Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska 325 WSM Brown Bear medicine

With good bullet construction speed is a wonderful thing and has a fair bit to do with killing in my experience. The great thing about the 325 is that you can get a pretty good balance of both with a 200 grain bullet at 2800+ ft/sec. That speed will give you excellent expansion and a wide wound channel and the retained weight of a Nosler Partition, Accubond or Barnes X will give excellent penetration.

Agreed. Using the correct bullet is key. If slower out penetrates faster wouldn't the faster bullet eventually slow down and out penetrate itself?

When bullets are pushed faster than designed they tend to explode and fragment on impact and fail to penetrate. I have seen this happen many times. Especially with bullets made for long range shooting and are fired at thick skinned game as close range.
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Lhook, no because the faster bullet is smaller and lighter. It will be more effected by wind. Lose it's momentum faster, more likely to fragment, greater deflection, smaller wound channel ( after expansion), less stable, etc. Use a heavier bullet for better results and the .325 above 200 grains would be on the right track!

If slower out penetrates faster wouldn't the faster bullet eventually slow down and out penetrate itself?

By and large I'd agree with you. But I toyed around with the 160 grain TTSXs out of my 325 and was able to get them to 3100 fps. If the BC is true then it gets 19" of drop and 13" of wind drift. While I was only able to get the 200 grain AB to 2750 fps (mostly due to lose case capacity with being mag box restricted) which leads to 23" drop and the same 13". They both shoot the same around 1" sometimes better sometimes a about 1.25" but I think thats more attributed to me than the rifle

Still trying to figure out which one to go with. The tinkering side of me wants to have the 160 TTSX for sheep and caribou and moose and 200 NPTs for bears which also shoot around 1". But the logical side of me says use the 200 NPTs for everything and rock on.

Thanks to 1SgtStephen I was able to get much more respectable numbers out of my rifle. Worked up to 65.5 grs of IMR4007SSC and wound up with velocities 2830-2870. Shooting new brass so was not expecting stellar small groups but put two rounds beside one another and I think I may have pulled the third round, or it may not be as accurate as first thought. Either way it's a good start.
Got the 250 Woodleighs just over 2600 with a heavy charge of imr7828ssc and did not see any signs of excess pressure. Not enough case capacity to fit anymore in there with that large of a bullet. Either way it's plenty fast for what I will be using it fo