Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters ? for JB

Thinking I read somewhere on here you felt the current gen NBT are comparable to the current Core-Lokt.

I also recall there are/were specific cal/weights that had been "beefed up".

Specifically, do you think that applies to the 270/130 gr Ballistic Tip??

Thanks in advance.

No, I compared the current Ballistic Tip hunting bullets (as compared to BT varmint bullets) to Hornady Interlocks--but only in smaller calibers and weights. This is because those I've recovered retain about the same amount of weight, around 50%, give or take 10%--though both BT's and IL's can also retain more weight, depending on impact velocity and what they hit.

The BT's from .30 caliber and 165 grains up have heavier jackets, so retain more weight, more like smaller caliber/weight Partitions, generally a minimum of around 60% even if they lose the core.

JB and Dogzapper here got me back on track with NBTs. The early ones( hunting bullets) were a performance disaster, so I shunned them for the next 25 years. Been a Hornady Interlock fan all along, but tried the newer NBT hunting bullets, and yes, the performance is comparable on every level, and in most cases for me at least, they are a bit more accurate. My only"big" rifle now is a .275 Rigby and I use 150 gr.NBTs in it exclusively.. I wish they;'d make a 'hunting' NBT in .22 cal!!

Agree with Mule Deer & Ingwe - the Nosler Ballistic Tips have become fine game bullets. My son and I have made excellent use of these three in particular:

6mm 95 grain from a 6mm Remington on both whitetail & mule deer

257" 115 grain from a 25-06 on mule deer & pronghorn

308" 165 grain from a 30-06 on elk, black bear, mule deer & pronghorn

Mostly one-shot kills. Many bullet exits. One shed core that I know of - because the bullet jacket was caught in the off-side hide of a black bear, with no core. The core exited the jacket, and also exited the bear! I was fine with that. Dead bear very quickly.

Nosler Ballistic Tips have become my most-used hunting bullet, mostly in the past 20 years or so. I remember when they first replaced the old "Solid Base" lead-tipped Noslers, and I wasn't pleased. Now? Happy as can be with them.

Regards, Guy

My experience mirrors ingwe's. I shunned them after using them in the 80's.
I tried them again after JB stated they were redesigned a little and improved.

Oh, I use the 130gr in my 270 though.

Using the 200gr Ballistic Silvertips in my 338-06 this year.

Not just 30 cal and up -- I believe the 7mm 120gr NBT is also beefed up.

Most BT's have been "beefed up" in one way or another since the first models were introduced. But those from the 165-grain .30 up have been REALLY beefed up, mostly because hunters insisted on using them on game bigger than deer.

Nosler introduced the Ballistic Tip Hunting bullets as deer bullets, because they already made a bullet for bigger game named the Partition. But many hunters didn't understand this, and liked the BT accuracy, so started using them for everything. Eventually Nosler gave up and started beefing up the bigger models, starting with the new 200-grain .338 in 1992. It performed similarly (but not exactly like) the 210.338 Partition from the get-go, because it was given a jacket weighing around 150 grains, 3/4 of the total bullet weight. As somebody at Nosler said, "It's sort of like a monolithic with a sliver of lead in the nose."

I tested some of the first ones in dry newspaper, which is very hard on bullets, side-by-side with 210 Partitions, and the 200 BT's penetrated 90% as deeply, and retained almost as high a percentage of weight. They work very well on game,too: I once shot a gemsbok bull through the shoulder and spine as it quartered toward me at around 150-175 yards. The bull went right down, and the expanded bullet was found under the hide of the ham on the opposite side, retaining just almost exactly 60% of its weight. Gemsbok are about the size of mature cow elk, but with heavier bones and inch-thick hide on the shoulders.

Nosler soon applied the same super-heavy jacket to all other Ballistic Tips over .30 caliber, including the quickly discontinued 260-grain .375, which was introduced in 2002 but the next year was turned into one of the first AccuBonds. This wasn't because the .375 BT didn't work well (one went through both shoulders of an even bigger-bodied gemsbok, and exited) but at least partly because Nosler realized how many hunters believed in "bonded" cores.

One story I've heard about the 120-grain 7mm is that its jacket was thickened because some silhouette shooters liked, but it splattered on 500-meter rams so wouldn't consistently knock them down. I tried to confirm that with Nosler, but could not. But it does not have an exceptionally heavy jacket, nothing like the 200-grain .338. I suspect the real reason it works well is because the base of the jacket is similar in thickness to the other 7mm BT's, but since the 120 is a relatively lightweight 7mm, the jacket is a higher percentage of its weight than in, say, the 150 7mm. Though the 150 has a very good reputation as well.

I have been told by people at Nosler, however, that the "beefing" up of Ballistic Tips was also accomplished by simply using harder cores in some models, rather than dinking with jacket thickness. Was also informed at one time that some of the original Ballistic Tips worked fine from the get-go so were never changed. But that was a while back, and quite often bullet manufacturers keep tweaking models, if they see a reason--but also don't always see a reason to announce every tweak publicly.

We call them the wounding tip.

The original ones certainly were........