Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 150 Grain TTSX for elk this year - any concern?

I've found the blue tips in the entrance as well. Actually on the fur at the entrance. Leaves me scratching my head, but it works.

I shoot the regular TSX in many calibers and have kilt a pile of critters (100's) along with my buddies that I reload for and have never seen a TSX fail. I heard that problem was more with the original unbanded ones as the copper was harder that helped prevent them from opening plus creating very high pressures with standard loads.

I’ve used TSXs with great success in the ‘06 (168) and the 375 (270) and the TTSX (a 140) in a 284. But one time I used a 150-gr TTSX in the 284 and I killed a good whitetail buck at about 500 yards. It was the day after a blizzard in the Sandhills area of Nebraska and the temp was about -20* to -25*. It was bitter.

The bullet was over R17 and had chrono'd consistently about 2950 mv. The buck barely traveled thirty yards but the entrance and exit were not much bigger than bullet diameter as expansion appeared nil and double-nil. Due to the cold I didn’t do too much searching out of the bullet’s path through the chest.

I have wondered if the cold affected the load (R17 — ?100-200 fps slower) resulting in a much slower impact velocity than expected or if I may have met that rare and extra tough bullet. However, refuting that first thought is that the bullet hit where I was aiming at 500 based on the higher chrono’d mv.

Even though you don’t exactly know the reason why, one remembers these things.

But this seems to be an aberration at least in my experience and is probably much further than your grandson will shoot anyway.

I have shot lots of elk with 150's BTBT and Accubonds.. During some lean years I used Sierra 150 FB, I shot mine out of the .300 at 3400fps.. You will have no problem.

I’ve been wanting to try the 130’s in my 308. Should wack hell out of deer and pigs.

They’ll whack the hell out of anything. Seriously deadly combo.

George there are no worries with that combo. Its a slamo dunko.

Here's an interesting alternative, The Raptor by Cutting Edge Bullets. Not cheap, but great terminal performance. They're sort of a mono answer to the Partition, petals fly off and do a lot of tissue damage while the core bores on thru. I read an account of a problem with using them in the brush. Seems it doesn't take much to start the frag process. In the open, they're great.

DF