Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Any Barnes X failures?

Brad
Have you gotten your elk with that lw 6.5?
Performance?
R

Rick our season only started Saturday, and I've only hunted one day with it. I'm pretty relaxed about hunting elk these days, and pick my days carefully and sparingly, so I'm not sure how much I'll even hunt. So, we'll see.

What are you using for a bullet in the 6.5 Brad?

130 NAB, but had I been able to find the 127 LRX I would have been happy to use that. No time for load development, I threw one load together, sighted at 200 yards, and called it good. But I've got a pile of 6.5 bullets to try.

I was wondering. That’s a great bullet and for some reason always seems to shoot as well in a few 264’s for me.

I don’t see it doing less than what a 270 has been doing for years.

I use or have used TTSXs in 6mm, 6.8, .308, 9.3, and .416 diameters. Never had a failure on game. My only complaint is they’ve often been finicky to find an accurate load with. One nice thing about Barnes is if you’re looking for a certain bullet you can call and they’ll tell you when it’s scheduled for production, which certainly helps with planning. They’ll also tell you the MEV (min expansion velocity) for each bullet. They ought to just list that on the bullet boxes though.

If Nosler keeps up their scalper pricing and spotty availability I’ll be using a lot more Barnes products. What’s in the water in Oregon? Leupold sucks now and Nosler seems headed that way.

Today's 145 LRX on an elk at 433, quartering shot. Retained weight 143.9

Here is one of three TTSX’s I have recovered out of scores of deer and hundreds of pigs. A nephew shot this buck that was 210# on the scales facing him at a slight angle. The entrance was on the front edge of the near side shoulder. The bullet was found under the hide of the offside rear quarter. Here it is as it is being cut out.

Been shooting Barnes bullets and killing critters with them for 18 years now. Over 100 deer, hogs and coyotes in that time. Never once had a failure. I’ve only found 1 bullet and that was from a 250 gr. T-EZ muzzleloader bullet which performed flawlessly. I load them for numerous guns and calibers. I’m a fan of them.

I never had an issue with the 168 TSX out of the 30/06 or the 200 TSX in the Whelen. Both worked great the half dozen times I used them. The 350 TSX was also excellent at 2550fps when I was shooting the 458WM a bunch.

I have a much wider experience with the 53gr .224 out of the 223 and 222Mag, probably around 40-50 pigs and deer. Never had one I felt like didn’t expand or failed in any way, recovered very few and those had worked as designed. But they give very narrow wound channels compared to my experience with conventional cup and core bullets from the same cartridges and rifles. I’ve found them to be slower killers than cup and cores on animals up to 300lbs unless large bone is hit. I’m not likely to buy any more as they don’t fill any need for me.

I have never recovered a ttsx out many 7 mag 150’s. Never had a failure but had a weird occurrence one time. Deer hunting and a lone coyote ruining my hunt gave up on the deer hunt and decided to get revenge. Shot him broad side 150 yards. The fur blew up like I shot a dove super close. Furr everywhere of course couldn’t find the bullet. Not sure if he turned his face in front of bullet and it went down the length of the skull and then through the body. I didn’t see that in the scope but the body wound wasn’t clean entrance and exit either. Maybe the skull shaved off a petal or something.

Like I said not really a failure he was dead immediately but strange.

I hope you get a bull - I'm curious how that bullet works on elk. I picked up a 6.5 earlier this and it likes various 140s but can't find any more 140 ABs.

Hi Bill, you can find 140 AB's here:

https://www.shootersproshop.com/6-5mm-140gr-accubond-50ct-blem.html

A .338 225gr TTSX. This wasn’t a failure. It was the third in about as many seconds to strike the moose in my avatar. Impact velocity (out of a 26” barreled .340 Wby) was around 3,040 fps.

This is the same bullet next to a .243 recovered from a Virginia deer:



The first two TTSXs went through about 4 feet of moose and exited.

The one in the pics went through about 5 feet of moose, entering in the right-rear rib area and and ended up smashing through the front-left shoulder and stopping under a considerably-thick hide before coming to rest.



For reference, the rifle is just a hair under four-feet long.

That 225gr TTSX now weighs 196gr. So, it lost about 13% of its mass. So, TTSXs can be recovered and will shed a little weight if they go through an extreme amount of meat and bone.

FWIW, I’ve been told that the rifle/bullet choice wasn’t that great because I “had” to shoot it three times.

In hindsight, after the subsequent skinning and butchering autopsy, I am fairly confident that the first shot would have brought the moose down. But I wasn’t 100% sure where I hit it at the time, as the moose was running. And I wasn’t going to save ammo and risk that dinosaur getting away as long as it was still on its feet.

Great moose MarineHawk! I used 250gr TSX's from my 338 Win Mag with excellent results, pretty much all of them DRT! But never had a beast like that in front of me, very nice!

I use TSX, or TTSX, in multiple calibers, from coyote to moose, and have never been disappointed with the bullets.

Outstanding moose. And, I would consider that bullet performance also outstanding.
I shoot them until they fall, regardless of bullet or the cartridge that it was sent from.

143.9 retained vs 145 gr "rated" weight. Curious whether 143.9 shouldn't be considered 100% weight retention if the bullet came in a little on the low side (0.75% lower than 145.0 gr).

Either way, great bullet & great performance!

Terrific moose MH!! Quite jealous here. Returned from our Wawa, Ontario moose camp empty handed last week. Other two hunters in our group saw two bulls 600 yards off, but they didn't come in any closer to present a shot. Yours is a beast! What did it measure?

I'd wonder if the 140 BT's won't work great. Pretty tough 264 bullet in my opinion.

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