[But the base line remains. If you have a bullet that retains (as an example) 80% of it's weight at an impact velocity of 2300 and you fire it from a large magnum so it impacts at 2700 you may find that the excellent bullet fired from a 30-40 Krag is terrible from a 300 Weatherby. So your point is spot on. My base line of "60% weight retention or more" covers all the bases, even when you thrown in impact speed. If your rifle will cause a bullet to come apart at realistic impact velocities, use something tougher. By the same token, if you have a bullet such as a Barnes X or Swift A-Frame that is very good from a 300 Weatherby, but you fire it in a 30-40 Krag, you may find that it will not expand past about 125 yards, and in some cases not past 75 yards.[
>>>> very well said szihn ! our crew all use nosler partitions and swift a-frames bullets out of our 257 weatherby mags. which to many of us is very similar to a 264 win.mag. , for deer and elk these two cartridges 257 & 264 do kill these animals fast.
Very interesting..... I started reloading for a .264 Mag in a 26" Finnbear. This was late '60s and did not have a lot of rifles back then. I wanted to shoot 140G. Nosler Partitions and had to load them. Hunted all over with that rifle and shot everything from Antelope to bears in the Yukon and Alaska. Moose, Caribou, Fannin Sheep and a number of Mulies out West . One Elk around Thermopolis. The .264 is a good killer with the partitions. Never loaded anything else.
Never shot a whitetail as I hunt in Northern , Wi.......but a couple times I had that long open shot and wished for the Sako. The .264 got me started reloading... and I load for many cartridges now,but I hate reloading now . When I find a good shooting commercial load I use that.
The .264 is best when used in a 26" BBL. Prolly mentioned already. The short barreled Westerners don't do it.
You'll see I wrote 60%--------meaning AT LEAST 60%.
No doubt as to the value of weight retention in penetration, ..what about the factor of frontal area and how it effects penetration?
Do you find controlled weight loss contributes more to penetration than controlled frontal area?
Originally Posted by szihn
I want exits, every time. I admit I don't always get them, but I do most of the time.
If you wanted to achieve better chance of exits every time, would you be more focused on limiting bullet weight loss or limiting expanded frontal area?...ie;..Do you think one effects penetration more than the other?
-Bulletproof and Waterproof don't mean Idiotproof.
^^^^^^ Yes another point to think about. If we look at any bullet I know of that doesn't shed it's jacket, the best I have seen in expansion compared to original diameter is about 2X. In other words the very best 25s will be about 50 cal when they stop, the very best 30 cals will be about 60 cal ----- and so on. If we look at 60% retention of a 30 cal 150 grain we see a retained weight of 75 grains and at best a diameter of about 60 cal. Such performance will be deadly in the right place, but seldom will exit game. that's why I like heavier bullets then 150 grain for elk. It's also why I was so surprised and pleased with the number of exits I got a few years ago from the Winchester 150 grain power Points on elk. I recovered 2, and those weighed 129 and131 grains. It would have been "better" if I had recovered none, but I also would not have learned how well those bullets worked. I am betting that if I'd been using 180 grain power Points I would not have recovered any. now the idea that some bullets will open up to a larger diameter than others is absolutely true, but I know of none that average more then 2X original diameter and don't loose more then 40% weight. So the theory you examine is valid and worth study, but I don't see any real-world application of it with frontal resistance being over 2X original diameter. I would not be dogmatic and say that are none, but so far in about 50 years of doing this, I have not personally seen one yet.
bullet that opens up to about 30% over original diameter and still holds together is a very good bullet for elk in most cases. To illustrate, I look at the Swift A-frame 180 grain shot from a 30-06. The nose will mushroom out to about 45 cal and you don't recover many from game. Shot into out test trough we see excellent penetration and bone breaking ability, but a narrower wound channel they you might get with a "softer" bullet. But the wound channel is larger enough in diameter to kill quickly and the fact that penetration is 100% means that you actually get more blood loss then you would from a large but shallow wound as you may see with a Sierra Game King. So matching the bullet to that size of the game is important in marge animals but less so in small er animals. A 3/4" diameter wound clear through a whitetail will kill it fine, but the deer often will run a short distance farther than if you had a 2" wound 75% of the way through that same whitetail. BUT the large diameter wound from a bullet that comes apart is sometimes a wound that veers off and can be gory but not hit the organs you want it to hit. Not often, but it does happen.
My outlook on these thing is pretty simple. Unless I am wanting to test a bullet (like I did 2 seasons ago with the 8mm 170 gr SSTs) I fall back on what I know. That is simply that a 100% penetration with 30% expansion is always good. A 50% penetration with explosive expansion can fail, sometimes dramatically. So if I am in a place to choose, I take narrower wounds that got through in a fairly straight line over the possibility of bullet failure.
In Africa the largest of game is often shot with non-expanding bullets. Why? Because for many years many if not most expanding bullets would break up on Buffalo, Hippos Elephant Rinos and sometimes even loins. Solids didn't. Now days I recommend expanding bullets even for the largest game in Africa, but that's because the bullets we have today beat the pants off what we had only 40 years ago. The idea that a bullet that will kill a hippo is not good enough to kill a deer seems a bit simple minded to me. There are better deer bullets. I don't deny that! But the solids would kill deer just fine too. A bullet that goes from say a 264" to a 35 cal on a deer and hold 60% or more of it's weight is going to kill any deer you shoot with it and do it well. (Baring the times you gut shoot them. A gut shot deer hit with a 12 gauge slug can run a long ways, as many here will attest)
My Garndsons and my Daughter have all killed elk with a 257 Roberts using Nosler and Barnes bullets and all have been good kills with exits. Those kills were not as dramatic as some I have made with larger rifles, but none of their bulls or cows ran more than about 30 yards after the hits.
I have many bad memories of tracking down bulls hit with 300 mags and 7Mm mags that were shot poorly, and also about 15 that were shot in the right place, but with bullets that failed. The 300s and the 7 Mags are GREAT elk guns, but no gun or cartridge is as good as it could be if the bullet you shoot breaks up. I hear that "bullet ___" did fine for me" all the time. I believe them too. But those that tell me that often have not hjunted elk for 50 years and seen more then they can count killed. I have. I see a pattern and I am relating what I have learned to all who want to learn from my experience. "my ___ bullet was fine" is true many times, but I can say that the best bullets for the job are fine too, and I have not seen a pattern of failure with them. So if you have a 90% chance of satisfaction with bullet X and a 99.99% chance of satisfaction with bullet Y, it just makes sense to choose bullet Y. Until you have killed many dozens of elk the statistical eventuality of what works and doesn't work is not learned --------------------------------- unless you learn from the mistakes of others.
I offer my experience to all who want to know. Free of charge too. (I already paid for the knowledge) Those that want to learn from their own experience are well within their right to do so. But I have seen mistakes made and made more then my share too, so I can tell you that I think "bullets Y" are Nosler Partitions, Barnes X, Swift A Frames, About anything bonded, from any maker, and in cup and core bullets the ones I have seen that work very well have been 120 grain Remington 257 cal power points, 150 grain 270 cal Remington Power Points, Hornady 160 grain 6.5MM round noses, 175 grain Hornady 7MM Spire points, 220 grain round nose 30 cals from both Hornady and Sierra, 30 caliber Winchester Power Points in 150 and 180 both, and the Remington 180 grain Core-Lokts made in the 70s (newer ones seem to be made with lighter jackets) and 375" 270 grain Winchester Power Points are some of the best performing bullet I ever used in my 375H&H. Now my recommendation here are shallow because of the exact detail Starman brings up. What was working so well for me may not be the best for you if you shoot a faster cartridge than I did. What works to perfection at 2500 FPS may be a total failure at 3200 FPS.
So I almost always come back to the foundations. Nosler partitions Barnes X, Swift A-Frame and if you don't use these test to see if your bullet will hold 60% of it's weight. If it does you are likely to be fine
If one wants exits.....I can't thinkof a better bullet than an A-Frame
A-Frames do not always guaranty an exit, I shot a big muledeer in Idaho that stopped a 200 gr A- Frame in his shoulder at 85 yds shot from a 300 win mag , I really expected an exit but was not to be, perfectly mushroomed and didn't lose much weight!
If one wants exits.....I can't thinkof a better bullet than an A-Frame
A-Frames do not always guaranty an exit, I shot a big muledeer in Idaho that stopped a 200 gr A- Frame in his shoulder at 85 yds shot from a 300 win mag , I really expected an exit but was not to be, perfectly mushroomed and didn't lose much weight!
Yup.....NOTHING guarantees an exit....that's a given always.
Actually, A-Frames tend to exit less often than many other bullets, because their bonded front core expands widely.
In fact, this is a basic characteritsic of bonded bullets. They tend to expand into a more rounded, wider "mushroom" than either monolithics such as the TSX, Nosler E-Tip and Nornady GMX, or mechanically controlled-expansion bullets like the Nosler Partition. The expanded front ends of TSX's and Partitions usually have less frontal area, so tend to punch through the hide on the far side of an animal more often than the wide, rounded mushroom of A-Frames, and other bonded bullets such as the Hornady Interbond, Nosler AccuBond, Norma Oryx, North Fork Soft Point and Woodleigh Weld-Cores.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” John Steinbeck
Actually, A-Frames tend to exit less often than many other bullets, because their bonded front core expands widely.
In fact, this is a basic characteritsic of bonded bullets. They tend to expand into a more rounded, wider "mushroom" than either monolithics such as the TSX, Nosler E-Tip and Nornady GMX, or mechanically controlled-expansion bullets like the Nosler Partition. The expanded front ends of TSX's and Partitions usually have less frontal area, so tend to punch through the hide on the far side of an animal more often than the wide, rounded mushroom of A-Frames, and other bonded bullets such as the Hornady Interbond, Nosler AccuBond, Norma Oryx, North Fork Soft Point and Woodleigh Weld-Cores.
Thanks for that post John. My previous experience with A-Frames has been in a .300 H&H Magnum using 200 grain bullets on African plains game. All were shot through the rib cage and all exited.....but that probably would have been the case if I were using core-lokts or interlocks, or other traditional cup and core bullets. Further the distances were relatively short.....less than 200 yards with Kudu, Gemsbok, and zebra. I did use the same gun and bullets on a whitetail once only because I had them left over from the previous hunt. I never found the bullet but suffice it to say, I had no trouble following a massive blood trail the 25 yards to the very dead deer.
I'm currently changing all my big game rifles to monometals (for personal reasons) and it's reassuring to know that I'll likely not give up a thing in terminal performance because of it. I've read a great many positive posts on the subject of all copper bullets and they mostly all say the same thing....echoing just the words you have posted here.
Vapodog, I have never had or seen a TTSX or TSX in 7mm or .30 caliber fail to exit an extremely dead critter nor have I had to track one more than a few yards. I would expect similar performance in .264 or any other caliber. Same with the 225 gr Trophy Bonded Bear Claw in .35 Whelen and 160 gr TBBC in 7mm Mag. Happy Trails
Life Member NRA, RMEF, American Legion, MAGA. Not necessarily in that order.
No elk, but lots of moose. When we came to Alaska in 1965 my Dad brought his pre-64 Mod. 70 in .264 Winchester. It had a 26" barrel and a steel butt plate and a Bausch & Lomb Balvar 2-8 scope and the adjustments were in the mounts.
He also brought several pounds of surplus H4831, a bunch of Winchester brass and CCI 250 magnum primers. He load measured with one of those little yellow plastic Lee cups and he had been using that system for a long time to load his own ammo. The only bullet he used in Alaska was the older style 140 grain Nosler Partition. His longest moose shot was around 500 yards and many moose were slain with one shot from that fine old rifle. It was usually a lung shot and a dead moose shortly thereafter.
I have heard elk are harder to kill then moose, ya got me. If they were hit in the same place I have a hard time picturing them being tougher. But, moose can be bigger and if that Partition hits an elk in the right place he is dead.
