Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Another Nosler Partition Failure!?

What?!?! I don't suppose there is a good reason then that the Nosler Partition is still the standard by which most every other bullet is judged by? I've killed lots of critters, mostly large northern midwest whitetails and mulies with a Partition and I believe I have a total of two recovered bullets in my collection. I find it quite rare that a Partition stays in an animal, even at 300 yds. Most of the deer shot with the Partition were shot with 100 gr. 6mm Paritions or 165 gr. .308" Partitions. If I were to go on a trophy hunt for an animal that "really counts" my first choice would be a Partition, hands down, no contest.
Selmer

One time I put together an ill advised load for my .300 supermag. It was a 200 NP over 98.5 grains of AA 8700. Ball powders don't compress as we all know and this load tested the full case capacity and stretched it a bit. It didn't shoot hot though....well it flattened the edges of the primers a bit.

I didn't have a chrony at the time but from the impact point spread at 100, 200, and 300 yards it was moving out pretty well.

I made a poor shot on a bull with that load the first day I had it in the field. He turned to leave and I took a followup that was pretty near a texas heart shot. Bullet hit him in the ham, shattered the femur, traveled inside the body but barely inside the abdomen, tore through one lung, exited the brisket and then distributed it's remaining energy into the surrounding environment. Despite the shattered femur and the long trip to the exit wound I had what I always got from those bullets, a .30 cal entrance and about a .70 cal exit wound and a dead animal I didn't have to track.

I can't recall recovering a bullet inside a big game animal since my first deer with a 30-30. My 30-06, .270, and .300 mag never have left one in an animal. Neither did my wife's .284 or my sister's .270. My buddy shot a buck with his 7 MM mag through a 6" diameter tree and still didn't get the bullet back.

What do you guys do to stop them so fast?

You're coming awfully close to saying you want a solid, and in the case of dangerous game, that's neither a bad, nor, uncommon thing.

For ANY non-dangerous game, however, that just doesn't wash and, IMHO, is a pretty big stretch.

I will agree, however, as I've said in other posts, all things being equal, I think the nod does go SLIGHTLY in the direction of the X (TSX) for having more potential and maybe, forgiveness, too. But that's a slight nod.................

MM

I couldn't agree more. Placement is the key, whether it's a core-lokt, partition, or X. One thing's for certain with the X, however. You never know if the petals are going to break off or not.

Mule Deer,
I get the impression from several of your posts that you have a slightly negative impression of Barnes bullets. True or false?

I tried the Barnes X when it first came out. I couldn't get acceptable accuracy. I was talking to the smith that built my rifle about it and he said, "I've had to replace three barrels this year that I shouldn't have had to. The only common thing between them was lots of Barnes X bullets down the bore"

Two strikes was enough for me. Got the Noslers flying well out both of my go to rifles and never looked back. I keep toying with messing around with something new and fancy (Lost River, Trophy Bonded) and every time my wife (occaisional hunting partner) says, "What you have works and works well. Why waste the money?"

I've heard lots of '[bleep]' stories about Barnes bullets myself, some from smiths, mostly all from those that have never used them.

Have yet to have one destroy a tube, not shoot, not expand.

Course it's fair easier for folks to guess.

Coworker had a couple X bullets pencil through. He switched to Berger VLDs...go figure.

To each their own.

I don't think Mule Deer has a negative opinion of Barnes bullets, but I think his it trying to dissaude any readers of the idea that Partitions are less than premium bullets that don't penetrate. But I don't want to words in his mouth, I'm sure he will chime in again.
Selmer

Joran Smith,

To the contrary, I am a great admirer of Barnes bullets. My wife and I have shot several pickup loads of game with them, and I've also watched them in action when shot by other hunters. I am also prety convinced that Barnes had solved the accuracy problems of the original X several years before the TSX appeared, because I was getting outstanding accuracy with several origin al X's from 6.5mm to 9.3mm diameter in the 3 years or so before then. I have also never had an X fail to expand, even on small game like prongorn at quite long range, though I have some reliable friends who that's happened to.

But I grow a little weary of people who tell all of us that the X is the only bullet to use, or that it always drops game right there. If you use X's long enough some animals will go quite a ways before dropping. This is precisely because the X does less damage, on average, to the heart-lung area than other bullets that lose some weight or open up wider. Thus the exit hole of the X is sometimes required for a blood trail.

Different bullets do different things. They are alwasy a compromise, and I have found the Partition and the X to be very good tools, though they act somewhat differently on game. The differencse isn't a large as some would have us believe, though.

I use the quote because I am lazy nothing else. I used the old plain Barnes X twice and both times got a pass thru and a small tracking job. Vitals were damaged for sure but I went back to Partitions. "IF" I were to hunt animals that might tear me up I would use the newest TTSX.

My .02

I keep hering about thefailures of the partitions and these statements keep being backed upby photos of spent partition bullets recovered from game animals. Maybe I'm a fool but if you recover the animal, in order to dig the bullet from it's hide, that means you have a dead animal right?. How is that a bullet failure?

BPHC2, a fine - and logical - question. However, emotions and wanting to complain are rarely ruled by logic!
Selmer

The previous four posts above this one are dead on as far as I'm concerned. I have used both X and partitions over the years and both have done their jobs. Anytime I recover a bullet, and I have recovered X bullets as well as partitions from animals, I consider the bullet doing its job. In order to recover the bullet, the animal was dead and was found. As I said in another post elsewhere on the Fire, there are no degrees of dead when hunting.

If you shoot an animal and don't find the animal is it safe to conclude the bullet didn't do it's job?

It's safe to conclude somebody didn't do their job...

If you shoot and animal through the lungs and you watch the critter run 100 yards and than walk for a bit, then stop and finally fall over after being on it's feet for 5 minutes after the shot, cut it open and only find a caliber size hole through the lungs with no sign of expansion, but the bullet exited, is that a failure?

Unless it was a solid/FMJ I'd say yes.

Yep, shooter failure - you shoulda nailed a shoulder.

Well, I guess my opinion would lean maybe more towards the shooter's failure. You don't say which bullet you used. I don't feel you can blame the bullet because, as you stated yourself the deer did expire and you were able to collect it. The basic job of any "hunting" bullet is to do just that.

When I was in college I worked for a commercial vegetable farmer and was licensed by the state to do his crop damage culling. The state issued me anywhere from 5-20 carcass tags a year, thus over four summers I was able to kill aproximately 50 deer. Part of the job was working with state biologists and conservation officers, so I got to see not only basic field dressing which I did but was also able to be present at what basically amounted to a "field autopsy" of the animal.

During those four summers I shot deer with everything from shotguns and slugs to .223 rifles up to a 375 Hand H magum and numerous different bullets. The two consistant things I observed where, deer shot in the shoulder always had some meat damage no matter what bullet or caliber was used, and, Deer hit in the lung/heart area behind the shoulder, did not always drop on the spot, most of them ran between 40 and a couple hundred yards.

one deer that was shot in the head by a .223 FMJ ran for almost three hundredyards before she stopped and offered me a broad side shot. I shot her through the shoulder with a 300 weatherby and she dropped. I learned it wasn't the bullet's fault (even though I agree a FMJ bullet is not a good choice as a hunting bullet, the ammo for the .223 was provided for me by the state and that was what was given), It was my fault two folds one for using that bulet and one for trying a head shot when I could have waited.