above the heart. But... Those deer just do not go very far. ZERO lost deer. Out of A few dozen deer I killed, more than 1/3 tttand maybe 40% dropped where they stood. Some by design, some just because. I think 70 yards was the longest run, and that was from a deer with it's heart completely destroyed and no functioning lung tissue since the upper lungs were completely destroyed. The difference I see killing deer with monos vs cup and core is from either the cup and core coming undone or being deflected after impact. I have seen no difference between Barnes, E-Tips and GMXs. I have seen no difference between Barnes Xs, TSXs and TTSXs. And, while we are at it, I have seen no definitive signs from the deer as they depart that I can say tells me the deer was hit well or not hit at all. Missed deer can and do run away without flagging and deer that make it 30-50 yards have flagged right up until they ht the ground. I have spent more that two hours searching for blood without finding a single drop all the while having zero doubt that Bambi was dead somewhere nearby.
There is a very great deal of difference between the people standing behind the rifle. The is an equally large difference between the people behind the deer after the shot. IMO, that's a whole lot more significant than any difference between bullets as long as the bullet is even marginally adequate to the job at hand.
I hear you and your confidence about how you go about your business. Let me tell you that you ain't the only one to kill stuff nor be half educated about bullets or killing [bleep]....
You can yap all you want about your bullet. You shouldn't be so committed. It ain't worth it. I'm here to tell you that bullets and game performance of said bullets are a fickle bitch...
There's no poor performance of the TTSX, there's just better. Don't post [bleep] about how many more deer you've killed. There's always folks who scoff at it, including me...
You damn Barnes folks sure are sensitive. It's kind of funny....
These discussions are always funny. The topic of Barnes bullets seems to bring the zealots out of the woodwork, on both sides of the debate. I think the reason for that is because opinions vary widely, and many people (though certainly not all) jump to conclusions without having adequate data. I have no dog in this fight, but I like to add my observations as a data point because I've witnessed a fair number of animals shot with Barnes bullets. I think between my own hunting and guiding others, the count is somewhere around 138 last I checked, ranging from pronghorn, BH sheep, moose, elk, WT, MD, bear, etc. My experience is similar to that of MILES58, in that all animals went down after the shot within typical distances. The farthest runner, a sample of one, went 200 yards after I personally made a bad shot and clipped the upper rear of one lung with a 100gr TSX from the .25-06. Shot distance was 115 yards. I had no problem finding that deer, though, because the blood trail was substantial, so tracking through the dense deciduous forest was easy. Aside from that one deer, the farthest any animal ran after being shot was right around 100 yards, which was only a couple of animals, and none were lost. The vast majority ran 50 yards or less with good hits, and most of those dropped where they stood because of high shoulder shots. There were a few cases where the blood trail was minimal, but the animal wasn't far away in each case, so was found with relative ease.
Unlike MILES, I have seen some difference in the terminal performance between the X/TSX and the TTSX, however, in that the TTSX seems to expand more violently and leave larger wound channels. IMO mono bullets are best used at close to medium range from high-velocity chamberings, where one expects the possibility of shooting with the animal at a difficult angle, and where penetration and bone-breaking bullet integrity may be valuable. I've not witnessed more than a couple of kills with the GMX or E-Tip, so can't comment much there, other than to say that so far I haven't seen any real difference between the way they work and the way the TTSX works.
