Probably not great anecdotal evidence, but I finally got to shoot something with my new 26 Nosler last Thursday. Loaded the 140 Grain Nosler Accubond and I was very impressed with my sample of one spike elk. Bullet went through both shoulder blades, a rib on each side, and clipped the spine along the way and we found the perfectly mushroomed bullet under the hide on the far side. Elk dropped in his tracks and didn't even twitch... Hardly any meat lost- probably about a cup or so and no tracking required.... my kind of bullet....
Bob
My hunting bud loves the 140 NAB in his 26 Nos, kills stuff with authority. I have been loading those for him with 869 powder.
I have been shooting 120 TTSX and E-Tips in mine with good results, also with 869.
My latest 26 Nosler load is the 156 EOL over Vv N-170 at around 3K fps. Have not killed anything yet, but that's an impressive bullet on paper, shoots great out of my Shilen M-700. Check out the specs on that bullet. I had resisted VLD's in my Nos because I didn't have faith in them holding together at high speeds, especially after a Berger Tech told me they didn't recommend pushing their VLD Hunting bullets over 3,200 fps. Well, the 156 EOL maxes out around 3K fps, so it should be OK on critters. With its high B.C. it should perform pretty well at long range.
N-170 isn't as slow burning as 869, but out performs it with the 156 EOL. It's a high energy powder, probably harder on barrels than 869, but I don't shoot my Nos that much. It's a very coarse stick, won't flow thru my Uniflow RCBS powder measure, stacks up. I remove the drop tube, dump a load in a scale pan, tweak load to the desired weight. Slower, but I don't shoot a volume of those loads.
DF
