Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Fragmenting Monos

What's the likelihood that we'll see lead-free bullets designed to shed weight? I don't just mean losing a petal or two, but something like the lead-free barnes and nosler varmint bullets that have a core of copper fragments, but designed for medium to large game with the fragments in the front third to half. They would probably be expensive and difficult to manufacture, but I don't know anyone who punches paper or steel with barnes anyway.

I'd assume anything is possible. I've yet to have a problem killing anything with ones that don't 'fragment'.


Bone is your friend.

I agree it's absolutely possible, no assumption required, was just curious if any of the gunwriters had any advance/inside info that such a design was being considered. For what it's worth, everything I've shot with a barnes has died within a few feet, and a few seconds.

With that type of result - what's the advantage to changing them then?

CEBs are designed to lose all four petals, but I don't see an advantage to that. I have killed a lot of deer with TSX/TTSX E-tips/GMXs and none of them have given me any concern whatsoever after they hit meat. IMO they all work better than any comparable cup and core bullet in terms of consistency, their ability to work at point blank range and still function perfectly at moderate range. Once you get to 400 yards, I do not trust them to have a good margin for error. They are out at the limits of where they will expand well depending on the bullet and load.

I suppose it would be a pretty simple thing to put maybe half a dozen segments of copper rod/wire into a jacket that would rupture on impact and release them, but why? It would seem to be next to impossible to better the wound channel of a well expanded (mushroomed) bullet that stays intact and cavitates all the way through.

I guess that you could probably create a big enough "hole" that it rivals what happens to small varmints with fast cup and core bullets. You can virtually disintegrate them. But for something you intend to eat What's the good in that? For varmints we won't be eating, we already have bullets to do that. You can make an impressive hole in a coyote with a 243 and a 58 grain VMax at close range.

I shot four deer with Barnes T-EZ bullets last fall, all inside fifty yards. They all hit the ground where they stood and that was it. All through the shoulders. Wrecked more meat than was necessary. Nasty holes in the deer. All the way through. Pretty fair approximation of overkill. One doe ~150 lbs, two fawns <100 Lbs and one fawn ~110 lbs.

I'm not a gun writer but Cutting Edge Bullets already have this technology in the Copper Raptor and their ESP Raptor.

I have only shot 1 coyote and 1 whitetail doe with the 55 ESP Raptor at 3900 out of a 6-284 but both were DRT.

I believe Mule Deer has used them?

Remington tried that technology 20 years ago with their Copper Solid shotgun slugs.

And?

I have been shooting "petal" type bullets, and watching companions do the same, into big game since the first Barnes X-Bullets appeared in the late 1980's. The others have included Winchester Fail Safes, Nosler E-Tips, Hornady GMX's and Cutting Edge Raptors.

When Randy Brooks first started making X-Bullets he didn't really care of they retained their petals, as long as they penetrated sufficiently. But by then some hunters had been convinced (partly by Bob Hagel's book) that the more weight retained by expanded bullets the better they killed. So he kept tweaking the X's until they retained all their petals. Usually, anyway.

The only difference I've seen in such bullets is that those that retain their petals occasionally don't kill very quickly. As a result, I'd prefer bullets that lose their petals, especially on deer-sized game.

But there are a bunch of people out there who think 100% weight retention is The Only Answer, apparently because there are a bunch of people out there looking for The Only Answer.

Isn't there a European one where the petals are designed to break off? Privi or something like that.

I would assume that we will indeed see a fragmenting core non-toxic bullet.

Make the back half a solid, and the front end a large cupful of fragmenting copper. Pretty much a Partition-like bullet with no lead in it.

Thats not due to barnes alone, thats due to shot placement.

And I shoot barnes almost exclusively on game.

I've found Barnes to kill well, well beyond 400 in a 338 win mag 225s... out just past 800. To much is put into this instant kill stuff, put a hole in vitals and 99.9% of the time stuff dies.

Well said.

Why have a mono that fragments anyway when we have so many C&C bullets that do exactly that already?

If it's extra penetration after fragmentation that the OP is looking for,we've had that design around for over 60 years. They call it a Nosler Partition.

In most of Europe almost all hunting is done on private land, and the game belongs to the landowner, who can legally sell the meat. The agreement between hunter and landowner varies, but if the hunter wants the meat they pay extra for it.

The meat is a marketable commodity, so they don't "shoot for bone." The same applies to cull shooting in Africa. In fact in most of the world game meat is sold like beef or pork. Whether this is better or worse than the North American system is arguable, but that's beside the present point.

In general, if the animal makes it over the land's boundary before it falls, the animal belongs to the other landowner. In much of Europe, parcels of huntable land are often small, so hunters want a bullet that kills quickly, so the animal doesn't leave the land they're hunting, but they also don't want to shoot shoulders, because that reduces the amount of meat that can be sold--and hunting is expensive over there, just as it's becoming in most of the U.S. where there's far more private than public land.

Consequently, European ammo makers do a lot of research on what bullets kill quickest, including shooting LOTS of actual wild animals. And on properly managed land there are a lot of animals that need to be taken, just as there are on many properties in the southern U.S., or in Africa. I'm not talking a few dozen or even 100 animals. One well-known European firm shot over 500 animals one fall testing a new bullet to see how it killed with typical lung shots, compared to other bullets they'd previously tested on similar numbers of animals.

The bullets they've found to kill quickest are bullets that partially fragment. That is what every European ammo and bullet maker has found after shooting far more animals in one season than most American hunters will ever shoot in a lifetime.

But of course they're wrong, in every possible way.

If you can't figure out how to kill something with a Barnes, and quickly, you might want to stick with golf.

The most impressive killer of deer bullet/caliber-wise, has been my 257 Weatherby with good old Hornady 100gr Spire Points going full zone five afterburner. Over 80 deer I'm guessing and an equal number of hogs, and NOT ONE has taken a step. There is almost never an exit hole BTW and yes shoulder meat is toast, but who cares.

They did! And IME those worked VERY well.

GS-Custom HV, out of South Africa IIRC.

Brenneke TAG



Jaguar Classic



SAX KJG

This.

Like JB also said, everyone is out looking for miracle bullets and the infamous DRT with lung shots....no bullet guarantees that every time. Not sure where it came from.

The Innanet I think.