Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Triple shocked!

Shot my first Barnes triple shocks today, though my 300 Dakota. Been using 180 gr X bullets for several years, with eminently satisfactory results. 79 gr RL25, Fed 215 primer gives right at 3250 fps, give or take about 25 either way, with groups hovering right around an inch at 100 yards. And three inches at 300. Not just hypothetically; I've tested it extensively.
So, you can imagine I'm not all that motivated to try other bullets. But these new triple X's kind of piqued my interest, which should gladden the heart of whoever is doing the promo work for Barnes.
Hard info is hard to come by for those, it seems, and the Campfire seems to be the recognized source. Figure on adding an extra one to three grains to achieve the same velocity; they said.
So I loaded up a few rounds each with 79, 80, and 81 grains of RL25, plus some loads for my son's '06, and headed for the range.
The first shot just freaked me out! An even 3400 fps, with the 79 grain load! Criminy!! The things that run through your mind.... But no, I hadn't screwed up on weighing charges, or anything else. Half expected to not be able to get the bolt open. Well, it was obviously not just a mild load, but it opened up without undo effort. The primer had obviously seen a bit of pressure, but in retrospect wasn't unduly flattened. I figured it had to be an erroneous reading. #2 chronoed 3396!
Man, I was freaked out and gave it up. Figured I'd come home & find some reloading data on the net. Nope. Google can't find any, at least, which in my experience means there isn't any to be found.
Gads! Opinions?
I think I'll back off a grain or two & try again. It was near 80 degrees, so maybe that's a factor. Also, one thing that disturbed me a bit is that to fit the magazine I'm seated nearly .060 off the lands. Those two bullet holes were centered about 3/4" apart, though.....
Is this too good to be true? Experience tells me it is, but hope springs eternal....

Why do you not drop to 75 gr and work up. The same happened to me using the (159gr) Groove bullets. I substituted my 168 XLC data and the first load was XX gr of RL 25 and yielded 3800 fps. Flattened primers but that is it. Bolt opened with the pinky. Dropped 2 full grain and I got my magic load. 3600 fps and .735" @ 200 yds! 97 gr of RL 25 gives 3550 fps and 1.4" at 200 yds! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

You will get higher velocities with Triple Shocks. I have been working up from "standard" loads in several calibers and always end up with more velocity than expected, even with those loads. For instance, am loading 140's in a pre-'64 M70 .270 with 24" barrel and getting 3100+ with 58-59 H4831, when 3000 is considered about the most possible with standard bullets.

Barnes has been finding the TSX's run right around the XLC's as far as pressure and velocity.

All right!
That's the kind of XXX content I come here for!!
I'll back off a bit and start over. I got a feeling I'm going to like these bullets....
Hey Mule Deer; I was in your neighborhood yesterday doing some scouting. Not my usual elk haunts, sort of a Plan B (or maybe E or F). Kind of a fun day; lunch at Wheat Montana, then poking around that Copper City BLM stuff, and further explorations that shall remain un-named ;-). Anyway, you crossed my mind. Drop me a line sometime, & I'll buy you your beverage of choice when I'm in the neighborhood. My neighbor's ex, Anne McBee told me once she went to school with you. Oh, the stories.... ;-).

Mule Deer,

Did you notice Clay's topic on X vs XXX where the petals tore off the XXX when fired into dry newspaper? One firing doesn't prove anything so I wondered if you had done any testing. I believe Clay is going to test a few more bullets and see if there is any consistency.

HogWild

The Barnes tech dept recommends using X (not the XLC!) data adding 1 to two grains over the listed X bullet data for the XXX.

I am around most of the time except when I'm hunting, shooting or fishing, which is about 60-70% of the time from now through December. Give me a call if you plan on being up this way. I'm in the book.

How is Anne doing? I went to our 30th high school reunion a couple years ago but evidently she wasn't there. Say hi if you see her!

The Copper City BLM stuff is interesting. Hunted it a few years ago for Huns but since it's been so dry haven't been back, which may be a mistake. Have heard there were a few coveys of chukars around there at one time (there are a few up this way, though I have never seen 'em).

HogWoild--

There shouldn't be any difference in "petal-action" between the old X and the Triple Shock, since the TSX the same bullet with grooves added.

To tell the truth, I have never been able to see much difference in what an X or Fail Safe does to game as long as it expands, whether it retains it's petals or not. Very few get recovered to tell anyway, but have seen them with all four missing, yet the animal went down in a heap with a big wound channel. Have a .30 165 Fail Safe my wife killed a gemsbuck with that lost all 4 petals as it went lengthwise through the spine. The front of the bullet measures a flattened .41, which put a big hole through his innards just as if it had petals.
Sort of like a flat-nose cast bullet, except the head is bigger than the shank.

The only TSX I've seen used on game so far was the 100 .25 my wife put through a pronghorn buck last week in Colorado. Don't know if it lost any petals or not, because it went on through, but it made a major hole in the buck!

Rimrock,
I have never worked with a 300 Dakota so I have no idea how those powder charges stack up. I will tell you this. The guys I shoot 1000 yd BR with played with R25 A LOT. Be careful with it. For some reason it seems MORE prone to pressure excursions than any other slow powder. It's like the pressure curve doesn't follow a normal rise but suddenly peaks when a threshold is reached. I know one guy who ruined 10 pieces of very pricey ( and hard to come by at the time) pieces of Warbird brass when a two grain increase ( we are talking powder charges in the 100+ grains) blew all his primer pockets out before he realized that it was too hot (chronograph showed only mild velocity increases. A local custom loader who loads LOTS of this big stuff said they learned a lot about R25 the hard way.

Might be a tincy bit slow for the Dakota ? I can't imagine that you can't get more velocity out of R22 and possibly even R19 but its a crap shoot as to which one is more accurate.

As for the XXX I guess Nobody in the Southwest carries them yet as I have yet to see a box on anyone's shelf !

Thanks for the tip, and I guess I'm lucky I didn't cross that line with the 79 gr load.
I used RL22 at first. No complaints. Just like 25 better, and exactly why I came to that conclusion has been purged from my memory banks ;-). It's been a few years. I believe I was getting a tad more velocity with less pressure signs. And yeah, I was miking case heads and all that rigamarole. Or maybe it was just that I like seeing a case full of powder, and that 3250 number pop up on the chrono.
Further experimentation is on tap for this weekend. We were going to take a camping trip up around the Misery Breaks, but... The kid got invited to accompany a pal on what should be a slammer upland bird expedition up around Malta, and I decided with bow season opening next weekend my time would be better off spent staying home & working. That, & some load development.

Did you find the magic load?

I wound up at 78 grains of RL25, which is producing about the same velocity as my original 79 gr load with regular X's, but notably tighter groups.
First animal to fall to that load was an antelope doe this past weekend. My son's buddy Aaron hadn't really brought enough ammo for his 280 antelope hunting, which as most of you probably know is a serious error <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />. He'd winged a buck, which to his credit he ran down and eventually dispatched. Went through a lot of ammo in the process, though...
So I let him use my 300 on his doe. The evening prior to the opener we'd seen a bona-fide trophy, one of the better Montana antelope I've seen. He was on private land that costs $$ to access, but was within spitting distance of a State section. Maybe we should have went back there first thing opening morning, but we had some more solid options to check out first, which resulted in two bucks for the boys and a doe for Cody. No Booners for Bill, though.... So Aaron and I hiked up into the aforementioned state section looking for Mr. Big. It could have worked, as we got onto presumably the same bunch, and had a solid rest over a boulder with them standing about 250 yards out. The buck with the bunch was only about a 13"er, though, so I held off. Handed the rifle to Aaron, but by then the antelope had thought better of standing around and had disappeared over a little ridge. He ran over there and opened fire. I couldn't see 'em, but reportedly they were sort of cantering along at about 250 yards. Kid made a pretty decent shot, at least on the second try. He was standing, offhand. I had only the sound to go by, and the first shot is just your usual resonant Ka-Boom. The second boom was followed instantly by this terrific "Whack!". That sound is hard to describe, but it leaves no doubt that grievous damage has been inflicted! He nailed her perfectly behind the shoulder, and you could have stuck a softball or maybe even cantaloup in the exit hole. She never knew what hit her. So anyway, I know, doe antelope aren't exactly Cape Buffalo, but it was still pretty impressive.
For me, I am just not motivated to drop the hammer on an antelope unless it's taxidermy potential, and that failed to materialize, at least before I had to get the boys back to civilization. Lots of bucks with decent mass and length below the prong, but a tendency to fizzle out above it. We'd secured access to this 85,000 acre place that reputedly has good trophy potential. Feh... Bad intel or maybe just bad luck, but it turned out to be darn near devoid of speed goats. Very odd, as they were in abundance just about everywhere else we looked. I'd like to head back out there again, but am having truck problems and as usual am having trouble rationalizing making another trip out east, given my list of other stuff that needs to get done before the deer/elk opener on the 26th. So, I suspect elk will be the next species to get Triple Shocked.

In the Phoenix metro area, Randalls Firearms (51st Ave and Dunlop) carries the Barnes XXX. I bought two boxes in 30cal 180gr and developed loads for a pre64FW 06 in the cooler climes of Prescott.

With 59gr of Reloder 19, 210 Primers, WW brass, the MV average of six five shot strings was an impressive 2,822fps. What I hadn't expected was that it was the most accurate bullet, too, with an average of all six groups at 1.1MOA.