Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Barnes TTSX .308 130 gr

For the last several years, I have been using Barnes TTSX, mostly a .308 Win with the 130 TTSX. A case full of Varget with a F210 0.010” off the lands works well in multiple different rifles. Velocity is 3100 from 24” and a below max load.

After lots of pigs and a good number of deer with uniformly excellent results, the TTSX has become my go to choice for hunting bullets.

Definitely recommend giving the 130 a try. It is pleasant to shoot and the terminal results are consistently excellent.

Here is my wife shooting culls last year with a .308 Win and the 130 TTSX.

This cut in the brush is about 20 feet wide. Sorry for the low res phone video.

I shoot the same bullet over H4198 in my 300 Savage. They're a bit spendy, but very accurate and effective.

Yeah I have also had great results with a 130gr TTSX bullet over 45 grains of Varget but this year I am going to try some 130gr Shock Hammers just for chits and giggles.......Hb

“Fake News”......everyone knows that Barnes bullets just pass through without immediately killing the animal! 😉 memtb

I’ve had good luck with the 130 Triple Shock too but the TTSX wasn’t quite as accurate in my rifle.

The 130TTSX/308win is a great combo, much like the 120gr 7mm-08 version. Moderate recoil, good trajectory for medium range hunting, and great penetration. Generally not the pickiest for accuracy.

My daughter, Taylor, has had great luck with the 130 TTSX in her 308 win! Like JPro said, it is a great combo!

She uses her own handholds- 45.0 gr. IMR 4895 gives her a chrono of 2947 in her 24" Vanguard.

Is there much difference between these and a 130 in a .270 as it relates to trajectory and effectiveness on game out to 400 yards?

I haven't used them yet but I played around with them and found an extremely accurate load that I'll try on whitetails here in TX in the next few months.


I expect them to be deadly. And yes, I know I spelled Barnes wrong.

Cool pics and interesting terrain there.

There shouldn't be much. BC of the 130gr TTSX .308 isn't far off a plain flat-base .277 130gr spitzer like a Powerpoint or Core-Lokt.

Thanks JPro

The hog hunts were in Florida, the ram was in California.

I use them in a 300 Savage, hammers pigs!

I think they at their best when pushed hard...out of a Win. 70 Classic 22" Tac powder am getting 3170fps and out to 400 yds it getting there in a hurry. Only drops little over 3" at 300 so that is 270 speed. Working on a 150 load with CFE223 that will push them 3000 per second..

I’d love to see a ballistic chart that has a .270 with a 3” drop at 300yds.

300 yds is more like an 8” drop out of a .270 or a .308 for that matter.

Maybe he meant MOA rather than inches? Both drop about 3.5 MOA at 300 yards for both .308 and .270 with 130 TTSX’s at 3100.

130 gr TTSX-50.2 gr TAC in Lapua case fired from Winchester Model 70 SS Classic Featherweight = 3,163 FPS.
~1.9" high at 100 yards
~4.3" low at 300 yards

150 gr TTSX-47 gr Varget in Hornady case fired from a Winchester Model 70 SS Extreme Weather = 2,894 FPS
~2.4" high at 100 yards
~5" low at 300 yards
No dialing required from the end of my barrel to 300 yards. Just aim and kill stuff. Like it is supposed to be.

lynntelk, out of my Win 70 SS Extreme Weather ( 92 model I believe) 130 gr TTSX at 50.4 gr TAC in Winchester case am getting about the same FPS, but at 2 1/2" high at 100 it is 3 1/2" low at 300. The 150 gr TTSX and CFE223 am close to 3000 FPS. Good elk load in a 308.

Blueboy, I had a large amount of Varget, so I stayed with that in the 150 gr. load. I have plans when/if supplies return, to upgrade my 150 gr load. I don’t plan to change a thing with the 130 gr load in the other rifle. Matter of fact, it’s turning into my new favorite rifle. I dropped the barreled action into a McMilan Edge. It’s easy to carry and shoots small groups. I don’t know what else I need.

The 130 TTSX works fine on both deer and elk in the .308. This is a big cow my wife took in 2017 at around 250 yards, and the bullet wasn't started nearly as fast as a 130 .270. She tends to get recoil headaches, even with the brake on her custom rifle, so I loaded them to around 2900 fps. The elk was quartering toward us, and the bullet broke the near (left) shoulder, just above the big shoulder joint. The cow staggered maybe 20-25 yards, obviously done for, before falling. We found the bullet under the hide over the ribs on the right side.

Very useful info Mule Deer. How much would a cow like that weigh?

Here is the other end of the spectrum on a very small pig, about 30 pounds, my wife shot this evening. The entry was low and behind the front leg classic heart shot at 143 yards. Here is the exit with a 6” blade for scale. The 130 TTSX literally blew the heart out the exit hole. Needless to say, he dropped where he stood.

The TTSX opens fast and very reliably, which was not always my experience with the TSX even when hitting shoulders.

So from big to little, the 130 TTSX works nicely.

That cow weighed around 475 on the hoof, from calculations we made after weighing the parts.

Generally, if an expanding bullet opens as all, it expands by the time it penetrates its length, which with most is 1.5 inches or less. My experience with TTSX's is they do open more violently than TSXs, and those we've recovered have opened a little wider, or even lost some petals.

The one that killed the elk lost ALL its petals, so "only" retained 62% of its weight. But it killed very quickly. Personally, I have never found much correlation between higher weight or petal retention of Barnes X-Bullets and how well they killed, though a lot of hunters seem to consider both both important. (Same deal with other monolithics.) Some of the fastest kills I've seen with various X-Bullets involved bullets that lost most or all their petals, probably because they hit bone, which fragmented and also caused some damage.

Using the Barnes .308" 130gr TTSX with Ramshot TAC in a Savage 16. Great on paper, we'll see how it works in the woods this fall. Been using Barnes since they came out, with great results, from coyote to moose.

Great pics (and video) and good hunting, all!

Will be looking to use the 130 gr TTSX here this fall as well, in 308 for sure and possibly 30-06, depending. IMR 3031 in both cases.

Kentac,
somehow I missed the photos of your daughter looking on my phone. Congratulations to her. Nice looking animals.

And John congrats to Ms. Mule Deer on a beast. That is huge. Also, tell her I put her cookbook to work and enjoy the results.

Good luck to everyone this season.

Thank you jeffbird!

Thanks for all the Good info here Gents. It has been a fun read.

I just picked up two boxes of these .30 cal 130g TTSX slugs to use in creating a good lower recoil deer /hog load for my 16 year old nephew's Ruger American in .308.

I have a question n for all you reloading the Barnes bullets- what OAL are you guys loading them and do you put any crimp on them?

I have read that Barnes recommends using the pressure relief grooves as crimping grooves. Based on the OAL lengths listed in the Barnes data it looks like they are seating and then crimping in the forward most groove for and OAL length just over 2.7" . I have also read about guys getting better accuracy by seating them further out to the second groove which results in just over 2.8" long loads but still short enough of most magazines.

Still a third camp crimps ON the first driving band for an length between those two extremes. I have a full length Lee deluxe Four die set so I can do either the roll crimp or the factory crimp on my cases.

Barnes seems to think the best combination of accuracy and velocity lies in seating their bullets TTSX relatively deep.

What seating depths /crimps are you guys using??

Try 3 each at .030, .050 and .070 off of the lands.

Pick which shoots best or if all 3 shoot the same, as was the case when I tried them once, just pick one length and go hunt.

No need to crimp.

I am a factory ammo guy, as I do not currently handload. I wish Barnes offered their VOR-TX factory ammo in 130 gr. .30-06. I do not currently own a .308. I use 150 gr. TTSX in my .30-06, and it has performed admirably, but would love to give the 130 gr. TTSX a try. Oh, well. Maybe that is an excuse to buy a .308.

Have some loaded up, time to get to the range. Pretty much an all new to me set up here. New to me Savage 16 and new to me Leupold VX-3i 2.5-8x36. So not only trying out a new load, but sighting in a new rig too...

Dean,

dealing with a new rifle, new scope, and load workup is a lot of variables that may take some time to sort out.

fwiw - I start any load workup 0.010” off the lands and that is where most stay.

Buy some more of that powder if it is still there.

Let us know how it goes.

Hang in there and good luck.

Jeff

For the first time ever, recovered a .308 130 TTSX from a management deer yesterday. The only other Barnes I have recovered was an 80 grain TTSX from a .243 on a large hog.

The deer was 186 pounds live weight, 143 yards, slightly angled facing me. Entry forward point of nearside shoulder, bullet came to rest under the hide forward of offside rear leg. Dropped where he stood.

The terminal performance of the TTSX is very consistent, by far my favorite bullet and they are very accurate too.

That sounds near about perfect.

If we shoot bullets in heaven, they'll be ttsx's.

Years ago I had a 130 gr Triple Shock take almost exactly the same route in reverse. It was on a buck about the same size trotting away at about 25-30 yards. The bullet entered just forward of the hindquarter and exited after breaking the offside shoulder. He only went another 10 yards or so.

Pushing the 80 gr TTSX like you're doing is OK. Pushing it at 3,600 fps out of a 240 Wby, maybe not so good. I got a huge blast effect on the chest wall of a doe, not so much internal damage. She ran over a hundred yards, had to find her in the woods at night, which wasn't a lot of fun.

That gun loves the NPT. 100 gr. NPT is my go to bullet in the .240, shoots half MOA at 400 yds. To me, they either love the Partitions or not.

I like 130's in the .308. For WT's and hogs, they're hard to beat. For that application, you don't need 180's, etc, IMO. And 3,100, 3,200 fps hits'em like a magnum.

DF

Sight in after load development is done. As long as POA/POI are close leave the scope be.

Too much jacking around and you may be scratching your head.

Yeah, find your group, then fine tune POI.

DF

I use TSX 150's in my Ruger.303 with a stiff load of either 4895 or Varget, only because that is the only bullet Barnes makes for it..
I have not recovered one yet and have killed "quite a few" white tails with them, from 50 too 372 yards, DRT's all of them.
They are stupid accurate .
This was the heart shot last year, 372 lasered yards.

Cat

Looks like those Barnes bullets are continuing to put animals in the dirt.

Another phone video of the .308 130 Barnes TTSX at 3100. This has become my go to choice.

Barnes 130 grain TTSX
H4895 48.0 grains
Browning X Bolt .308
Step-son’s first deer, shot at 250+ yards!

Nice video, great shot. I'm a TTSX fan, but it looked like a head shot and if we could shoot them there all the time any bullet would work and we wouldn't need the TTSXs. LOL

I used some factory Barns 130 ttsx ammo in 270 win to shoot a cow elk and a small mule buck. Both kills wrre fairly quick, but not much of a wound channel and small exit holes. I'm just glad they fell within insight because there wasn't much, if any blood trail. But the bullets did go through and through and killed them dead so I can't complain too much.

After some thought this sounds like the bullet for a 308 in a 14" barrelled Encore. Be Well, RZ.

.308 130TTSX .35BC @ 3150fps.....PBR on a 6" target.

http://www.shooterscalculator.com/ballistic-trajectory-chart.php?t=b4f67a13

tzone,JBM Ballistics has the chart. Just key in the B.C. of 350 and the drop of +2.5” at 100yds for the Barnes 130TTSX and it shows little one 3.0” drop at 300 yds.Killed a 8 pt at 100 yds this year quartering slightly toward me…hit him in lower neck just off left shoulder…dropped right there never took a step…head laying in a pool of blood when I walked up on him. Have killed deer way out there with that bullet and never have to think about holdover if anything just don’t shoot too high…still rising at pass 100 yards.

the Barnes 130gr ttsx is the 30 caliber secrets

The Barnes TTSX 130's from a .308 Win continue to provide consistent results. Had the chance to make a new short video while my wife was doing the shooting.

Shot placement was to the forward edge of the shoulder 1/3 down from the back. I was having her use that placement for a buck and she did it again on the pig. On pigs, a bullet to the base of the ear works nicely, but this placement certainly was effective. The bullet passed through.

Years ago, I had a TSX pencil through shoulder blades on a buck. He ran about 100 yards, which caused me to quit Barnes. About ten years ago, someone encouraged me to give the TTSX a try.

They have been a very different story consistently providing effective terminal results. The TTSX opens very fast. The TTSX and LRX have become my go to bullets.

Here is a buck shot through the shoulder by my wife with a .308 Win and the 130 TTSX (45.5 gr Varget and a F210). This damage from the TTSX is not pencilling through.

Entrance side:



Exit side:

I've been using the 130gr TTSX in 308/300 Savage since 2007

What's the max effective range of these bullets on deer you think?

212 yards is the farthest I have used it and that was DRT. Beyond 250 - 300, stepping up to a higher bc like the 168 or the 175 LRX would help with wind, which is more of an issue than penetration and energy with a .308 Win.