Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Barnes bullet... are you completely sold?

Maybe I'm naive or just not as experienced, but I don't get all this love affair with solids on medium game. I'm no elk hunter so I won't go there, but for deer size game, to include pronghorn, and yes, even wild hogs, I've tried six bullets. I hear people bad mouth my favorite of those six on here so I'm almost afraid to mention it. But for what I've tried on deer and hogs, the plain old Cheap Sierra Game King has been my go to bullet for right at 40 years. And one other, the Combined Technologies Ballistic Tip has also worked reliably. I tried some of the old generation Nosler Ballistic Tips and had a prolific failure to penetrate. It came apart just under the skin of a deer. I haven't tried them since and I don't have as many examples with the CTs as with the Game Kings, but as you say, it doesn't take too many before you see a good pattern of performance. All I want is a bullet to penetrate that 4, maybe 6 inches from outer skin, through any bones or cartilage(and counting any additional mass due to angle of shot), into the vitals, before it opens up. The Game King and the CTs give me this(and probably the regular Nosler Ballstic Tips since they've been improved). I don't need a solid for a Texas White Tail or a speed goat or even a hog. These have performed almost perfect for me over the years so I'll save the solids for whenever I get an opportunity for an elk.

Jorge -

Your post pretty well sums up my experience as well. Partitions have given me accuracy issues, although my testing on them has been limited to factory ammo in my 7mm RM and handloading for my .257 Roberts, .30-30 and .300WM. Accurate enough to use, not as accurate as I like or as accurate as others.

Barnes MRX, TSX, TTSX and LRX have all been easy to find accurate loads in every rifle I've tried them in and have not been sensitive to jump. (I tend to let them jump .050" to over .100".)

My bullet and cartridge shelves have many boxes of cup-and core and cast bullets for rifles, from various manufacturers including Speer, Sierra, Hornady and Nosler. Premium rifle bullets include Swift Scirocco II and A-Frame; North Fork SS, FP and prototype SS-HP; Nosler Partition, AccuBond and AccuBond Long Range and Barnes MRX, TSX, TTSX, LRX.and TAC-TX. The Partitions are my least favorite and the unloaded bullets have been sitting on my shelves for a decade or more. Can't buy North Fork anymore but I have a lifetime supply of them in 7mm, .308" and .458". The Swift Scirocco II and A-Frame have been very easy to load for, although my use of them has been limited to one cartridge each - good enough for those two rifles but not much of a test overall. Since I have some for my 6.5-06AI, where they have provided outstanding accuracy, I may try them in my new heavy-barrel 6.5 Creedmoor.

The Barnes bullets may not have the highest B.C. values, but they are high enough for my needs which includes shooting out to 600 yards. Accuracy has been great at the range and on-game results include right at 50% straight down DRT with most of the rest of the animals going more than a few steps and none going far. If I had to choose one bullet family to use exclusively for hunting in my bolt and AR rifles, I'd sleep easy choosing the tipped X bullets..

Filaman –

There is a big difference between solids that are designed not to expand and monos that are designed to expand.

For years I considered all of my centerfire bolt and lever rifles over .22 caliber to be “elk rifles” and, with the exception of the .243 Win I acquired several years back, have loaded them accordingly. (I’ve only developed one load for the .243, using 95g SST, not something I would use for elk.) I started elk hunting in 1982 and have only missed one year since – a benefit of living in Colorado. While I have hunted muzzleloader (primitive) seasons a few times for deer, most of my hunting is elk and deer in the combined seasons, with deer generally being targets of opportunity more than the primary goal.

Other than cost of the bullets, I’ve found no downside to using reliable premium bullets on game smaller than elk and have used them to take occasional varmints (prairie dogs and coyotes and crows) as practice for the main event. The premiums have never failed me on antelope or deer, either. In other words, they work fine for everything.

The cost difference between using premiums and cup-and-core bullets on a hunt won’t get you a cup of cheap coffee. I once calculated that several years of savings using cup-and-core bullets for elk, deer and antelope wouldn‘t buy me a cheap glass of wine at a restaurant. While it is true you can buy cup-and-core bullets for around $0.20 each, The GameKings you use cost about $0.33 each. Ballistic Tips run about $0.48 each while TTSX/LRX and Federal Edge TLR run about $0.79 each. So the savings for you would be around $0.15 to $0.46 per bullet.

In the greater scheme of things, where a week-long elk hunt can cost $hundreds$ in fuel, $hundreds$ in licenses, $hundreds$ in processing fees, $hundreds$ in equipment and $hundreds$ in housing and food, the cost of even factory ammo is in the who cares noise level.

I hunt elk and deer in my home state of Colorado. My loads are handloads and my housing is a trailer I drag to the far side of the state. Food is a mix of what I take and restaurant meals. Licenses are Resident licenses, so much cheaper than non-resident. Still, it isn’t uncommon for me to spend over $1,000 per elk. deer hunt. License fees this year will cost me $211.98 for application fees, habitat stamp, qualifying license cost and one deer and two elk licenses. Fuel will probably be in the range of $500 again. My processor charges $1.30 per hanging pound. My last cow elk cost me $308 without the straps and filets, which I process myself. That puts me at $1,019.98 for a single cow elk, without considering equipment costs or food. My equipment costs (truck, trailer, rifle/scope/laser, clothing, etc.) are sunk costs at this point – everything is fully paid for except the pre-hunt maintenance for the truck (oil change and maybe a new serpentine belt). Saving $0.46 per bullet, when I’ll likely use no more than two (one elk and one deer) just doesn’t come close to a high priority.

Other than cost of the bullets, I’ve found no downside to using reliable premium bullets on game smaller than elk and have used them to take occasional varmints (prairie dogs and coyotes and crows) as practice for the main event. The premiums have never failed me on antelope, deer or elk either. In other words, they have worked fine for everything in my experience. On the other hand, I’ve seen multiple situations where standard cup-and-core bullets failed to perform in a way I consider satisfactory. The first was on my first elk, in the mid-80s, which is why I went to Speer Grand Slams, which I used exclusively for 20+ years and for over 30 years total without an unsatisfactory result. Around 2002 I started switching to true bonded core and mono bullets in spite of the extra cost. Regrets? None.

Since my first elk I’ve only used two cup-and-core bullets on big game. The first was a cow elk with a 150g Ballistic Tip, the other a doe antelope with a 95g SST. Mostly I use North Fork SS and SS-HP, Nosler AccuBond and Barnes TTSX and LRX.

FWIW, I shoot mostly cup-and-core bullets at the range, the exception being a few zero and range verification shots before hunting season. If hunting pigs, a bucket list item, I’d go cup-and core in my AR-10, hoping for a lot of shots.

I’ll grant that standard cup-and-core bullets work fine most of the time. You see little reason to use the premiums based on your experience, I see no reason not to when trying to fill the freezer.

I must agree on the Partitions. As for accuracy, some rifles shoot them well and others don't. I'm aware of the argument that a rifle needn't be capable of excellent accuracy for elk hunting, but... I've found terminal performance of Partitions and Barnes TSXs are about the same: adequate bullet expansion, good penetration, and no tracking of a wounded animal. I've only used one TTSX Barnes (in a .308) and it worked just as well as the plain TSXs that I've used successfully in a .270, a 7x61, and a 308.

I have no real loyalty to either brand of bullet and I'll always try both Partitions and Barnes (TSXs and/or TTSXs) when working up loads for a particular rifle, but often end up going with a Barnes only because of better accuracy.

I do agree that the TTSX is about the easiest bullet to get to shoot well I have ever delt with.

So spake the protagonist.....