Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa 458 WM Bullet Selection for Cape Buffalo

I have killed hundreds of animals since 1990 when the X's hit the Aussie market in most caliber from .224 through .458 and although accept that some people had some failures and saw the pics posted of X bullet versions that did not expand, I personally never experienced or witnessed it. Because I used so many, I noted a great many changes that has ever been discussed here on the 'fire. I published an article on it about 2003 and although Barnes liked the article, TSX's followed soon after obsoleting my findings.

In the 1990's and into this century, I had a website called Guns-N-Info.com and had a lot of international input from hunters with their technical questions. The only Barnes issue from that era was with .257 caliber X bullets relating to accuracy and by miking my own lots, I found that at least with my supplies, there was a run of bullets that were under caliper, maybe enough that some barrels "could" be poorly matched. There was no talk of opening issues until I ventured here but as stated, I too have seen the pics posted.

I used a lot of .458 Caliber X bullets with my personal choice going to the 400 grain but the 300's were terrific on medium game and the 450's may prove the best of all of them. The 500's work too but are very long and I tried them in both my .458's and .460 Weatherby but 2150fps was only achievable in the .458 case when using AA2230 and extending the OAL to just under 3.6" and the .460 case lost powder capacity because of that same bullet length, were a mere 2600fps+ was only possible and not the full 2700fps the cartridge is rated at, which I will add, it a true and achievable factory specification.
John

You are spot on!

Great thread! A ton of experience shared.

I’ve used Woodleigh Weldecores in my doubles with complete satisfaction.

Interesting that you saw problems with the 25s as I have personally seen 2 occasions where a 25-06 fired X bullet failed to expand and penciled through. In one case killing a second animal and recovered from it and in the other it was never found but exited with none of the typical trauma.

A good friend of mine who was a game warden here in Arizona had a case where a 270 fired X-bullet exited a cow elk and killed 2 more, lodging in the 3rd. Bullet could have been reloaded and fired again. I know nothing of the rifles that fired these bullets, however.

When they first came out, I culled dozens of feral horses with them in various 30 caliber weights. They were most impressive on horses.

I have never killed a single head of African game (something I intend to correct in July) but I have killed 20+ elk with Barnes X bullets. I have never recovered one, not a single one on an elk. I have recovered only one from a mule deer which traveled the length of his neck after breaking one of the cervical vertebrae. I just wish they were more accurate in my guns.

He's not the only one. I guess the guys below is also full of it then?

https://www.shootersforum.com/handl.../103617-barnes-triple-shock-failure.html

https://www.longrangehunting.com/threads/barnes-triple-shock-disappointment.62461/

https://www.huntingnet.com/forum/reloading/122165-barnes-tsx-failure-expand-no-way.html

Jeff, those Woodleighs are very good. They are not as soft as what people make them out to be either. Had a hunter use them in his Heym 470NE on 2x Cape Buffalo. On both bulls, he broke the near shoulder, and we found the mushroom in the meat on the opposite side. ( Roughly 2"-3" from getting to the skin.)

I use them myself in the 500NE.

So you surfed, the internet to find 3 posts on 3 different sites as far back as 13 years ago, congratulations! 🎈 why don’t you do the same for any other expanding bullet that failed to do as it was designed to do? We know the examples are out their.

Like I said I’ve never experienced that nor have I ever personally seen it and yes I’ve read about on the internet. We are talking about buffalo with with a 458 and your 3 that you found on the net were 270 and 30 cal. Do you recommend any of those calibers for cape bullalo?
I personally have seen cup and core bullets come apart and not penetrate as they should. Jack Lott had a 500 grain solid bend about 90 degrees and 1 that broke apart on the same cape buffalo.

Any and all Bullets can fail at some point, I even saw a picture of a mono metal flat point solid that broke in half on accurate reloading site.

I’d use a TSX in a heart beat, but your point seems to be to thrash TSX Bullets.

Have a nice day, sir.

Same to you.

Interesting that you saw problems with the 25s as I have personally seen 2 occasions where a 25-06 fired X bullet failed to expand and penciled through. In one case killing a second animal and recovered from it and in the other it was never found but exited with none of the typical trauma.

A good friend of mine who was a game warden here in Arizona had a case where a 270 fired X-bullet exited a cow elk and killed 2 more, lodging in the 3rd. Bullet could have been reloaded and fired again. I know nothing of the rifles that fired these bullets, however.

When they first came out, I culled dozens of feral horses with them in various 30 caliber weights. They were most impressive on horses.

I have never killed a single head of African game (something I intend to correct in July) but I have killed 20+ elk with Barnes X bullets. I have never recovered one, not a single one on an elk. I have recovered only one from a mule deer which traveled the length of his neck after breaking one of the cervical vertebrae. I just wish they were more accurate in my guns.[/quote


Wow. I want to start off with saying this has nothing to do with the original post. I have been puzzled for the past 2 years of how my deer season turned out that year. Much older and very experienced friend of mine started loading 270wsm ammo for me. He suggested the 110gr TTSX as the bullet he thought would give phenomenal accuracy and velocity out of my Tikka. We went to the range and sure enough first try at the range using RL-17 I put 4 rounds in the same hole and 1 about 1/2" off. I was ecstatic and had never shot 5 round group like that out of a deer rifle before. Fast forward to deer season, I shoot 7 deer that year only recovering 5. That was my 19th deer season and to that point had only lost 2 deer total. This year I would match that total in 1 season. Of the 5 retrieved, I only found "good blood" on 1 of them. 2 of them I found zero blood. The other 2 I found pencil sized droplets or smaller until I walked up on the animal. None of the projectiles were recovered. Upon explaining this to my friend he was just as shocked as I was. His reasoning is that the TTSX's were they were moving so fast and the bullet was opening so fast that the petals were breaking off and on the core was passing through. My take was that the bullets weren't expanding at all. He says that's almost impossible. He has shot these religiously out of 7m-08 and 308's at a much slower speed and he says they perform flawlessly for him. Now I know i'm not crazy for thinking these bullets weren't opening! Thoughts??

I have since switched to factory loaded Nosler 140gr Accubonds and haven't even had a deer walk away from them at all. I really like the concept of the TTSX and want to shoot them again but maybe in a 130gr i'm just a little standoffish with my past experience with the smaller ones.

Randall

I’d say all Bullets have limitations and the petals shearing off is great for some and not so for others. The 140 ABs at 3200 are rocket ships though.

There is a huge difference between the smaller caliber TSXs (since corrected with the TTSX) but the large openings in the larger calibers, really afford the TSXs pretty reliable penetration. That and they will hold together and penetrate better than any bonded cup and core at least that has been my observation /

I would concur with this.

Agreed men, my 570 gr TSX's at 2168 and 750 gr TSX's at 2065 open very easy in test media and the end of lengthways shot 55 gallon metal drums filled with water.

You have to witness the displacement forces these two bullets put out to believe it!

Hard to believe anyone would not recognize the effectiveness of the TSX Bullets especially in big bores.

I'll give you a little visual rundown:

Steel 55 gal hydraulic oil drum full of water, banded lid facing me at 25 yards.
750 gr TSX left the 577 Nitro double at 2065 fps.
At impact, the drum ruptured, as I was recovering from recoil I saw the threaded filler cap bouncing towards my outside right field of view [pulled the threads on that]
Broke the latch on the lid band, main lid blew, ruptured [split] the drum at the seam.
Hugh half fist sized dog knot knocked into the bottom of the drum, damn near made it through.

Rolled the wasted drum back into the tractor bucket, went to the shop to wipe my rifle down and weigh the bullet, Yup, you guessed it, 750.4 grains.

Nothing will live through an accurate hit with that combo.

Nope!

Except maybe the poor sap who pulls the trigger

I [may] have 10 years left with that shoulder pounding beast!