Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Nosler E-Tips

kkalaska,

I haven't seen any difference, but haven't tried all that many grooved E-Tips yet, as I have a large supply of the ungrooved bullets.

I have loaded the 180 gr. TSX and 180 gr. E-tip with the same loads ( using N160 & R-19) in my 8x68S. Both posted velocities within 20 fps of each other with both powders.
Accuracy was excellent in all instances.
I'm leaning towards using the E-tips this fall for Moose as I had signs of no expansion using 168gr TTSX's out of a 300 Win Mag shooting at Caribou @ 423 yds. (he wouldn't let me get closer). According to Nosler, the E-Tips are designed to open at lower impact velocities. We'll see.
As for kk alaska's question, according to Nosler, the groove was put there to promote expansion.

That was great info. Thank you.

I have a couple of decent shooting loads with the 150 ETips at 3250 from the 7mm Mashburn and the 168 ETips at 3350 from the 300 Weatherby. Haven't finalized them yet, but they like to be seated at least .100 off the rifling and most seem to do better further.

Thanks that was what I was hoping for all my loads were tuned to the ungrooved Etip hoping to stay in the Groove!

For Mule Deer in particular, here is a photo of some recovered bullets from the other days shooting.
The backstop is Montana Gumbo, piled up about four feet high and rather fluffy in the top several inches from the boys constant digging for range lead that we just keep molding pistol bullets with. I make no guess why one bullet will perfectly mushroom and the next will scarcely deform when shot into the same medium only inches apart. It is however not an uncommon occurrence at out range when shooting mono bullets.
Just for comparison I include some VLDs form the same day. Never seen one of them that did not expand, literally to pieces in the same backstop.
Both styles undoubtably have their proponents, simply passing on my limited observations.

Have seen the same thing with Barnes TSX's in dirt backstops: Some expand, some don't, some come out very peculiar-looking. I suspect part of the variation is due to sometimes hitting the dirt at an angle.

Have rarely seen 185 Berger VLD's come out of an animal that intact, except at much longer ranges.

Which seems to indicate gumbo isn't flesh and bones!

My 25-06 sure likes the 100 grain E-tips.

I sure wish Nosler would start making the .224 55 grain E-tips soon....

Mule Deer, the picture of the VLDs is mis leading. The biggest one, in the upper left, weighs 108 grains. It's about as flat as a nickel. The others, while very expanded, are paper thin also. ETips however, have close to 100 percent of original weight.
I bet you are right about impact angle having something to do with the seemingly high rate of failure to expand with monos in the dirt.
If I get a chance tomorrow, I"l try to catch a few ETips in a roll of wet carpet and see if they don't all expand correctly.

The 185 VLD's I've "recovered" from animals never retained anywhere near 108 grains of weight, and in fact never retained any of the core in the rear of the jacket. They didn't flatten out, they disintegrated--but always after they penetrated 2-3 inches, which is why they kill so well.

Most expanding hunting bullets start to expand immediately upon hitting an animal, and are fully expanded by the time they penetrate their length--which is why the most meat damage is normally around the entrance hole. With VLD's (and other very sharp-pointed hollow-point bullets, where the hollow-point is tiny or even closed) the entrance hole often can't even be found without parting the hair, and then resembles a stab with a knitting needle. There's almost no meat damage behind it, until the bullet finally expands very violently, 2-3 inches inside.

Would have to look at my hunting notes, but I believe the biggest piece I've recovered from a 185 VLD was the extreme rear of the empty jacket, which was found resting gently against the inside of the ribs on the far side of a big red stag. But it went through the stag's heart on the way, essentially turning it inside out, resulting in a strip of heart-meat about a foot long and about 1/2" thick.

Nope, John, as I'm sure you well know.

The medium has an awful lot to do with bullet performance. I shot a few 130gr cup and cores from a 270 into a piece of firewood once. Distance was maybe 10 yards. The bullets held together much better than I expected and much better than they did on game. I think the density of wood must have prevented the bullets from blowing apart.

Yep, have seen that a few times as well.

Some frequently used kinds of "test media" are pretty easy on bullets, including water-soaked newspaper and it's pulp-mill basic ingredient, known as "wet lap." Just about any bullet tends to come out of both as a nice mushroom, one reason wet lap was used as a "test" for many years by bullet companies. The bullets always looked perfect, so could be used in advertising photos.

One similar but inadvertent test media I encountered years ago was snow. One snowy winter a couple of feet built up on the "berm" (a hill) of my range. When the snow melted in spring I picked a bunch of perfectly mushroomed bullets off the ground, of several different makes. So snow apparently can work a lot like wet lap in providing photo-ready bullets.

The trick in picking hunting-bullet media is to simulate animals, which is tough to do, since animals made of stuff from bones of various sizes (and hardness) to hide, ligaments and internal organs that can be anything from pretty tough to very soft. The same can even be said of muscle, as most of us know from chewing meat.

Most test media, whether wet newspaper or ballistic gelatin, simulates soft tissue. It can provide an idea of relative penetration, but doesn't stress a bullet like bone, so doesn't provide an idea of how a bullet will hold up when it hits, say, an elk's shoulder joint.

The same is true of other stuff used by hunters to "test" bullets, including the common line-up of plastic jugs filled with water. Water-filled jugs are fun to shoot, but other than providing an idea of relative penetration in soft tissue, don't provide any idea of how a bullet reacts to bone.