Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Hornady 220 gr RN in the 30-06, actual hunting experience??

Yukoner;
Good morning to you Ted, I hope you're all well up in the north country and the year has been a good one for you folks thus far.

It's interesting to me when folks get varied results from the same bullets and I'll apologize for posting this photo and relating my experience with the 220gr RN from about 20 years ago. They were out of a .308 Norma with a velocity of under 2700fps, which is faster than an '06 but not super fast.

On a small Okanagan bull moose - Shiras or Canada - depending on whose map one chooses to use I guess, they came right apart on broadside body shots, neither of them hitting a scapula as far as I can recall. The bits and pieces weighed about half of what they'd started out at.



For sure the moose died, but I was less than enthralled about the lack of penetration, so I tried them again on a first rack whitetail. That shot was front on, into the chest where the neck and chest meet. It killed the buck for sure Ted, but again the bullet came right apart and I only found bits and pieces with about the same penetration as the broadside moose - not too, too much as in.

Again these were 20 year old bullets not current production and were slightly faster than '06 velocities.

Based on those two animals however, I began loading 200gr Partitions in that rifle for better penetration and based upon shooting a couple bucks nearly lengthwise, they did that. I've now gone to 168gr TSX in that rifle as a by the way as they seem to give about the same tissue damage and penetration as the Partitions were, but my tests so far have only been on deer to be clear.

I'd be interested to hear how the new ones work if you're using them on bison or the moose you've got up there some of which have to be close to double the carcass weight of ours.

All the best to you in 2023.

Dwayne