Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Ballistic tip failure?

My daughter shot a big buck in the shoulder with a 250 savage with a ballistic tip. Bullet splattered on shoulder. No more for me thanks. Edk

^^^This^^^

If your bullet was 110 gr, you weren't shooting a Ballistic Tip, you were shooting an Accubond.

I run 115 NBT out of my 257 Roy at 3450. Although I haven't shot anything at less than 120 yds, it has performed superbly on everything I've shot. Bang and a flop. It's the only bullet I use in my 257 Weatherby.

What is your experience with Ballistic Tips on deer, and what vintage bullets were they? I've found the 150 grain Bal Tip to be a very fine deer bullet when launched from my 308s. No blow ups at all. Same for the 165. The 120 has been great out of the 260 Rem., and so has the 95 out of the 243 Win.

I hope there a few that shy away from NBT's for awhile....Their big game bullets are currently in short supply and I'm running low in .243, .284 and .308..Just about perfect for Deer....and some say even larger....

"I shot heavy bone at mid-3k's FPS and my lead-core bullet didn't exit the dead animal that dropped in its tracks. Is this a bullet failure?"

try some Berger bullets like 115 gr. VLD 25 caliber in your 257 Weatherby Mag. , this Berger bullet worked well for me in my 257 Weatherby Mag. on a large buck.

HA. Fortunately I bought enuff 120 BTs for my Swede to hunt the rest of my life.
At 3000 fps the deer have ‘failed’ every time.

Jerry

Correction it was the 100 gr. blue tip ballistic tip. Any deer down in it's tracks is not a failure, just fanning the flames. I loaded the BT for work up and longer body shots but not as the primary bullet for this rifle. I grabbed the BTs thinking I might get a chance to test them on some hogs, then a respectable buck shows up instead.

I would have expected the base to get through but as pointed out the neck is pretty tough and the vertebra substantial. What was surprising to me was the first incident with the Sierra didn't kill the buck immediately.

I have had the older solid bases which are like the Varmit BT without a tip tear up several vertebra and keep going. This a 7RM and the 140gr bullet at 3,300 fps+. The solid base would always fragment but the base usually exited.

Odd thing I even used the first generation NBT's out of a .280AI....the real fragile ones that were supposed to be Deer specific...but some had to try them on Elephants, so Nosler continuously toughened them up.
Probably the farthest any Deer made it was 40 yards and most didn't make it that far.

My father used a number of first generation 150 grain Bal Tips out of his 30-06 for deer. He didn't have any problems that I recall.

I have been using .270 BT's on deer and hogs since they first came out decades ago... NEVER had any problem with them. I have probably shot 60+ in the neck from 20 yards to 200.
I can remember several deer that had large exit wounds from neck shots. One in particular that you could have stuck a baseball in.

Mathman,

I have shot deer with the Hornady SST bullets in a 270win, 260 rem, 338 win mag and Nosler Balistic tips in the 30-06. I have also witnessed two deer and a elk being shot with a 25-06 and SST bullets. All animals died, bullets exiting the animals was about 50%. I prefer a bullet that has a higher probability of exiting. I also enjoy eating wild game and prefer less explosive bullets that damage less meat.

I don’t think Boston’s ballistic tip failed. It performed as ballistic tips do when pushed fast at close range on a dense target. It rapidly expanded and didn’t exit.

Tom

Nosler Ballistic Tip Hunting bullets make excellent long range varmint bullets.





For critters bigger than ground dwelling rodents I'll stick with Swift Scirroco II's.

RJ

That has little relevance to how a properly chosen Ballistic Tip performs on deer.

I guess everyone has different experiences with BT’s, I’d hunt just about anything with the .30 165.

That one does just great on big hogs.

Try that with some Barnes TTSX. You'll see the same thing, more or less. The bullet isn't coming apart to generate that tissue damage. It is a product of energy dump and rapid expansion. Maybe you've seen the Barnes ad where a medium-size tomato is vaporized by a TTSX, which has fully expanded.

In short, I don't think you understand terminal ballistics in the slightest.

One of my hunting partners shot a nice buck in the neck with a 150 grain core lokt from a .308 this season and it didn't exit. A big bucks neck is pretty tough. Have seen all manner of bullets not exit, up to and including 12 gauge slugs.

Thank you huntnshoot for your vote of confidence.

FYI, I have done a good bit of testing using various media with NBTH bullets and find them to be lacking (as are *Barnes bullets) for my use as a hunting bullet. Terminal ballistics provided by my chosen bullet in a given hunting rifle are complete pass through (or at the least, bullet is recovered under the hide on the far side) without a lot of meat damage. The NBTH has failed to do that for me

*Barnes bullets will not provide levels of accuracy that are up to my expectations but they do as they claim as far as expansion and retention.

So, as usual everyone here thinks everyone else is dumber than a bag of hammers and only Mule Deer has the only correct answers for everyone's situation and expectations, which does make for some lively and robust conversations.

RJ

So then what were you attempting to assert by displaying the pic?