Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Pic of a TSX pulled from Black Bear ---what do you guys think

Jeff,

No, and they are not X's either. Those TSX's should open up on wet newsprint. If not, I would suspect them to be made of inferior
copper. Not unknown for Barnes to produce bad bullets from bad copper.



I think your full of embellish.

I think Barnes has its "E-Tip" called the MRX at $1.50 each. I have loaded some up in a pre 64 winnie in '06 the 150 grainer for next deer season. They are really accurate and hopefully will expand on the whitetail of the great brush country of S. TExas.

Unless Barnes gets their quality control up to par the MRX will have the same fate as the TSX. That is to say a spotty of record of performance in the field. I also suspect the MRX will have a very hard go of it based on price alone.

Alpine - Seems to me the bullet failed to open up as advertised [you know that beautiful advertisement pic of a tsx (with 4 distinct and equal petals) after it has passed from one end to the other on an elk]. I have taken several black bears with a 270 win and 130/150 corelokts and partitions. They all ran off somewhere around 40-80 yards and died. With your confidence in the tsx probably in the toilet, I'd say go on back to the partitions and never give it another thought. Pics and stories like yours are primary reasons why many folks steer clear of barnes bullets.

Alaskacub, I've got an idea....if its possible to go back to the spot where you shot the bear, and inspect various trees and branches for bullet impact.
maybe this would give you an idea on what happened to the bullet en route to the bear.
I have a suspicion that the bullet did hit something......

I am gonna roll with the too many ifs in this equation to make a solid determination. I have shot phone books in years past to see what bullets do but am not convinced that it equates to the same media as all the different components in an animals body. Dont much get sold on that stuff. I dont generally find bullets in chitt I shoot. I have been using A-Frames and TBBC's on our big animals for a long time and they have always worked great for me. I have also killed truck loads of thin skinned game like mule deer and whitetails with core-loks with great success. I like the higher velocities, flatter trajectories and accuracy of these TSX's and know there has been a bunch of chitt killed with them so figured they were worth a try. We'll see how they do in the faster flying 300WSM this coming fall. Too much work and money spent setting guns up to switch anything off true unkowns from the boys black bear. If I had drilled the thing through the shoulder or just behind it and had the events that transpired with the additional shots I had to make and the recovered bullet then I be throwing the SOB's in the trash but thats not the case so we'll see.

First off don't take this the wrong way Cub as I know that there are a number of things that could happen to any of us on a hunt. However I have shot more than a few animals with the TSX and never had a problem. I have also never recovered a bullet. It looks to me like that bullet hit something before it reached the bear. Seeing as this was your son's first big game animal and I don't want to take anything away from him on it, but I would definitely hold off passing judgement on a bullet's performance when the one doing the shooting was so inexperienced in hunting situations. As I have said kudos to the boy for a great hunt and bear.........Blake

They must not be selling like hotcakes as I see Cabelas is already cutting the price from $30/20 down to $25/20. Looks like Barnes may feel the need to meet the E-Tip pricing even before e-tips are available.

Copper alloys, with just a tiny bit of other metal in them, can become very hard with swaging and other repetitive stage deformation processes in manufacturing. Any time you change the metallurgy or the process, you have to really check the hardness and brittleness of the final product.

An extreme example is the copper welding tip nozzles on OxAc torches. They are harder than most steels, so they take abuse like dropping, banging, and dragging across steel all day long. They put out a flame that melts the steel they are working. How? Beryllium Copper that is hammer forged and swaged into shape.

Or its simply off season and they have extra inventory they want to clear out.

Boy a lot of you sure are quick to rip the bullet on a questionable report. They seem to work pretty good to me.

If it's a mystery in black bear hunting try this: I shot a black bear with a perfectly good Nosler Partition, 286 grain .366 at 2399 fps, in my CZ550 FS. The entry hole was plain but neither hide nor hair of the bullet could be found, no exit hole in the hide either! The bear moved 10 feet, rolling down the hill dead. If this bullet failed, I hope all of them do the same. I had a "failure" with a .35 Whelen and a 250 grain Barnes X bullet, 2550 fps from my Reminton 700 Classic. My cow elk ran twenty yards and fell into a revine. Hell of a recover operation ensued. My guide thought the bullet "failed" or at least the shooter did. Fact was, as the cow rolled, bits of lung tissue exploded from the chest on both sides of the path she rolled end over end down. I contacted Barnes about the lack of expansion, they said the bullet should expand down to 1600 fps and not to worry about it. My last use of Barnes bullets was a brown bear, .416 350 grain TSX, 2550 fps, one shot at 215 yards and the bear went about 75 yards, rolling down into a ravine with an ice bridge that caught the bear short of the icy creek at the bottom. Off side shoulder was pulped and no bullet was recovered. I'm still not sure the bullet worked correctly, no recovered bullet to weigh for weight retention, diameter of petals and any petal failures. I sure hope those 100 grain TSX BTs in my new .257 Roberts at 3200 fps aren't failures too. Come to think of it, the 117 grain SST Light Magnums from Hornady only does 2994 fps in my Model 70 Featherweight. Isn't 3000 fps the minimum to kill deer past 200 yards these days? I don't see picture perfect bullets when I recover them from game, except a .44 Special cast 240 grain SWC which I could lube and reshoot, after breaking a 750 pound water buffalo cow's shoulder. I killed my first two mule deer with plain old Remington 180 grain Pointed Soft Points from a little .308 Winchester. Too heavy a bullet in too slow a caliber? I have a .22-250 with 60 grain Nosler Partitions set up for my youngest son, hoping he will enjoy deer hunting with it. No point in a higher recoiling caliber he won't practice with. Any reasonable combination of proper bullet and caliber suitable for the game and hitting the right place is my simple solution.

Alaska cub,

thanks for the pictures. I think your supposition that you hit a branch or someting similar has merit. The bullet is a VERY odd shaped thing and I and my clients have used a boatload of TSX's with nothing looking anyhting like this. Very curious.

Originaly posted on AR, 210 Partion..........


TXPO
one of us

Posted Jun 13, 6:41 AM
I recently returned from my black bear hunt in British Columbia. My primary rifle for the hunt was a semi-custom 338 Federal on a Rem model 7 action which was built by Hill Country Rifles here in Texas. I devoted quite a bit of time to load developement for this hunt and actually almost ran out of time before I settled on a load. My load was 46.0gr. RL15 under a 210 Partition. This load chrono'ed just under 2500fps and was a consistant 1/2" to 3/4" load. I spent enough time with the rifle and load to feel confident that I could drill anything I wanted at 200 yards or so. Ok, now you have the background.

On the second evening of the bear hunt we (me, a buddy and the outfitter) were on our way back to camp after my buddy tagged out on a very nice boar. It was beginning to get late but there was still some shooting time left. We rounded a corner in the logging road and saw a bear feeding in a clear cut off to the left. The outfitter looked it over for awhile and decided that it was a shooter. I got to a position and ranged the bear and got readings between 174 and 176 yards. No problem. Since it was getting late I told the outfitter that I was going to shoot it through the shoulders to bust it down. I waited for my perfect broadside shot and when everything felt good I touched the trigger. At the shot the bear pitched forward on the near shoulder that I shot, rolled around and scrambled out of sight without ever really regaining his feet. The sound of the impact was the most solid and loudest that I can remember hearing. It happened way too fast to get another shot in or I would have tried. Anyway, it's pretty late now. I feel very confident that the bear is dead within about 50 yards. We take a cursory look and I suggest we come back in the morning with better light and a couple of other guys to give us a hand...besides, I wasn't all that crazy about following up a wounded bear at night! Long story short, we lost that bear. After doing several grid searches of the area with 8 or 9 guys involved and given the limited cover that the bear could be hidden in, I feel confident that we didn't overlook him.

The outfitter, a grizzled veteran outfitter with years of experience, was just as surprised as I was. We are both still scratching our heads wondering just what in the hell happened???

Any ideas???

I ended up later taking a 6-1/2' boar AND a wolf with my old faithful Browning A-bolt in 300 Win Mag. See the Canadian forum for the pics.

Wes Webber


An Armed Society Is a Polite Society


http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/3221043/m/381102686?r=582102686#582102686

Su

I know you are Lee's side and hate Barnes. Thats cool with me. We all have rights. That being said the X I shot that did not expand were not TSX. I have not dug around and my lab has not been around to dig them up for me lately. They were regular X base bullets. I was very queasy to use them, especially since the round starts slow at about 1600 fps or less. Hearing all the rumors of slow speed non expansion... Called Barnes, they had no issues on bad copper runs with that lot. I trusted them, and have since shot about 10 animals with said bullet, 50 cal 275X, that have expanded and killed very well. No deer or hog runs over 40 yards or so. Generous blood trails. Have some other 50 cal, 640something X bullets waiting to test also.

As to your call of bs on my claims of shots, let me just say our deer limits range from 5 to unlimited, my wife shoots them also and there are other states out there. Also years were spent guiding where our quota was just over 300 deer a year, I've seen more than a few X series shot. Still the only ones not to fail except Partitions, IMHO, and I"ve had issues with partitions being too soft for large game....for my tastes anyway. Requiring second shots due to less than stellar penetration through bone structures. I can assure you that I"ve shot deer and hogs at 30 yards or less with various X and I've got one out to 802, and all stages in between. Every one I"ve tripped the trigger on with an X has died(except one hog where as I was trying to lead and swing my nephew shot and the 12ga slug empty hit me in the side of the head and I flinched a shot probably 20 feet low....IE miss) Every one has shown caliber size entry. And at least 2x caliber exit. Thats expansion to me. And it kills. BTW the 802 shot was actually 2 shots, both worked just fine. #2 was a bit of insurance since the bou was wobbly but still standing.

Thoughts welcome?

Jeff