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

Man, that's like waiting for the blaze to die down a little and then throwing a can of gasoline on it...........I've going for another beer and more popcorn!

MM

It was a 35 caliber ballistic tip fired into a 140 pound whitetail at 40 yards.



Yep, all the more reason to hunt with a 22 short and a pack of tracking dogs. So long as the critter dies, the bullet did what is was supposed to do, regardless if you need to track it for 3 days, 2 nights, across 4 counties, 2 rivers and one graveyard.

Gotta like that thinking.

For me, a ballistic tip that didn't expand is not only a failure but an oxymoron.

Back in the '80's, when BT's first came out, I saw several in .277 150 gr that penciled through on whitetails (up close and personal too). At the same time I was shooting .308 150's at 3100 fps and getting stellar results both on game and at the range. They've definitely changed since then.....

The deer was killed in 2003, should have caught up by then.

Mule Deer has stated several times on here and in print that the larger caliber BT's are designed to be much tougher than the smaller caliber BT's. Could be that the lungs of a 140 whitetails didn't provide enough resistance for a .35 cal BT. That might be by design and not a failure.

They did. I think it was in 2001 that I had that same bullet shot into a red fox at similar distance come completely apart...still have the jacket which rattled to a stop on the snow just beyond. The early versions were purported to be soft so they must have toughened them by 2003.

Bullets that have not failed me include the nefarious 150 grain Ballistic Tip fired out of my 7x57 at 2700fps. I have shot deer from many angles and distances with this bullet, all went down pretty fast and I have yet to recover one. My first experiences with the 100 grain partition were a bit spotty also from my 6MM Remington so I used different bullets like the Gameking, Ballistic Tips and various Interloks with good result. The early X bullets from my 338 Win mag, the 225 non coated version caused more trouble for me than any other single bullet. Good thing elk are easy to track in snow and I was much younger then. Really soured me on them and in waiting for the perfect Barnes mono to appear at a somewhat reasonable cost my hair has greyed somewhat. I have had a box of the 85 grain TSX bullets waiting to be loaded in my 6MM for several years but when the 95 grain Ballistic Tip kills so well they will probably be traded off first.

"Dead" deer do seem to run when in doubt - if they can. I was put off by a bullet I used many years ago because the deer ran as far as it did. In reality that animal sprayed blood as if out of a hose initially, then blew most of its trashed lungs out along a well marked trail it left. OTOH, I was surpised again by a BT, a 100 grainer out of a 25-06, which was quite speedy at the short distance it went to arrive, broadside, into the chest of a bull caribou. Tiny hole in; tiny hole out. As "dead" caribou often do, he just walked in circles for a bit and toppled over. Lungs were soup though.

Too funny...

Many people have become confused at to what constitutes success or failure.............

MM

Unless they don't have enough velocity.

Sure; true of any bullet,really.We have to stick within those confounded design parameters.....

They fail very consistently. If they were designed to fall apart, why doesn't Nosler use a picture of a Partition that has fallen apart instead of one with a nice mushroom and integrity?

Nothing like digging up a 14 year old thread to introduce one's self....and then have so much to say about the topic.

He'll it's got so bad some can't tell if their male or female.

JFC.

Does McDonalds sell food by showing pictures of the shiits it makes? Does your favorite auto make sell vehicles by showing pics of one totaled in a deadly crash?

Sales never was reality, you fuucking retard.

Rant over.

Atkinson maybe has it right. So does SD. I too think them over-rated. (But I don't use Barnes TSX or TTSX either, and haven't, except some 120 in .260 factory loads, which gave me 5" "groups". That gun doesn't like ANYTHING but 140's, any flavor....)

I had a 210NP.338WM fail on a moose at 100 yards, the first time I used that bullet on game. Hand load. It blew up on the shoulder blade, peppering the nearside lung with bits of lead and bone, no damage to the far side lung. Never found the base - I think it exited from the entry wound , perhaps just dropping out during the dressing process- or maybe when he stood up when I was 10 feet away. That was "interesting"! I never used them again on game, just for targets.

The 250 weight performed as they should the several times I've used them, as did the 180 in '06. I have never recovered any.

But I still quit using them, for the most part. Less expensive bullets are more accurate in my guns and do just as well on game. Not that the accuracy was out of bounds for the NP- just less so than others.

I have a box of (140?) NP bullets that came with the 7X57 that I will load up and use, after I work up some cheaper loads to get a handle on things in that arena. If they shoot well enough, and I'm pretty sure they will.

I’ve used partitions for 45 years on deer and pigs. I’ve never recovered one, haven’t lost an animal I’ve shot. If I had to get down to one bullet, it would be a partition.

Lol way to pull up a zombie for your first post.

I’m thinking he’s a bot.