Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Thoughts on the 338 210 grain Nosler Partition

That..^^

I prefer 225s but I wouldn't hesitate to use 210s if I had them. Partitions dig a deep hole and expand a bunch. Hard not to like.

For powder, I start with RL 19 and H4350. Likely if neither of those shoot well, the gun has a problem and you're not going to win. Others to try, though, would be H414 with lighter bullets, H4831 with heavier. Nothing wrong with the IMR versions, I just have gotten along better with the Hodgdon powders once I started using them. I think I used IMR 4064 with some 180s at one time.

I like .338.

I load the 160 Barnes for pigs and puny deer we have here. A partition is a fine choice anytime. If I had to get down to one bullet for every rifle, that be my choice.

I have a good friend that is a 338 nut. He has a 338 Federal, two 338-06’s, a 338 Win mag, a 340 Bee and a 338 Ultramag. One of his favorites is the 210 Partition. He’s taken everything in North America with it and a slew of game in Australia and Africa with it. Never a complaint. His other go to is the 275gr A frames. Again...never a complaint.
Have fun and good luck!

I used .338 210 gr Patitions for several years after getting a .338. I tried several powders and found REL-19 to have the best accuracy. I ended up using 74 grains of REL-19 for my load.

They work very well and penetrate nearly as well as 225 grain NPT's.

I did move to using 225 grains for most purposes after a few years. Not for any fault of the 210 NPT but to find a practice and deer load with a less expensive bullet that shot very close to my Nosler loads
out to 300 yards. Differing BC's notwithstanding It ended up being the Hornady I/L.

I have used the 210 in my .338 also in my .340. Bob Hagel loved this bullet, but 225 Part. were not available then.

I tried to get the 210 partitions to shoot in my .338wm but the best they would do is around 1.5” which for this rifle is terrible. There are too many great bullets that shoot good for me to waste time trying to get the partitions to equal other factory loads. In the win mag the 225 A-frames and 225 TBBC as well as the 210TTSX are sub 1” loads that don’t leave me wanting more. Good luck guys. 👍

I’ve been shooting 210 Partitions out of a 338 and a 340Wby for decades. I’ve taken coyotes, antelope, whitetails, mule deer, dozens of elk, and a Shiras moose. Performance has always been dead reliable, even at ranges that were probably too far. I used IMR4350 and RL19 with good success. Velocity was over 3000+fps.

All of this has been very interesting, but my experience is the 200-grain .30 Partition from .300 magnums kills just as well, and penetrates deeper. Oh, and due to a higher BC, shoots flatter and drifts less in the wind than the 210.

Have measured the diameter of the "mushroom" of recovered .308 and .338 Partitions and haven't found any difference--despite the often-claimed greater frontal area. Have also shot both into various kinds of test-media and found the same thing.

Which is why during my decade+ of hunting a LOT with the .338 Winchester Magnum, from Montana to Alaska to Africa, I eventually tended to prefer the 200-grain Partition from .300 Magnums to the 210 in the .338, especially on heavier game. But whatever....

Minutia...

In general yes, but that's what rifle loonies tend to thrive on.

But in my experience the difference in penetration between the 200-grain .308 and 210-grain .338 Partitions is definitely not minutiae. And the big advantage of the .338 WM has always supposedly been deeper penetration.

Of course, the .338 also originated, thanks primarily to Elmer Keith, back when the only readily available controlled-expansion bullet was the Nosler Partition--and heavy-for-caliber, cup-and-core bullets were the normal "solution" to hunting bigger game. Which is exactly why one of the original Winchester .338 factory loads was a 300-grain roundnose at a listed 2400 fps--which apparently worked well.

But Elmer also apparently never did really "get" the Partition, at least according to his writings. He insisted, for instance, that the 250-grain .338 Partition should have weighed 300 grains.

He went on his first African safari in 1958 with a .333 OKH as his "light" rifle, using Kynoch 300-grain soft-points that often failed to exit 50-pound Thomson's gazelles. Consequently he started shooting 300-grain Kynoch solids on plains game--which of course penetrated, but didn't kill very well. (This is partly where the myth of African plains game being super-tough originated.)

He would have gotten far better results with a .30-06 and 180-grain Partitions--which had been around since 1947. But that was not Elmer's "style". He wanted to prove something--and did, but not what he wanted....

Today we have bullets which penetrate deeply on bigger game, and kill well, despite being far lighter and smaller in diameter than any common .338 bullet. I know this not through theory, but seeing around 1000 big game animals killed by various hunters using a wide variety of cartridges and bullets.

Glad I asked, always good to get people thinking.
I shoot two magnums, one is a Ruger in 300 win mag and a 375 H&H Sako, just thought it would be nice to try a 338, so shall see what it is like when my eyes are good, did also buy some Barnes bullets to go along with accubonds and the Nosler.

I’m with MD on this one, if I had to choose, I’m running 200 gr. AB or Partitions in a .300 vs. 210’s in a .338.

Considering how well the 210’s penetrate and considering that I’ve failed to catch a single 210TTSX shot into elk, deer and bear I’m not sure how much more penetration I need.

If there was a way to measure the given energy of the bullet after it’s completely penetrated the animal then we could argue over what’s better but until then it’s mental masturbation for rifle loonies.

It seems odd to me that the 200 .308 and the 210 .338 expand to approximately the same diameter. The jacket on the 210 is much thicker and should hold a wider mushroom.

The jacket over the front of the 210 .338 is thicker than the 200 .30?

I didn't get the 210 Partition to shoot all that great in my old Sako 338. I didn't really press the matter however. Right out of the gate it shot very well with the 250 grain Game Kings and Partitions. I was using IMR4350 and H4350. It has been a while though, the H4350 was the original one made in Scotland.

Sure looks like it to me.

Sectioned Partitions

My first trip out using my LaBounty 338-06 Rem 700 rebore and the 210 gr Partition. A number of years ago.

For me, the only reason I found to use a 338 WM over a 300 Mag is the 338's ability to work well in a 22" barrel vs. the 300's 24" bbl. Otherwise, I'd always take the 300 (make mine a WSM).