Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Elk and Moose and a 30-06 with three bullet choices... which one?

John, you are pretty logical. Your views are probably somewhere in between O'Connor and Keith. Good to have you around here..

I've shot 12 animals with the 180 grain partition in my 300 Winchester magnum and caught 2, one in a bushbuck and one in a blesbok. I've switched to 200 grain partitions in that rifle but haven't tried them on game.

So my choice would be 3,1,2.

Old Crab, I was a AB fanman all the way. I have since went back to a 180g Partition on my -06. Could not be happier. No loss in accuracy, nothing. Killes 'em dead.

My son loaded up some 200g. partitions that I use in my 300RUM. He likes them and they are accurate... even more so than the AB's in his -06. I know there is a lot to that equation, but he is sticking with that combo. I will stick with the 180's.

I think any of the three will do you well.

Good Luck.

WM

My first choice would be the 180 Partition, second the 180 grain Partition, third choice the same.
I have seen "lots" of elk taken with the Partition and the results are boring as hell, dead elk everywhere and Partition performance every time.

TTSX and you can push it faster than 2800 without much of a problem.

For Elk and Moose, there is only one right choice;

200 Grain Nosler Partition.

No wonder they call you bonecrusher...

It does seem that way sometimes,
but penetration tests done with 9,3x62 in elephant showed that weight retention was ones best friend by a large margin.

WL 286gn went 20"
WL 320gn went 40"

NP 286gn went 23"
AFrame 300gn went 42"

The 286NP is only 5% lighter that the AF300 and NP had rather noticeably smaller expanded dia. than the AF.
so the NP should be the winner, yes?...well no, since NP penetration was miles behind the AF.
Final weight for NP was 217gn (75%) and the AF 298.5gn.(99%)

Used the 200 and 180 Partitions on quite a few animals, not from a 30/06 but from various 300 magnums. The 200 digs deeper but there are no flies on the 180 at any distance.It will exit sometimes and other times stay inside a heavy animal. It will break both shoulders of a bull elk from what I have seen. Seems it's velocity dependent.

My experience is similar to John's in terms of seeing the 200 gr penetration. One bull elk was hit back forward of the flank, into the back ribs, and the bullet smashed the upper leg bones on the opposite side....one of Elmer's "raking shots". I did not recover that bullet.

Starman,

Your results are classic "examples of one," and are flawed in other ways, since obviously original bullet weight and muzzle velocity were not the same.

Repeated bullet tests repeated in various kinds of media (including animals), using bullets bullets of equal original weight at a wide variety of velocities, show that frontal area of the mushroom affects penetration as much or more than retained weight. This is especially applicable at higher muzzle velocities.

180 partition in 300 wtby has been a dismal failure on our white tails if you try a frontal shot, barely makes it to the hindquarter... I have a small 6mm, slower than 243 that does the same with 85 tsx...

On nilgai, which are 500ish pounds, I've shot a few... quartering shots the 180s never exited... ugh....

JB told me the 200 partitions where the thing with mags.. to not use the 180 partitions..

I solved the issue by going all barnes basically if possible.

Regarding the “winner”, initial and final weights and final expanded diameter only tell part of the story. How fast the bullet expands plays an important role. My guess is the NP expanded sooner/faster.

Impact velocity also plays an important role. Given identical bullets, it has been shown many times that the slower bullet will often penetrate deeper. This may be in part or even mostly due to how soon/fast the bullet the bullets expand or it may have to do with the mechanical properties of the impact – push your hand flat into water and there is no problem, slap it into the water fast enough and your hand will turn to mush.

For example, take a couple of .458” hardcast FN bullets fired from my .45-70 into water jugs. The first was a 460g Cast Performance WFNGC @ 1812fps while the second was a 300g Oregon Trail Laser-Cast bullet at 1167fps. The 460g bullet (461.2g actual) had a sectional density of .314 and started out with 3362 ft-lbs energy and a relative momentum of 836 while the 300g had a sectional density of .204 with a paltry 907 ft-lbs energy and a relative momentum of 350. After firing into the water jugs the 460g bullet retained 352.9g with a maximum width of 0.58” (due more to a bent/deformed tip leaning to one side than true expansion). Expansion and final weight of the 300g bullets was unknown as none were recovered but the Laser-Cast bullets are hard and little expansion or weight loss, if any, is likely.

Given just these numbers many people would expect the 460g bullet to penetrate further – after all it had 1.54x the mass and sectional density, 1.55x the velocity, 3.7x the energy and 2.4x the momentum, all packaged into a projectile with the same diameter and (more or less) construction. Those people would be wrong – way wrong.

In fact, the 460g bullet stopped in the 9th water jug. The 300g bullet repeatedly exited 12 water jugs. One notable difference was the amount of destruction. The 460g bullet violently destroyed many of the water jugs while the 300g passed through the 12 jugs destroying one or two but leaving only entrance and exit holes leaking water in the rest.

Another bullet tested was the 350g North Fork SS at 2189fps. This bullet started out with 3726 ft-lbs energy and a relative momentum of 767. It expanded to 0.80” and stopped in the 6th water jug. Not only did this bullet violently destroy most of the water jugs, it did a lot of damage to the sawhorses and plywood surface the jugs were resting on as well. The plywood was a 12” wide strip of 1/2” or 19/32” plywood. The front water jug was resting on the leading edge of the plywood, flush against the right side. The bullet impact not only destroyed a lot of the water jugs, the concussive force blew a hole in the plywood that matched the footprint of the first water jug. The force also broke the horizontal support of the front sawhorse, dropping the plywood and water jugs to the ground. It just goes to show that penetration is not a good measure of a bullet’s destructive ability. If it was we would all be shooting non-expanding spire point solids for big game hunting.

what powder/how much do you use to get 2625 with a 200 partition?? ( 59 grain of h-4831?) also if you could get the federal high energy 180 grain tipped bonded bear claw at 2880 fps that would be one I would really consider. I do shoot factory ammo rarely , but my older federal high energy ammo loaded with both 180 partitions and 180 bear claws get 2888 out of a 22" Remington 700 mtn rifle. light gun a lot of recoil.

roninflag,

Not Old Crab, but I use 59.0 H4831SC in my NULA .30-06 with the 200 Partition. It has a 24" barrel and the load averages 2690 fps.

Still have a little bit of the High Energy 180 Trophy Bonded load you mention, and in the NULA it averages around 2940 fps, with decent accuracy. But Federal doesn't make anything like it anymore, partly because in a few rifles with tight barrels and/or chambers it was pretty warm. I know of a couple rifles where the load blew primers.

MD,

you yourself compared a 200NP to the 168TSX for penetration
their MVs and original weights are also not the same, should we consider it a flawed comparison?



I don't put much relevance in any of those other( non animal tissue) kinds of test media.
Since none of them accurately replicate the mechanical properties of animal tissue reaction to projectiles.
some of them give very misleading results.
But they sure are good for entertainment purposes and to easily impress the uneducated.

Ballistic GEL:
is often used to test bullets, but its actually a Non-Newtonian (shear thickening) media,
can you say animal tissue reacts with the same Newtonian properties?
For a start, blood itself reacts the exact opposite to the reaction one gets from ballistic gel,
blood gets less viscous(less resistant) when agitated while ballistic gel gets more viscous(more resistant) with agitation.
(to give people an idea of how important the Newtownian nature of a particular bullet test media is,
just consider that they are designing bullet proof vests with Non Newtonian-shear thickening fluids.
So its not something to ignore.)


Telephone book tests:
These tests make me laugh, simply because animal tissue does not at all react like wet paper to a rifle projectile.
Paper has very different shear and tensile properties to animal tissue. Wet paper also "wads -up" to form a
clump in front of a travelling projectile....as such it produces a larger frontal- larger wound channel and larger exit hole
in the paper than would be achieved with just a bullet passing through animal tissue.
We know that the greens found in an animals gut do (like paper)also wad-up and slow/stop a bullet considerably
So a sensible person would not use either of such type clumping-wading materials to simulate penetration of animal tissue
..or the common chest shot.

Water jug tests :
water is not like animal tissue because it does not compress.
Water is also not like blood or ballistic gel, because the Newtonian nature of water is that its viscosity does not change
with agitation.
Water is at best a good bullet trap.

I'd let the accuracy of either the 180NP or the 200 NP which one to use. Either one is as good as the other.

Not a bad choice in the bunch. Lot of talk on how the bullet performs after it hits the critter. I'd say that how it prerforms getting there is just as important. Especially if you find yourself needing to take a poke. That being said, I'll add the 175g Barnes LRX to the list.

Starman,

I don't use ballistic gelatin or wet paper, because I have found through plenty of experimentation that neither resembles shooting animals.

You might read the chapter in my most recent book on pre-testing big game bullets to find out what I do use, because the "test media" used more closely replicates the results from shooting lots of animals.

This.

Of course same could be said of smaller rounds too.