Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Pictures Of Recovered Accubonds

200 AB 300 RUM 3250 start speed. Bull elk, 560 yards. Ribs in, found after shattering opposite side leg bone.

200 AB 300 Win 2975 start speed 675 yards. Ribs in and found behind front leg on the hide.

These are 180grn .338's from my .338-06. The one on the left from milk jugs and the one on the right from an average whitetail. Both weigh exactly the same, 153grns. The one from the milk jugs went through the fewest of any bullet I've tested. The one from the buck surprised me that it didn't go through.

Cool grab, amazing how similar they look.

260 grain Accubond, fired from my 375 H&H into a black bear at about 15 feet. Bullet was hanging in the off-side hide. Recovered weight is 218 grains and measures .73" wide.



Bear had been wounded by another hunter, I went into the brush after it.

Guy

I think I'll stick with A-Frames

I'll get a better photo at some point, but here is one from June that was taken from a quartering hog taken at 140 yards. It is a 125 grain Accubond fired from a 300 Savage with a muzzle speed of 2740 fps.

I haven't hunted with them yet. Had some 350 gr A-Frames for my 45-70, they were quite accurate and when shot into water jugs, they mushroomed beautifully.

What sizes of A-Frames do you use?

Thanks, Guy

Honest question: In what way are they better?

They have a built in mechanical fail safe mechanism. That can matter.

I could & would post mine but they don’t look a bit different from all these pictures. I have recovered about eight from: Axis, Red Stag, Oryx, Whitetail, Pig. My only surprise was the uniformity of their expansion. Mine were 7mm 140’s & 308 150’s & 165’s.

Oh, really?

Have witnessed A-Frames where the "mechanical fail safe mechanism" didn't work, apparently because they were "over annealed" during the bonding process. Could provide details if you want.

Same thing happened briefly during one brief period of early AccuBond production. The difference is that Nosler reconized the problem early on, and corrected it. The head guy at Swift at the time denied it could happen--despite being sent the failed bullets.

Mule Deer, I’ve seen lots of pictures of A-Frames and read about them a bunch but never shot them myself. What was their failure mode? What did they hit to cause the failure?

There's a few different ones here. 140gn (280 Rem) 140gn (270wsm) 150gn (.308win)

John, by design these two bullets are different. Failure or not. ANY bullet can fail. But I’m not talking about a one time QC issue. Bonded core bullets without a partition or solid copper base can pancake. I have seen it happen more than once. This is because of design. Not in spite of it. When that happens penetration is severely compromised.

I’m not saying don’t use accubonds. But what I am doing is answering the question of why someone might prefer an A-Frame. Count me in as being in that camp.

Let me also say that the three biggest internal messes I’ve dealt with on big game were the result of Nosler Accubonds. Bar none. One of the times I was with a good friend who is a veterinarian. So a bloody expert in necropsy. We could not believe the shot placement and absolute destruction. It was ridiculous. This coming from a guy who has a dump truck full of experience with the Nosler BT on game.

And one more thing. I spoke to Allen Day about his experience, face to face, with Bob Nosler over this “brief” Accubond problem. It sounded like a really pleasant encounter.

Recovered from smaller bull moose at 100yds from 375/338CT.

I recovered an 8mm 200 launched by my .325 into the rear shoulder of a buck at about 40 yards. Oops. It went through the hip joint, then went the length of the deer and ended up under his chin under the hide. Retained almost exactly 70% and looked just like the pics here. I’ve got a pic somewhere I think.

I like NAB’s and use them with zero qualms.

[[/quote] John, by design these two bullets are different. Failure or not. ANY bullet can fail. But I’m not talking about a one time QC issue. Bonded core bullets without a partition or solid copper base can pancake. I have seen it happen more than once. This is because of design. Not in spite of it. When that happens penetration is severely compromised.

I’m not saying don’t use accubonds. But what I am doing is answering the question of why someone might prefer an A-Frame. Count me in as being in that camp.

Let me also say that the three biggest internal messes I’ve dealt with on big game were the result of Nosler Accubonds. Bar none. One of the times I was with a good friend who is a veterinarian. So a bloody expert in necropsy. We could not believe the shot placement and absolute destruction. It was ridiculous. This coming from a guy who has a dump truck full of experience with the Nosler BT on game.[/quote]

Pathfinder,

The failed A-Frames were 300-grain 9.3s, shot into a bull water buffalo with a wildcat about like the .375 H&H at around 50 yards. The bull was quartering toward the hunter (who was standing next to me, a friend and the ranch owner), and the bull landed in the big shoulder joint. The bull limped a few steps, then stood there looking at us again. There followed several more shots, both from the 9.3 and solids from the rancher's .458 Lott, before the bull finally expired. We didn't find any of the other 9.3s, but the first one was resting against the ribs just behind the shoulder, weighing half its original weight and about the size and shape of a thick nickel coin.

One of the interesting things about A-Frames that even some hunters don't realize is that only the front core is bonded. The rear core is not, and the best guess we could make was that somehow the front core didn't get bonded, and when it came apart the rear core broke through the partition--which isn't solid, since it has tiny hole in the middle that's filled with a little wedge of copper. Apparently the others also failed, since none of them entered the body cavity.

That does NOT mean A-Frames don't work well. They do, and I've not only used them but have seen the results from hunting partners I was standing next to on game up to Cape buffalo in size. They're very good bullets--but like the batch of AccuBonds that didn't getting annealed properly a year or two after the AB was introduced, a bonded bullet that doesn't bond is "annealed" and turned softer by the heating process.

In Nosler's case, it was traced to one worker who was hurrying his particular job, because demand was very high and he decided to speed things up. They caught it pretty quickly because they run accuracy and penetration with samples from every production run of every bullet, but some did get out.

Now, I don't know if the Accubonds that Allen Day took to Africa (which as I recall were 225-grain .338s) were from that batch. But I do know the sample bullets be brought to Nosler's plant when he met with Bob worked exactly like they should have in the penetration test run on them that day. Maybe one of Allen's boxes of AB's was from the bad batch--but the ones he brought to the Nosler Plant were not.

Bob didn't have the same impression that Allen did of the visit, partly because toward the end Allen started telling Bob he was running other aspects of the business all wrong, and Allen could straighten them out.

I must also confess that I've had some doubts about things Allen posted here on the Campfire. One time he posted about hunting elk and the .30-06 versus the .300 Winchester Magnum. At that point he claimed to have "killed almost 10 elk," and the ones shot with the .30-06 all went at least 100 yards before falling, while the .300-shot elk went less than 50 yards. I have some experience with elk hunting, and killed them with cartridges including the .270 Winchester, 7x57 Mauser, .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Weatherby Magnum--but have taken more with the .30-06 than any other round. The farthest one has gone after being shot with a .30-06 was 45 yards--and my biggest bull in both body and antlers was taken with Federal factory ammo featuring the 180-grain Trophy Bonded Tip at 250 yards. It went 20 yards before falling. In fact, the only bull I've killed that went 100 yards was an archery kill: The arrow went through both lungs, and the fletching hung up on the ribs and hide on the far side. (Oh, and in addition I've been with Eileen when she's yaken all her elk, using the .270 Winchester and .257 Roberts--and none went anywhere near 100 yards either.)

"Bonded core bullets without a partition or solid copper base can pancake." I have seen that, but AccuBonds have the same solid base as Ballistic Tips--and in the heavier, larger caliber models the base is even thicker. This involves a little history: After Nosler switched to impact-extruding jackets and bullets in the late 1980s, rather than lathe-turning the jackets, they eventually decided to redesign the interior of the heavier Partitions by moving the Partition forward, so they'd retain a higher percentage of their weight.

But they didn't make any announcement of this, at least that I can recall, so I didn't find out about the change until I took a bull bison on a ranch in Wyoming during the winter of 1998. I used a .375 H&H with 300-grain Partition handloads, and the bull was quartering away on the first shot, which entered the middle of the ribs and ended up under the hide of the far shoulder. The bull walked slowly off for a few steps, then stood there broadside, so I shot again and he went down in maybe 3-4 seconds.

Both bullets were recovered from under the hide, and retained 88% and 89% of their weight. Back home I contacted Nosler and found out about the redesign.

Have since taken quite a few animals with two other heavier, larger caliber Partitions designed the same way, the 286-grain 9.3mm and the 400-grain .416--and recovered a few of those as well. The average retained weight of all of them--9.3s, 375s and .416s is 90.6%. Yet some hunters remain unaware of this, believing that all Partitions retain around 65-70% of their weight.

When Nosler decided to make AccuBonds they also decided to make the larger ones retain more weight, so made the thick bases of the jackets even thicker. The biggest one I've used is the 250-grain 9.3mm, on a bunch of big game from Alaska to Africa, started at a muzzle velocity of 2650 fps from both the 9.3x62 and the wildcat 9.3 Barsness-Sisk that Charlie and I designed. The ONLY one I've recovered was from an angling-away shot on a 7-1/2 foot interior grizzly in Alaska: The bullet entered the middle of the ribs on the right side, and ended up under the skin at the rear of the neck on the far side, retaining 81% of its weight.

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed post for us, John! Most interesting.

Rex