Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters AccuBonds vs. A-Frames in Africa............

I've never had the tip fall off of a Partition. :-)

Recently used some Speer hot core .277-130 on plains game.
Shot placement made more difference than bullet construction provided the bullet wasn't totally unsuitable.

Reason: delayed arrive of ammunition. That is why I travel with a rifle chambered for cartridges that are available everywhere.

Good point, Rick. I've taken African plains game with probably a dozen dozen different brands of bullets, partly because of what I do for a living, and my hunting partners have used a few more, some of which would be sneered at by the bullet experts on the Campfire. In fact I've taken plenty with "non-premium" bullets, including (gasp!) Sierra GameKings--and may again.

I'd like to hear that story.

It may be that shots on the African game are predicated to be in the very front of the animal, likely intersecting bone, while most in NA shoot behind the shoulder?

I'll be doing a Springbok slam in my near future with either a .25 or .26. For once I'll be leaving at home my much loved A-Frames and loading up either NABs or NBTs.

Did you actually read the entire thread, instead of just the original post?

Are you 'sposed to actually READ the whole thing.....?


Schitt...I got some catching up to do.....

Well, I generally don't if the thread's over a decade old--and this one started in 2007!

Oh, in that case..I'm semi-good!

And for the OP my vote goes to A-Frames

Whatever--but the original poster who started this thread passed away in 2010....

I have not been on the fire long enough to see/appreciate his writings. But this thread makes me think that he was a solid contributor here. Sadly men of his caliber seem not to post much here these days...all that aside, I actually read through the thread and enjoyed it!

Then you encountered where it was "revived" the first time, in 2017--where I was able to add quite a bit more information, starting on 1/06-2017 with post # 11714325.

As did a lot of other people.

I finally read the entire post, admittedly skimming some replies.
One thing I didn’t do see here:

A hunter has bad luck with a bullet. Reports his bad luck with documentation. People reading his report reply, “You’re wrong, because that bullet worked well for me.”

I have had tips fall out of bullets, yet I am told that that doesn’t happen, move on. I bought some new bullets in the last couple of years with the tips bent or falling out. Since I’ve seen and experienced it along with one of my hunting partners, we are clearly both WRONG. Admittedly they were not Accubonds, but some varmint bullets. Varmint bullets having a much softer tip and thinner gilding metal to hold the tip I can see a reason for it happening with varmint bullets. It’s sort of disconcerting when someone tells you that what you experience is wrong, it never happened.

I have had bad experiences with several bullets’ performances, three that were mentioned in this thread. I’ve seen and read where others have too. It takes me a very long time if ever for me to trust that bullet again. I see that my brother-in-law uses a bullet I abandoned years ago. Each year he uses that bullet and has good luck with it. Another hunter I hunt with annually same story. That bullet was also mentioned in this thread.

At the start of this thread, I believe the word ‘consistent’ was used a lot. To me once I see what I believe to be a failure I don’t want to repeat the happening. One failure is enough for me and I prefer not to make the mistake again.

Since this thread is old and apparently most of the issues with Accubonds were reported more than a decade ago, and since I have not heard or read of problems with Accubonds, I wonder if or what Nosler did to improve the bullets? BTW: I don’t care about bullets having plastic tips or boat-tails or bonding. Except I am getting to like TTSX.

The good thing about this forum is that a person can read of a lot of professionals’ experiences.

The bad thing is having to put up with people that tell you your experiences are not true.

Bugger,

Yes, you apparently did skim some replies. Here's a shorter version of what happened with AccuBonds, along with some of my experiences:

They were introduced in 2003, and immediately became popular, because they did perform much like Partitions on game. Nosler made sure of that by field-testing them before introduction. (They'd gotten burned by introducing "hunting" Ballistic Tips without much if any field-testing, assuming they'd perform like the Solid Base softpoints they were based on--and they didn't.)

About 1-1/2 years later AccuBonds were even more popular, and demand was so high one of Nosler's employees tried to speed up his particular station in the assembly line. This resulted not only in bullets not bonding, but annealing and becoming softer. Nosler discovered this relatively soon, as they periodically test samples of all their production lots, both for accuracy and in expansion media. But some still left the factory.
Those were the AccuBonds that "blew up."

Nosler corrected this, and AccuBonds started performing like they had when introduced--retaining about the same amount of weight as the same caliber/weight of Partition.

I'd used my first on game in 2004, where they performed as designed, but by chaNCE didn't use anymore until after the problem was corrected, so never encountered any of the bad ones. Among other things, I took part of month-long on huge ranch in South Africa in mid-2007, where almost 20 American hunters took a total of 180-some animals. The two "new" and popular bullets at the time were AccuBonds and Barnes TSXs (this was a year before Tipped TSXs appeared) and many of the guys were using them. I took two rifles, a 7x57 and 9.3x62, and among other bullets used 160-grain TSX's in the 7x57 and 250-grain AccuBonds in the 9.3. Both bullets performed very well, whether in my rifles or the other guys'.

I have never heard of any troubles with AccuBonds since then, and might suggest that if they continued to act like the defective batches, hunters wouldn't still be buying and using them TODAY--which they do.

The last one I used was a 150-grain from my Merkel single-shot .308, on a whitetail doe on a friend's ranch maybe 3 years ago. (I'd already taken game up to 400 pounds with the load, with no problems.) The doe was almost directly facing me about 80 yards away, so I aimed just inside the near shoulder, and at the shot she dropped. I recovered the bullet from the opposite ham, retaining 70.5% of its weight.

In an earlier thread, Big Stick said Accubonds were junk. But that was just a quick turd drop with no further explanation. Maybe BS can elaborate on that a bit.

Tony

MD

Having worked at a John Deere factory while going to school, I witnessed a fellow cutting corners. It was something the fellow was doing aside from his normal duties. He was getting paid extra for the work on a number of pieces done per hour. The engineers came down to watch the fellow performing his work to see what the cause of a problem was. The guy was clever enough not to cut corners then or ever again. Bottom line, the companies will often pay extra for above normal performance, often measured by pieces per hour.

I can assume this fellow at Nosler was making more money by cutting corners.

Of course this is just an assumption.

Bugger

Yes, I am familiar with that--partly because I have also been informed by other bullet companies that they've had the same problem. Dunno if that's applicable here or not.

Do know that if AccuBonds "blew up" Nosler wouldn't still be selling a bunch of them 20 years later.

I really liked the 225 Accubond in my 35 Whelen, very accurate and effective on game

I read the whole thing, having forgotten I posted in the thread.

Twice.




P