Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters TTSX Shot placement for deer.

I posted this on another thread but its applicable to your's as well... We hunt many acres of private farms and ranches in Western Nebraska with very diverse topography consisting of flat wheat fields,rolling corn and bean fields plus deep canyons...I shot this young Mule last week to remove him from the gene pool with a shoulder shot that stopped him in his tracks on top of an alfalfa field with deep canyons on both sides. I'll gladly sacrifice a little shoulder meat for a long bag drag out of a wooded canyon any day! ..The Barnes 6.5 127gr LRX from my Swede performed exactly as I expected at 310 yds. The surrounding tissue damage was minimal even after breaking both shoulders...These days the TTSX,LRX and NPT's are all I use or ever require.

The smartest man on the whole dam forum.

This year I switched to Hornady GMX 130 gr. for my .270. My wife got her blacktail with a high behind the shoulder shot at 40 yards--bang flop. Pencil hole entry, quarter sized exit. Perfect meat shot--got the lungs without damage to heart, liver, or shoulders. I tried the same shot on my buck, about the same distance. I hit a little lower behind the shoulder. Similar sized entry and exit, clipped the off shoulder. My deer ran about 30 yards, leaving only tiny droplets of blood. The off shoulder sealed the exit wound. The lungs were totally trashed, but very little blood escaped the cavity.

I like the shoulders also, I don’t like looking in the cactus, dragging deer back through the cactus to the road. There is rattlesnakes in there too. Some guys were sprayed by a skunk looking for a deer one night. Shoulders are the way to go.

I swapped to 130gr TTSX in a .308 kimber adirondack this year.

2 deer DRT on opening morning by putting them in the lungs, folllow the leg straight up on a broadside shot and plant them, both bullets exited, neither deer moved more than 3 feet squirming on teh ground.

I got some lead ground up in some burgers last year which is the reason for my switch... I'm not worried about it for me, but I've got 2 kids under 6 and the only red meat wee eat comes from the field. Getting some chickens next year, but just for the eggs (unless they piss me off)

I allso found a helluva deal on 338 federal 200gr trophy copper and bought alll they had. Can't wait to see it work on pigs.

When I started shooting deer with Barnes copper bullets I experimented to see if they were any different in performance on deer. I carefully picked shots to damage different parts. Anything hitting bone that's well constructed enough to make it through seems to be the same. Copper or lead no difference in killing capability, but... lead makes more mess typically. Running bullets through at steep angles the difference is that the Barnes made it through 100% of the time whereas lead core bullets were much less predictable. The major difference I noted was that the copper bullets, Barnes TSX/TTSX, E-Tips, and GMXs all were much much more prone to straight line pass thru whether bone was involved or not than lead core. Since I am shooting at a target inside Bambi that is a decided performance advantage.

I shot one doe at just shy of 300 yards with a .270 and 110 grain TTSX. It was very late, last minute of legal time and she was in a cut hay field which is hard to find blood in, so I wanted her down on the spot and high shouldered her. She was at a quartering away angle. Onside scapula had a fist sized hole in it. Four ribs close to the spine were cut edgewise. A fist size chunk of spine was missing from the bottom half. Two more ribs edgewise, then a quarter size hole in the off side scapula and an exit. Scapula and spine are not real hard bone like ribs, but the wound channel being arrow straight really impressed me.when that much bone is involved. Having never seen much deflection at all out of the copper bullets, that is performance that I now expect. I have seen well more than enough lead bullets hit a hard springy rib at an oblique angle and never make it into the chest. That kind of deep straight line penetration alone is reason enough to use only copper.

Miles, straight-line penetration in expanding bullets is primarily due to the length of the remaining shank after expansion, not what the bullet is made of. This has been proven many times in testing.

Monolithic bullets do tend to have longer remaining shanks, but so do many lead-cored expanding bullets, such as North Forks and Trophy Bondeds, because they have solid shanks with a small amount of lead in the nose. The heavier Nosler Partitions that have the partition further forward also tend penetrate very straight, because they end up with longer shanks, and so did the Fail Safe bullets, which had a lead core in the rear end protected by a steel cap. I've seen all those bullets penetrate several feet in a straight line in large animals like elk, moose and Cape buffalo. But occasionally have seen even long-shanked bullets deflect, whether monolithic or lead-cored, after hitting very heavy bone.

Brother shot a 250 lb buck in Missouri this year. 165g ttsx. You never know what a bullet of any make will do.

300 WSM, 165@ 3150.

Bullet hit the shoulder, angled up the spine, and was under the hide just behind the skull. Buck was laying in it's tracks of course which is all that counts for us.

We found the 6.5 ttsx one of the very easiest of all tripple shocks to tune in three different calibers. 6.5x47L, 6.5 Creed, 6.5 Sweed with R#26 and fed 215 is unreal accurate and fast. I formed brass out of Rem 22/250 for the 6.5x47L so we could use the 215 which the #26 likes.

I think I should be seeing more deflection in monos actually. The are not infrequently marginally stablized due to their length which at first blush should make them more prone to tumbling and deflection. Don't know why I have never seen it, but I just haven't. I have definitely seen unstable and marginally stable monos in load work. I have seen a lot of monos tumble after hitting the target usually on plastic election signs. I just have never seen evidence of one tumbling in Bambi.

Miles,

As an old friend who spent decades in the shooting industry once noted, "All bullets tumble! Some just tumble less often!

The weirdest one I ever personally witnessed was a 300-grain Trophy Bonded (the soft-nose Federal version, not the present tipped TB) from a .375 H&H that hit a Cape buffalo in the shoulder. The bull stood broadside at about 100 yards, and my hunting partner placed it perfectly--we could even see the dust fly from the spot. The bull bucked like a rodeo bull as it disappeared into the nearby brush. We waited almost an hour before following up, hoping for a death bellow that didn't come. The buffalo was jumped about 100 yards away, and two PH's with a .416 Rigby and .458 Lott followed it up, putting 10 more bullets in the bull before it succumbed--luckily without a charge.

Turned out the 300-grain Trophy Bonded had expanded perfectly while breaking the shoulder, but apparently the bone started it spinning. It only went through the near lung before ending up in the ribs on the SAME side it entered--the reason the bull was still so lively. Never have seen anything like it before or since.

The ones That tick me off are the oblique angles that hit a rib. I can't begin to predict where they will go, but I have seen more than a couple that never made it into the chest. I like those shot presentations where you can just line up just above the heart and send it out between the front legs just above the brisket. I shot a fawn a few years back. It had been wounded the night before. I jumped it at 20 yards and as it was clearing a dead fall I put a 160 grain Factory LeverEvolution on it near the last ribs so it should have come out in the vicinity of the front of the opposite shoulder shoulder. Didn't faze that little sucker a bit. I took off after it because I didn't want it escaping into a big piece of thick woods that didn't belong to us. I hurdled the dead fall (almost) went down on the 336 and cracked the stock. After I got up I put one behind it's head and found the entrance hole right where it should have been but couldn't find an exit. After skinning you could see it just followed the rib up, went through part of the backstrap and exited almost straight up.

I couldn't imagine how much easier it would be to put a round into a cape buffalo angling from the back and have that bullet deflect off the rib and slide around under the hide.

Cape buffalo have unbelievable bone structure, including the ribs, which are not only thick but wide, and overlap slightly. The one buffalo I've seen shot from that angle was taken in Botswana, and shot on the left side at the rear of the ribcage as it angled away. The 400-grain Partition from the .416 Rigby penetrated very straightly, ending up under the hide the opposite shoulder, probably six feet of penetration. That bullet's one of the Partitions designed to retain a higher percentage of weight; that one retained 83% of its weight, and the other (from a water buffalo) retained 95%.

FWIW on critters less formidable that Cape Buffalo, when Im shooting the TTSX, even from the little guns, I picture a straight line where the bullet is going, and make sure theres nothing important behind the animal on that line......

^^^^^^^^^^

Probably a good idea for most north american hunters, if you go shoooting at flesh tanks, thats a different conversations.

In my experience with TSX and TTSX Bullets from 270 through 375 hit them anywhere in the vitals from any angle and the results are predictable. They kill extremely well in my experience.

I agree, and especially like monos in the smaller chamberings. They may not completely wreck the vitals like some cup/cores, but "only somewhat wrecked" still kills pretty dang well, and you have great odds of them actually plowing through to the vitals when angles are bad. A lung-shot 50yd death run vs a 30yd death run is still a dead and recoverable deer.

Exactly.

The only real problems I've seen with monos is when they don't open up, but that problem has been almost totally eliminated by the addition of plastic tips.