Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Is the Barnes TTSX that good?

Light for caliber bullets spun fast and pushed hard seem to impress smaller critters more than heavier slugs churning slowly, mostly.

What grain Partition are you using JGRaider? I shot 160's out of the 7 mag and 140's out of the 7mm-08. That exit looks a little lower than where I shoot mine and those lower hits bleed to the ground faster. I know that the front half of a Partition is soft and I've had lung tissue strain through my fingers when I field dressed them. I can only figure that the front half of the bullet is expanded fully early on and the back half is what is making the exit wound. Our deer are big here and usually close so the bullet velocity is high. I double lunged one once with the 140 Partition and if it wasn't for the scuffed up leaves, he didn't put hardly any blood on the ground to find him by. Another one with a .300 WM and 180 grain Partition went a hundred yards and zero blood sign. I wonder if the heavier fat and winter coat of a northern deer helps plug up the exit wound?

I've taken caribou with a 130gr .308 and a 250gr .375. Both left dime size exit wounds but turned the hit organs to mush. The one hit with the 130gr was spooked a half second before hit and ran 50 yards with no blood trail into thick alders (which we were lucky to find after 5 minutes of searching), the one hit with the 250 gr dropped right there but needed a second shot as the first was just a high lung shot. Those are the particulars to my experience with the TTSX. In my opinion, they work well enough to enter the premium bullet debate and should be considered. They do run out of expansion velocity earlier than lead bullets so that needs to be considered.

The biggest reason I use them is that I believe they work as well as a premium lead bullet and I know there won't be lead fragments in my meat.

First off, everybody that really hunts deer in my family has a 7-08. My wife used the 120 ttsx for years, I run 140 accubonds, and my dad and brothers use the 120 ballistic tip. I'm a fan of the 120 ttsx, if your shooting shoulders, they break everything in their way and the deer don't leave eyesight, hit lungs and your blood trailing with less blood than with a regular cup and core bullet(more times than not). I've killed more than enough with the 140 accubonds that I feel very confident in any angle given to me on any sized whitetail. My dad and brother killed a few with the 120 Ballistic tip, then ordered hundreds more of the 120 ballistic tips. They wouldn't change for anything. With that being said yes the ttsx is that good, the accubonds is too as well as the 120 ballistic tip. Run the ballistic tip in any weight you want from shootersproshop seconds and you will be happy. The 7-08 has a wonderful following because it's velocity is in the range to work good with any bullet.

Primarily 160's in the 7mag, with an occasional 150. I didn't see any difference to speak of between the two. The 7-08 and 140's work great too. Listen, I'm not being argumentative here, but I have shot many mule deer with these combos, and believe it or not our big, mature sandhills bucks can weight 300+ on the hoof. Have weighed quite a few on old cotton scales that field dressed in the neighborhood of 270lbs. With that in mind, I don't think your big deer are the problem, but I can't explain your experience. The last few years though, I've become particularly enamored with the Accubond.

I have used the 120 gr bt and 120 gr ttsx to take many deer with my 7-08. The bt is slightly more accurate, but I don't like to run it at max speed. I like it at about 2800fps, and none have stayed in deer. Most never make it out of sight in open woods or fields. I did see evidence of it coming apart when pushed over 3k or maybe slightly more. At those speeds, the ttsx really shines. My current load is a near max load of big game with a 120 gr ttsx, which runs about 3200fps in my gun. I've only shot three deer with it but they have gone a combined 5 yards. First one through the shoulders broadside at 254 yards, it plowed ahead 5 yards. Second at about 100 yards in the woods, and hard 1/4ing away. Hit 4-5 ribs going in and out in front of the far shoulder, dropped so fast I wasn't sure I hit it. Found it with all four legs folded up under it and it dropped straight down. Third was at 120 yards down a road in TX. In behind near shoulder and out in front of far shoulder again. Dropped like it was hit with 50k volts.

That being said, when I shoot up the ttsx's, I am going to go back to the bt at 2800 fps or so. It is all I need where I hunt and more accurate, as well as easier to shoot. And I have a lot of them!

I'm not sure that's the case. Given the timing of our deer season here in WI (post rut - or close to it), the bigger bucks generally have little-to-no-fat at all.

I'm thinking you've experienced an exception or two with the Partition. That said, when shooting a reasonably stout bullet such as the partition, I generally prefer to take out the running gear as opposed to one in the boiler.

I guess what I'm looking for is a cone shaped wound cavity where the front of the bullet expands quickly to damage the near side lung tissue and then blow through the back side with a couple inch diameter exit hole for maximum blood loss to the ground if they run. I don't shoot for shoulders because it makes such a mess of the front shoulder meat. In my opinion those Partitions give me more of of a football shaped wound channel and while there was always a dead deer at the end of the trail, the blood trail is what I am looking for and haven't seen with a couple dozen deer hit with Partitions. Two elk with 160's with the 7 mag showed me that same small diameter exit wound. I saw the best blood trail with a.308 165 grain Hornady Interlock with a heart shot. I had steady blood on snow starting only five feet from the poi. I always want an exit wound, so stopping a 140 grain SST inside the last deer makes me wonder about that one, so the jury is still out on the SST's. It sure reads like those Ballistic Tips have been toughened up some since they were introduced. I was talking to a guy at a restaurant who had a deer on his car that was shot in the neck. It looked like it had swallowed a grenade and I asked him what he hit it with? An early Ballistic Tip and it made kind of a bad impression on me.

Good luck with that!

Could use a 500-grain Partition from a .458 Lott. Saw one make a hole sorta like that in a 200-pound bush pig in Tanzania a few years ago.

When you look at any of the soft point bullet expansion tests through ballistic gelatin, they all look football shaped from the temporary and permanent stretch cavity and that stretch cavity gets smaller as the velocity is reduced. Matching the bullet to the game so that the permanent stretch cavity occurs closer to where the bullet exits would give you a larger exit wound would it not? I saw that on elk way better with a Trophy Bonded Bearclaw than I did with a Nosler Partition.

Good luck!

The wound channel that you've described seeing is EXACTLY what's supposed to happen.

If you don't want to chase deer. Shoot the damn thing in the shoulder. If you choose not to, you're going to have to track a few.

I've shot plenty of deer in northern WI and MN. The MN version are much heavier than the deer in even Ashland, Douglas and Price Co's where we hunt hunt most of the time. A 200# dressed weight deer up there is rare. In MN, big woods country of the NE part of the state. Most 3 year old bucks are well into 200# because they're shot before the rut runs them down.

You're thinking too much. Just shoot the deer in the vitals and eat venison.

There are a lot of 120-150gr hunting bullets I'd feel comfortable with in the 7mm-08, and probably very few I wouldn't, when talking about deer. Same could be said for the .308win with 150-165gr stuff. They sit in a sweet spot where speed, mass, bullet construction, and animal size are generally somewhat forgiving. Having said that, if I was looking for an ideal balance between penetration when shot angles are less than perfect and exit holes/blood when making a rib/lung shot, I would look again at the Accubond. No bullet is perfect every time, and you may eventually run into a really bad angle shot where a TTSX might exit when nothing else does, but you might also have a few more hands-and-knees looking for blood instances with monos and rib shots than you would with a bonded bullet or a cup/core. Pick which tendency you prefer, remembering that they are indeed tendencies, not sure things.

How did we come to the point of expecting designer wound channels?. Ballistic gel may give a perhaps, but live animals are bones, flesh, fat, etc.

I would look at a heavy Berger Bullet (168 Classic or 175 Elite if you have the twist) or the 162 ELD-M.

What can I say tzone, I'm an analytical cuss. Over thinking is what had me using that Barnes TSX on the basis of the advertising hype and it cost me a nice one. The best advice that I've read on here is to quit reading the gun and hunting magazines. Elmer Kieth had me convinced that I should buy a post-64 M70 back in '65 when I could have still gotten a pre-64. Elmer is gone and thankfully so is that post 64.

Okay, back to bullets on deer. Did you ever read that South Carolina deer shooting study that they did back in the '90's where they kept track of 493 deer kills on the Cedar Knoll Hunting Club grounds? Much as I'm always looking for a bigger deer, they are after all just deer, not "big" game. Anyway, that study compared soft bullets from 6mm-30 caliber to hard bullets i.e. Partition, Grand Slam, X-Bullet or heavy for caliber bullets and measured the distance the deer ran after the shot or dropped at the shot and what calibers dropped deer the fastest or most effectively. It was the .25 caliber if any of you need to know. An interesting read and maybe one of you more computer savvy readers could put up a link to it. Bottom line is that I'm using "softer" bullets for my deer hunting these days.

I can tell you the 139 Interlock is a for sure deer killer out of a 7mm-08.

I also like"softer" bullets above 130gr when dealing with cases like the 308/Roberts/Creedmoor, but tougher ones when shooting smaller and lighter bullets at speed in the 6mm/.257 class. I say this because a typical cup/core or bonded bullet of moderate weight works pretty well and disrupts vitals nicely while providing exits and blood trails more often than not. My history with 6mm and .257 cup/cores was not what I'd hoped for, regarding penetration and exits, hence the switch to tougher bullets there. I still shoot a rather soft bullet in one of my 7mm-08 carbines, the Speer 145gr BTSP, making 2,700fps at the muzzle. It has been impressive so far on anything hit in the lungs, with lots of blood and lung matter to trail by. I've stopped two of those bullets on bucks with double shoulder shots, but both deer never twitched after the shot. I'll still use them.

Frank Glaser said the .220Swift killed faster than any other cartridge he every used and he killed thousands.