I have killed hundreds of animals since 1990 when the X's hit the Aussie market in most caliber from .224 through .458 and although accept that some people had some failures and saw the pics posted of X bullet versions that did not expand, I personally never experienced or witnessed it. Because I used so many, I noted a great many changes that has ever been discussed here on the 'fire. I published an article on it about 2003 and although Barnes liked the article, TSX's followed soon after obsoleting my findings.
In the 1990's and into this century, I had a website called Guns-N-Info.com and had a lot of international input from hunters with their technical questions. The only Barnes issue from that era was with .257 caliber X bullets relating to accuracy and by miking my own lots, I found that at least with my supplies, there was a run of bullets that were under caliper, maybe enough that some barrels "could" be poorly matched. There was no talk of opening issues until I ventured here but as stated, I too have seen the pics posted.
I used a lot of .458 Caliber X bullets with my personal choice going to the 400 grain but the 300's were terrific on medium game and the 450's may prove the best of all of them. The 500's work too but are very long and I tried them in both my .458's and .460 Weatherby but 2150fps was only achievable in the .458 case when using AA2230 and extending the OAL to just under 3.6" and the .460 case lost powder capacity because of that same bullet length, were a mere 2600fps+ was only possible and not the full 2700fps the cartridge is rated at, which I will add, it a true and achievable factory specification.
John
