Obviously I’m completely wrong in thinking lead up front equals weight for penetration. I’m wrong, good for you. Have a great day. I’ll just keep shooting buffalo with my North Forks
I know the guy who invented North Forks very well, and close to 20 years ago spent considerable time in his shop in Glenrock, Wyoming. Among other things he showed me his penetration-testing set-up, which was quite sophisticated--and then explained that when he originally designed the North Fork the little bit of lead in the front-end was NOT bonded. Instead it was inserted to insure the bullet would expand--unlike early hollow-point monolithics, which sometimes did not.
But he got so many questions from potential buyers about whether that little bit of lead was "bonded" that he ran bonded some, and ran some tests in his penetration set-up. There was ZERO measurable in penetration between the bonded and non-bonded versions, not surprising since
the lead in the tip amounted to less than 10% of the total weight of the bullet.
But he decided to bond them (via the usual method of heating them up until the lead's soldered to the copper) simply because so many potential customers believed in the magic of bonding. This of course meant there was still some lead attached to the front end of recovered bullets, which comforted guys like you. And once the magic word "bonded" was added to the North Fork, they started selling better.
Also had a similar conversation with Randy Brooks about the development of the X-Bullet, shortly after the TSX appeared. Randy said that the original X-Bullet tended to lose it's petals--which he though was probably a good thing, since it resulted in more damage to internal organs. But his customers eventually started bragging about Xs retaining all their petals--and hence 100% of their weight. So Randy played with the annealing until Xs almost always retained all their weight. This decision was based on the old business adage, "The customer is always right." (Oh, and in case you've never tried them. Barnes Xs kill very well without ANY "lead up front.")
If you firmly believe that remaining lead-up-front kills big game "better" than, say, a wider mushroom without any remaining lead, or a smaller petal-opening, leadless bullet, why then you should continue on your chosen path. But I have killed, and seen killed, too many big game animals with various expanding bullets that did NOT follow your particular belief-system to buy it. And yes, I have used quite a few North Forks, both in North America and Africa. They're very good bullets, but as I noted earlier, there are a bunch of very good bullets these days.
Good hunting!
