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Can any of you gun writers who are knowledgeable explain why Winchester has suddenly minimized production of the old Silvertip bullet (not the nosler version, the old one). Was this a decent hunting bullet? If so, I see Corelock still around, and was wondering why Winchester stopped making this bullet as it did seem to have it's loyal followers. My father in Law swears by this bullet. Comments?

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Can't answer your question as to "Why?", but have loaded and shot several thousand of them in 270 Winchester and killed everything from sheep to bears and huge bull moose.

Sure never had any problem with them. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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The thin tin "silver" jacket covering the nose over the lead core fit down underneath the nose of the copper jacket is more costly and time consuming to manufacture than the plastic tipped bullets of today and offered no real advantage except to look kinda cool. Supposedly prevented the nose from being battered up in the magazine and was supposed to make it a little tougher. I shot my first deer with a 180gr silvertip out of my grandfathers 300H&H at about 50 yds, the thing blew his ribs all to hell and only a few bits of shrapnel penetrated his lung on one side. I had a long tracking job that day. It was just a little forkhorn buck. Couldn't believe it, lost my confidence in them right there. On the other hand my grandfather used the same bullet for years with the same rifle for moose, deer and bears and never had anything like that happen.

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bushrat,



Interesting that you mention the 180 Silvertip in the 300 H&H. I was just going thru my thirty year old collection of recovered bullets fired into water filled cartons and that bullet really blew up at close range.



I would have to go back and look at the data but it was very disapointing.


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Never used them except they were the only thing available for my 358Win.
200gr. silver tips. Didn't shoot worth a damn through my Savage 99, used them for practice then reloaded with a much more accurate bullet.


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I'm sorry to correct you guys, but actually, due to all the werewolves having been shot out, there is no longer any need for silver bullets.

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The old Silvertip was, in some models and some calibers, very reliable. In others it was a catastrophe. You never knew until you shot something.

I have a friend who's shot dozens of elk with 130 Silvertips in the .270. His father bought 1000 of them way back when and they're very reliable: expand and penetrate just like Nosler Partitions.

At other times other makes/calibers of Silvertips have come apart like varmint bullets. Another friend had to shoot a brown bear 11 times before it quit, mostly because very few bullets even made it through the wet hair on the big bruin. This with 300-grain .375's! I personally had a 150-grain ST from a .30-06 come apart on the shoulder of a forkhorn mule deer back in the 1980's, a little buck that wouldn't have drssed much over 100 pounds.

I believe Winchester eventually recognized the erratic reputation the bullet had and moved on to better things.

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mule_deer,

There was always something magical about those silver tip'd bullets. When I turned 12, I started deer hunting where I grew up in Pa.. My father bought me an '06 and the load I used, as did most everyone else that we hunted with, was that yellow WInchester box with the magic words "Silvertip" on it.

Hell, I thought that was all there was !!

That 30 cal. 180 Silvertip was a lightening bolt on Pa. deer !!

I actually tried to find some to handload in my fathers Pre-64 Mod 70 '06, just for nastalgia, but couldn't find any.

You of course are right in your assesment of Winchesters decision on ending the "Silvertip" line. There will always be a fond spot in my childhood memory for that magic silvertip'd bullet.

Tony

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That 200 gr Silvertip bullet for the .358 Winchester was always a favorite of mine. I have shot dozens of deer and more with it and always got penetration. It's the only load that a deer never got up after falling unlike all the other cartridges which includes the 7mm RM and 30-06.

It was as accurate as other bullets in my two 99f's and M70. I would still be loading them if I could get them but Winchester dropped selling them as components quite a while ago now.

However Ray Atkinson says that the Silver Tips in the .358 are "As soft as butter" He and I disagree on this.

But while looking thru my collection of bullets recovered from shooting into water filled cartons I found a 250 gr Silvertip fired as a factory load in the 358. That bullet lost a lot of metal and expanded to about 8/10 of an inch. Since it starts out at only about 2200 fps. it seems that Ray is right on the 250 as one would want that one for heavy game.

Like a poster above I too have many good memories of bucks falling dead and staying there when hit by just one Silvertip.

Like anything else it has to be done right. Many good ideas out there it's the doing them that's the real achievment.


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My Silver Tip story is from long ago and 1 head of game, I got a 300 Weatherby back in 1969 and I bought a bunch of 180 gr Silver Tips because they were suppose to be pretty good, they were cheap compared to Noslers at the time, and I was broke because I bought the rifle. They shot ok as I recall, and the one head of game I shot with it, A moose in Newfoundland, in 1970 died, we found that the bullet sort of broke up on a rib. pieces of it put a hole in the heart, not a big hole but big enough. Ran a bit, and no blood trail. After that I shot nothing but 200 gr. Nosler Partitions. I learned something of value from that, while those silver tips were a bargin at the time, they almost prove to be to expensive. I would have been way better off with two boxes of Noslers at the time than those 500 sliver tips I bought for just about the same money. I was thinking about per shot costs rather than what a Moose Hunt cost back then. You live and you learn. They may have been fine out of a 308 or 30-06. Learned another thing to about High Velocity too.


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I've been using the 150 gr in .300 Savage in my M99 G for years and they've never let me down. Maybe the don't blow up because they're not being pushed as fast as they would be in a 30-06 or a .308.


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I bought a bunch of old 270 130gr SilverTips a few years ago. They work great on deer for me.

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"... due to all the werewolves having been shot out, there is no longer any need for silver-bullets."

I'm afraid I must reject that conclusion ....

... Silver Bullet

(Alex, I'd like out-of-production bullets, for 200)

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hicountry ... Your post also made me take a brief nostalgic drive down memory lane, because my dad used to load those silver-tips in all the 30-cals we shot. So I wandered down to the reloading-dungeon and found two full boxes (50 each), labeled:

30-06 Springfield 180-gr Silvertip Bullets
Western Cartridge Co.
Div. of Olin Industries In.c
East Alton Ill. USA

Same lot # 95DF51
(I weighed 5 on the Dillion electronic and they averaged 180.1 grs )

(hicountry) ... You have first choice if you would like these. PM me an offer for the pair of boxes and you could soon be makin re-loading memories.

... Silver Bullet

(Barnes-TSX ... when only through-n-through will do)

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I've revived this old one because I plan to try these in my 300 Savage. IMO "skidrow" is right about them being velocity sensitive and "mule deer" recalls that some worked well in some cartridges and some didnt. I've read many stories about good performance with 130 gr. 270 on elk and many stories about bad performance in 30 cal. My take is that these were intended to give improved long range performance to standard calibers. They were touted for their ballistic performance beyond 200 yards and as everyone now recognizes they were the first "ballistic tip" bullet. W-W ballistic tables promised at least a hundred fps more retained velocity over PowerPoint performance at 300 yards. However, not long after Silvertips arrived, magnums came on the scene and changed the whole formula. The weakness of the Silvertip (too much expansion at close range/hi velocity) would only be exacerbated by magnum velocities, effectively enlarging the Silvertips failure envelope and as JB said, the two combined could make close shots a disaster. With the exception of the 130/270, slow velocities seem to have been best for them and you hear many more success stories with Silvertips in 30-30, 30-40, 300 Sav and 358 Win. I've also read good things about the 100gr. 250 Sav Silvertip load. A 160 or 175 .284 Silvertip would probably make a very good 7x57 bullet except they never made a 7mm version; they damn sure made that 130gr./.270 bullet work though. I think Magnums brought the Silvertip experiment to a close but like the Remington Bronze Point, there are a few loadings that did work very well.

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I have a box of 140gr 270's and have been reluctant to try them because of this reputation


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They were a great bullet in the 130 grain loading for the 270. The 30 calibers were great in the 300 Savage and the 30/40 Krag but not so great in the 300 Mag. I still have a couple of boxes which I use in the 30/40 and they work fine. The truth is, almost any cup and core bullet works great at 30/40 velocities (180's at 2450). GD

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Have them in several diameters. They behaved as expected of a cup/core having alot of exposed lead. Neither blow-ups nor failures to open on deer out back using the 180 gr .308" at 2650 fps MV and 300 gr .375" at 2550 fps MV.

Plus they look cool, especially the 250 gr .338s and 300 gr .375s.

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My perceptions of the Silvertips differ a little from most fellows. I worked a Fish and Game check station for a couple years way back when in the '60's...so heard lots of stories, same day they happened, and personally examined the carcasses. Keep in mind, this is steep timber country so shots are generally under 150 yards. Silvertips did very well in the 30-30's, very well in the 30-40's, moving up to the .300 Savage occasionally you would hear some complaints, same with the 'new' .308 but when you got up to the '06 and 150 gr bullet...I saw some spectacular surface wounds, and ruined meat...other than the fact the deer was dead, you could call it a bullet failure. The .270 was never very popular here for some reason, so I cannot comment. But my conclusion of the .30 cal Silvertips was as velocity went up, controlled expansion went down.


Well this is a fine pickle we're in, should'a listened to Joe McCarthy and George Orwell I guess.
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I bought a half a case of the 180gr 30/06 factory load when I bought my first 30/06. They were pretty erratic on game. I had two from the same box behave 180deg apart in one week.

The first one I shot up the ass of the biggest whitetail buck I’ve ever killed. It penetrated stem to stern and left a 3/4” exit hole at the base of his neck. Two days later I shot a large pig right in the shoulder from approximately the same range, 150-175 yards. It completely flattened and failed to break the shoulder blade.

I decided after that I wasn’t shooting any more game with them, in fact that’s what started me reloading. Shot a coyote with one I had left and it literally cut him 90 percent in half!

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