Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Let's talk about Boattails

Look at your 22 caliber match bullets. Usually 52 or 53 grain bullets. One is a flat base one is a boat tail.
Easy to learn early on which your barrel prefers for accuracy. Hasbeen

For targets( limited amounts) with my 308 tactical, I use both Nosler CC and Sierra MK, 168 gr. boat tail bullets. I am consistently shoot dime size or smaller groups at 100 yards. It holds that consistency out 400. I do not hunt big game with this rifle. For coyotes I prefer the 160 flat base SP. I get consistent instant kills with them.

Well said! We were sold a bill of goods, the premise that we needed sagebrush country bullets all the time, every place...when it's pretty obvious that 75% of the game meat harvested is done so in cover or broken terrain at less than 200 yards. It's ok though, it's six of one, half dozen of the other. Kinda like the demise of the poor old round noses. Cup and core round noses are good reliable bullets with decent trajectories to 300...but the market trends went with spitzers, then boat tail spitzers, then .600 bc rocket ships. Overkill when you could pretty safely say, over half the hunting population couldn't put 3 shots offhand on a 9 inch pie plate at 300.

Jack O'Connor mentioned this in one of his books. With the improvements in metallurgy in the 60+ years since he wrote about it, I wonder if there is any validity to this.

I believe ASTM steel standards were adopted nearly a hundred years ago. 4140 is 4140. Advancements in the knowledge of metallurgy are inarguable. Advances in quality that match the the advances in knowledge...not so much. Ask welders...ask machinists that work in the industry. Modern, generally imported steel, even at my end user level is terrible. Cavities, slag inclusions, hard inclusions are common and are readily apparent in welding and cutting. Maybe something to do with the millions of tons of scrap we exported . A couple of fellows with borescopes have noted serious defects in stainless steel barrels sent in for rebores right here on the 'fire recently. Which, sorry, has nothing to do with boat tails.

Overkill when you could pretty safely say, over half the hunting population couldn't put 3 shots offhand on a 9 inch pie plate at 300.



I think that you could “SAFELY” say that over 1/2 the hunting population could not put 3 shots (consecutively) offhand into 9” plate @ 100 yards! memtb

Here in Alaska I have been using the Barnes TTSX bullets in my .338 and 30-06, they have a boat tail. Before I started using them 4 years ago all my Barnes X and Nosler Partitions were flat based bullets. I don't think the moose and caribou I shoot care if it is a boat tail or flat base blowing through their lungs. I have not shot past 200 yards in years, which is fine with me. I have some 175 grain LRX bullets for my 30-06, the ballistics of one of them going 2,800 fps mv is pretty good, on paper.

I don't see much of and advantage to using them for ranges I hunt at. But, if one is regularly shooting past 400 yards then why not use them. Good binoculars and good bullets, we are blessed with and abundance of them.

Yeah, the monolithic bullets generally don’t come apart—BT or not. This .338 225gr TTSX went through about four feet of flesh and bone. It didn’t come apart, but contrary to advertising, it did lose about 12% of its mass along the way. Weighed in at 197gr after the event.

Pretty sure there's something in about all of us that makes us want the tough shot on really large game. The shot that lesser riflemen and lesser rifles and loads just can't handle.

Seems like an entire industry grew up around writing about such things, and producing rifles and loads for all the great riflemen taking the important shot. Most of the readers and most of the hunters shoot whitetails. And a whole lot of those whitetail hunters bought in to the tough bullet thing.

I'm inclined this way myself. And this despite the fact that just about all of my life's experience tells me that any decent shot carrying a 22-250 or a .243 is well equipped for most rifle chores.

Before I get stomped into a mudhole by the moose, elk and big bear hunters, let me say that my only elk was taken with a .30 caliber rifle. Then back in the late 90s I shot a spring black bear in montana. I'd read about all the grizzlies in the area, and wanted to be prepared for the "inevitable charge". I took a 30-06 loaded with 200 grain partitions.
But the guy we hunted with was from the area, and we met several of his friends that week. They all carried Remington cor-lokt ammo, and every one carried a Remington 700 7RM.
Is there anything wrong with the 06 and a 200 partition? I had loaded up a box of 50. Used a couple to adjust my zero. Used 1 on the 350 lb black bear. Used 1 on an antelope later that fall. Shot the rst of them at coyotes and they did just great.
So... No, there's nothing wrong with heavier rifles and tougher bullets.

On the other hand I've broken the off shoulder of a largish mulie with the Sierra 6mm 85 bthp. Also took my first ever black bear with the same load. A max load of IMR 4895 and the 85 bthp was my go-to hunting load for a number of years and took a lot of deer and antelope, as well as a few hogs with it.
I've heard that load described as a ping pong ball, powder puff, and a flash bang. I have nothing bad to say about it. And for many, that specific load was THE accuracy check load for about any .243 rifle.

In some of my heavier rifles, I graduated to the ballistic tip bullet. It's a boat tail in profile anyway. I hear and see others claiming they'd never use a ballistic tip on big game.
I saw one of the original ballistic tips used on an elk killed with a .300 Winchester. There was evidence that the bullet expanded quicker than what I'd like. But that bull died as quickly as most anything I've seen, and with one shot.
And over the past 25 years what I've seen from ballistic tips is about the best performance i could ever expect from a hunting bullet

A friend explained to me that similar to the throat, an eroded or non uniform barrel crown will allow gases to escape more erratic when a boat tail exits the barrel vs a flat base.

He also stated that his belief is a Nosler partition can " seal" the back of the bullet / barrel interface due to the lead being exposed caudally.

I have had a barrel or three recrowned by a gunsmith and it seemed boattails grouped better. But my observations are anecdotal at best.

I agree and would go even further 80%!

My post had a serious error...I meant to say 200 yards...from my days helping to host NRA Sporting Rifle High Power. These events brought out an above average bunch of shooters, but in 8 or 9 seasons, I don't ever recall anybody ever shooting a perfect score in offhand. IIRC, about a 3 1/2" ten ring and a 13 inch aiming black. I include myself in the criticism of lack of skill in real life shooting positions. The whole point being, it's not the bullet, the group measured in 3 decimal places fired from the bench, the latest and greatest in optics, the last tenth of a grain of wonder powder...in real world hunting, it's the man. Not that I don't appreciate the revolutionary advances in our sport, I do, but in traditional hunting rather than wildlife sniping, it all comes back to the man.

That certainly would make it more difficult.....regrettably, now I probably fall into the couldn’t hit that 9” plate consecutively @ 200! memtb

Have a friend who has a long range muzzle loader, 50 cal. He recently shot a nice bull elk at 557 yds. Nothing new. People shot a long ways with flat based bullets long before modern boattails. Sometimes we just need to be reminded that maybe we might just overthinking things abit. Of course that takes the fun out of things. That’s why we’re loonies, always chasing perfection. Happy Hunting

I thought that Sporting Rifle High Power would be fun, but haven't been able to generate enough interest around here for it. BTW, it uses an SR target with a 4" X ring, 7" ten ring, and 13" nine ring and aiming black.

Unless things have changed-I don't keep up with it like I used to,but one of the things I noticed when hanging around serious short range benchrest shoots(100-300 yard) was that nobody used boat tail bullets-100% flat base.

Ya, you haven't kept up. They've been using boattail bullets in short range benchrest for close to fifteen years.

I'm not shooting past 100 yds without a tree limb, backpack, bipod, or shooting stick to shoot off of.

You are right! A lot has changed-I went to the NBRSA website-not very well updated,the only match results I could find were the 2019 Cactus Classic-of the top twenty in Light Varmint 25% used BT's and 20 % in Heavy Varmint. Not a bunch but way more than in the late 80's- back when it seemed like everyone shot a Stolle-I see that has sure changed! I think I am getting old!


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