Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Nosler E-tips vs. TTSX's

My limited experience with the TTSX on direct shoulder shots is that very little ruined meat resulted. Way less than would have been the case with a cup and core bullet IMO. All three of my shoulder shots were on full size bull moose.

Two of those three were drop on the spot dead and the third was able to walk about 50 yds before dropping. Two of the three bullets were found while skinning and had perfect Barnes expansion. The third also did not exit, but must have been left behind in the carcass or gut pile. I'm hoping to find it this fall when I get back there.

I have most definitely seen differences on critters with Barnes X vs TSX's and TTSX's.................

Casey

Less bloodshot than if the bullet were a C&C, but there can still be some bloodshot meat if the bullet hits fast enough and impacts heavy bone.

I'm about in the same camp DF, a sample of maybe 15-18 deer and pigs with my old Montana 257 Roberts firing the 100 gr TTSX at 3250 and the 25-06 AI firing the same bullet at 3550, to me, at least what I've seen in the woods, 25 cal and up with a lot of speed gives better blood trails than the 22 and 24 cal monos, that being said, I bought a lot of 24 cal 85 gr TSX's here, loaded a bunch up and gave em to my uncles to shoot in their 243's and 6mm's, I've went with them [all in their mid to late 70's now] to retrieve deer they hit, I had no trouble at all tracking the deer in the brown Arkansas fall leaves.

If they didn't drop to the shot, I never remember any going farther than 40-50 yards, all this being said draws me to the real conundrum which is my 358 Winchester firing the 200 gr TSX and TTSX's at a lowly 2700 fps, that bastard drops deer more consistently than ANYTHING I've ever hit them with, I've probably shot 30 deer with that load, none went any further than a 10 yard death sprint with most simply dropping.

I do shoot both or at least one shoulder with the lungs being trashed in the process, and like many have posted above, a handful of shoulder fajita meat is a small price to pay for a quick killed animal, the partitions in your 240 will be extremely quick killers, at that speed they've got to be about like a cup and core, at least in the 40% of their overall weight they shed very quickly at 3500+ fps.

I do think the e-tips may develop a bit more pressure, no relief grooves, but harder [slicker] alloy composition, like any, if they'll shoot good, they should be an excellent hunting bullet, with better BC's too boot in comparable weight TSX/TTSX.

I've shot all manner of game with partitions, a-frames and my old favorite, heavy for caliber Woodleighs along with the monos, we are truly blessed to have so many good hunting bullets to choose from today, we aught to pool our checkbooks, try to buy the rights and start production of the old Bitterroot Bonded Cores.

I've been a Hornady Interlock fan for years and a Nosler partition fan too. Before that - Remington CL's. I've always liked bullets plodding along at 2700-2900 fps and heavy for the caliber too.

This year, I'm trying 130 gr E-tips out of (dare I say) 270. First on Whitetail and depending on performance, perhaps elk after that. For an old fart that has had solid luck with Hornady and Noslers... But I'm loading for my son and his is a 270, our rifles will be using the same loads. He doesn't shoot rifles daily, so using a girly rifle like a 270 with 130 grain bullets it is.

The E-tips will perform well enough for you on deer..on elk is where they will come into their own...

C&C bullets are as good or better than they've ever been and they've killed a bunch of critters over the centuries.

There is a need for harder, premium bullets, just not for everything. For WT's, the South Carolina study showed that deer hit with soft C&C type bullets run around half the distance than those hit with harder premium bullets.

For harder bullets, E-Tip/TTSX/GMX are excellent.

Here is a hybrid of sorts, lead front, mono rear, from Federal. If they shoot as good as they look, they could get interesting. I have a box of 160's to try in my 8 twist/Brux/7RM.

www.midwayusa.com/s?userSearchQuery=fed+premium+trophy+bonded+bullets&userItemsPerPage=48

DF

A few comments on this thread so far:

Have seen Tipped Trophy Bondeds used on mule deer and elk, and they act very much like North Forks--which is understandable, since NF's are also solid-shank withe a small lead core in the tip. The performance of both has been deep penetration, though both Trophy Bondeds (whether tipped or not) and North Forks tends to end up under the hide more than monolithics, I suspect because the rounded mushroom, due to the bonded lead, doesn't cut through hide like petals. The tip doesn't provide any magic, other than a little higher BC.

Have seen a BUNCH of Barnes TSX's used on big game in both North America and Africa, and have seen a few things some of their most enthusiastic fans haven't--which tends to happen if you see a large enough sample. Have seen one TTSX enter behind a mule deer's shoulder at 100 yards, a 100-grain started at around 3150 fps, create as much bloodshot meat as any cup-and-core I've ever witnessed, and seen X's of various sorts also shred plenty of meat on shoulder-bone shots. But in general they do ruin less meat than bullets that lose more weight, though on average they also don't cause as much interior trauma, for the same reason.

Between 2000 and 2010 I went on a bunch of cull hunts in various parts of the world, in part to learn more about how bullets work on big game. There were always other people involved, usually shooting different cartridges, which increases the number of observed examples considerably. During that period, along with other information I recorded as closely as possible how far animals traveled before falling after a solid chest hit, whether or not heavier bone was involved. The bullets that resulted in the longest average death runs were monolithics, while the shortest runs resulted from bullets that fragmented more, in particular Bergers. In all those hunts some monolithics did fail to expand, in particular TSX's in calibers from 6mm to .30, I suspect because there's just enough recoil for the relatively small hole of the hollow-point to close at least partially due to battering on the front of the typical bolt-action magazine. Never saw it with .22-caliber TSX's, perhaps because there's not enough recoil to batter the tip much, and never saw it with TSX's larger than .30 caliber, probably because the hole is a lot larger.

It may also have to do with a particular production run of bullets; one batch of 100-grain .25 TSX's resulted in two non-expansions, one with a .257 Weatherby Magnum. Haven't yet seen a TTSX not expand. Have also seen Barnes X-Bullets of all kinds lose anything from one to ALL petals, but despite the theories of some hunters that losing any petals is a partial failure, I haven't see it affect killing power at all--probably because they tend to lose petals when hitting bone, whether shoulder or spine. When hitting heavy bone the front end also tends to bulge, resulting in a larger, flat frontal area, which seems to work just as well as 4 intact petals. Or at least the animals all died much like they do when all petals remain intact.

Interestingly, I also never saw a Berger fail to penetrate the chest cavity of any animal up to around 450-500 pounds (the largest I've seen taken with them) if the bullet hit anywhere from the diaphragm forward. They certainly don't penetrate deeply, but they penetrate sufficiently if the bullet's put in the right place. They also penetrate well through fairly heavy bone. One hunt involved culling feral goats, and not only did the Bergers penetrate shoulders on 200-pound billies, I could NOT get them to fail even when deliberately shooting the shoulder joint of big, dead goats at a few feet. They still went through the bone and into the chest, and the "delayed expansion" was basically the same as when hitting ribs.That said, I would not try to shoot through the shoulder joint of a big elk with a typical Berger, though probably some of the bigger ones would work, especially at longer ranges. The average distance animals went after a chest hit was under 20 yards--for those that moved at all. Saw a higher percentage of instant drops with rib shots when using Bergers than any other bullet, including Ballistic Tips, SST's, etc. Death-runs with monos averaged around 50 yards, and they also resulted in the smallest percentage of instant drops from pure rib shots, not involving any shoulder bone. All other bullets performed somewhere in between those two extremes.

As a more general comment, I haven't run into a big game bullet yet that won't perform well if used within the parameters of its structure, the reason I don't get all wound up about THE BEST big game bullet. Part of my job is to evaluate how shooting equipment works, the reason I still use a bunch of different big game bullets for my own hunting, exactly which depending on the cartridge, muzzle velocity and the game hunted. In the past decade my own big game has been taken with Barnes TTSX's; Berger Hunting VLD's, Cutting Edge Raptors; Hornady GMX's, Interbonds and Interlocks;Norma Oryxes; Nosler AccuBonds, Ballistic Tips, E-Tips and Partitions;North Forks; Sierras; Swift Sciroccos; and Tipped Trophy Bondeds. Oh, and whatver's in Federal blue box factories, along with Remington Core-Lokt and Winchester Point Soft Point/Power Point factory loads. The 22 cartridges used ranged from the .22-250 to .416 Rigby, and though there were a very few bullet hiccups, penetration was always sufficient for the specific animal, and all bullets except solids expanded as designed.

Thanks MD. I can see another book in the makings maybe call it "The Campfire Chronicles"? You could have a final chapter quoting some of the most outlandish statements from the fire, if you do that I bet I make the cut as I have posted more than a couple of doozies.

Not cupro-nickel. They are gilding metal, an alloy of copper and zinc.

Well said.

I have a Kaibab hunt this fall and have been researching hippie bullets or if I should stick to ELD-X or ABLR. Reading this thread on the hippie bullets being compared makes me want to lean towards the e-tip. How do the TTSX and LRX differ? I am expecting my shot to be between 300 and 600 yards and i'm shooting a 300 win. Is there enough difference in the TTSX and LRX? Is the E-tip better than the LRX or TTSX at those ranges? I looked at the GMX but they seem to have a lower BC than the others mentioned.
Hope I didn't hijack the thread. Figure this was the same topic.

kique

Congrats on drawing that tag.

kique,

The LRX has a somewhat higher ballistic coefficient than the equivalent TTSX. The 168 TTSX has a listed BC of .470 and the 180 .484, while the 175 LRX is llisted at .508. The LRX is also designed to expand more reliably at longer ranges.

The E-Tip was designed with a wider, deeper cavity under the tip from the get-go, the reason it tends to expand a little wider than the TTSX. When Nosler was developing them, I handloaded some protoype 180 .30's in the .300 Winchester and took them to Africa, field-testing the bullets on a variety of animals, among them several springbok (a little smaller than pronghorns) at around 400 yards. They expanded fine at that range on those small animals, but I've never used them at 500-600. Nosler lists the BC of the 168 at .503 and 180 at .523, and says they'll expand down to 1800 fps.

Congrats and no wrong choices out of all you mentioned. If deer all of them would be good. If Elk then I might think twice about the ELD-X and ABLR but for longer shots these would shine and probably be fine for up close but with a little more meat damage than the monos.

I just completed another cull hunt, this time on fallows and reds. Two shooters, 3 calibers, 7 bullets, 500 animals. Of interest to this thread was the 80 grain TTSX loaded up to 3950 fps in a .257 Weatherby. Not to mince words, a more worthless POS is harder to imagine.

If your .300 will shoot the 190 grain ABLR you don't need to wonder about anything else. I've got several dozen fallows and reds with that combo; violently expanding and yet still exited on every animal AFAIK.

Nothing like real world experience to shed light on ignorant prejudice. Thanks for this heads up.

Monos may not have a theoretical velocity ceiling, but performance on game may not always correspond to expectation.

"Real world experience", yep.

It's where the rubber meets the road...

DF


Edited to add this link discussing, "can you push a TTSX too fast"...

www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/12175394/1

I think you can, depending on the bullet. This seems to be yet another example of just that.

Balance... Need to balance, mass vs. velocity for optimal terminal performance.

Common sense.

Maybe some lighter monos do have a practical velocity ceiling.