Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles LRX recovered from Elk

I just recovered a regular old 165gr TSX from my bull that looks identical to that. 300WSM from about 55 yards. 3130 at the muzzle. Basically shed all the petals but the base remained and did a great job as far as I’m concerned. I love Barnes bullets. Never had a failure.

Great bull btw. Obviously spends most his life in open country with as white as those antlers are.

I killed a Moose with a 127 LRX out of a 6.5-06 50 yards bull was facing me I shot it under the right eye. Bullet traveled down the neck thru the spine and we found it against the hide by the left shoulder. I had lost all it petals. Two we found in the neck were it went thru the spine the other traveled down and punctured the lung. We never did find the 4th one. I was impress how well it held together for all the bone it passed thru at pretty much muzzle velocity and how far it traveled would for sure use them on anything.

HuntnShoot,

I have several Barnes X's in my collection that lost either all or 3 of their 4 petals, going back to the original X, and including the most recent TTSX's, all from big game either I or my wife killed. The bullets all hit pretty serious bone, and all killed the animal very quickly: The farthest any went after the shot was 38 yards.

Have also recovered some other "petal" type bullets that lost all or most of their petals. Same deal with hitting bone, and how quickly the animal died.

None of those bullets stopped halfway through the animal. All were 1-shot kills.

Fifteen years ago I was sitting around a campfire with Randy Brooks when he mentioned that the earliest X bullets tended to lose their petals. He thought this was a pretty good deal, since the flying fragments resulted in more tissue destruction. But many of his customers were fixated on "100% weight retention," so like any good businessman he pleased his customers, playing with the annealing of the front end until they usually did retain all petals. But he sure didn't think it was necessary.

Now it looks like history is repeating itself. The LRX's are indeed a little "softer" than TTSX's, to insure they expand at longer ranges--and once again some hunters are complaining that some LRX's recovered from really dead animals lost petals, didn't retain enough weight, or don't look right.

Not me! happy as a lark

Yeah, I would be too!

Have also been happy when those other petal-free X's killed stuff quickly!

Fotis those are some great "bullet failure" results. If a 30-378 isn't a good bullet tester than nothing is. Good looking Bulls wish I could find them in the flatland like that. Excellent work. I think I am in the shedding petals is good camp but need to do more testing. This will take quite awhile as I catch so few X bullets to tell what happened.

Got a box of 95gr 6mms to try. Softer will be fine by me since I won't feel like I have to drive them as hard to ensure expansion. 2900 should be plenty and easy to get to with RL26. Easier on the barrels and plenty for the ranges I shoot at.

65% weight retention, the nose sheared off and the shank kept driving...... sounds like a Partition......

But Partitions obviously won't kill anything.....

Obviously...

FWIW I shot an elk this year through both shoulder blades with the same bullet from a 300 wsm. Didnt recover the bullet as it passed through, but found no lost petals either and I did look for them.. I also shot a mule deer with the same bullet from a 300 ultra and that bullet passed through both shoukder blades as well with no petals found. Both shots where under 100 yards.

I killed a decent 5x5 bull with a 7mm rem mag shooting 145 LRX's at 3225 MV this year. 100 yds broadside with two shots through the shoulder, both were complete pass throughs. I found one broken off petal when cleaning him.

Last year I used the same load on a 6x6. Again two bullets complete pass throughs but that one was 375 yds.

I've yet to recover a bullet and all four shots penetrated both shoulders of mature bull elk. Neither really needed a second shot but I like a second if they're still standing, at least with elk.

Well I am a 6.5x06 shooter also. Use the 120gr TSX exclusively for elk. Has given consistent one shot kills over the years. Is the only bullet I use on elk. Absolute dependability. Of course you know that..

Ive had good luck with all the Barnes Bullets I have used so far.