Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Bonded bullets or Hornady Interlocks

The money I spend just for travel from here to Montana or Wyoming what is another $30 or $40 dollars for premium bullets? I don't care what anyone shoots or what they shoot with them but if price is causing someone not to use premiums they must not buy out of state license, fuel, motel rooms etc. The money I spend to kill anything out west is whole lot more than if I would just bought a beef.

Dink

I would say a bunch. If I ever get my chance though it will be with a premium bullet.

Dink

And that, in my opinion and experience, is a very good reason to use the little bitty chunks of solid copper based metal bullets. Going small, light, minimal, or what-have-you in the cartridge commonly calls for the toughest stuff you can use, regardless whether it be a rifle on deer, elk, or moose, or a revolver on same. With more generally accepted cartridges and applications, there simply ain't no bad hunting bullets when you use some sense.

Well said Klik.

If a guy is gonna run itty-bitty cartridges a copper bullet makes sense... though the whole endeavor is a little questionable.

I don't think a .358 qualifies as "big and slow"; it's more medium and medium. With that disclaimer my little pea-brain can't fathom how a deer could be more "impressed" than what they are by .358....... maybe equally impressed, but deer find .358 to be quite... impressive.

BW, run a reasonably heavy Accubond for the caliber at an MV under 3000 fps as you spec and fret not!

I've killed two elk with the 8mm 200-gn, and my elk pard Jerry has killed two elk with 225's from his .338. Perfect bullet performance.

You get a good or even great BC, in at least some cases there's a NBT that drops right into the load for practice, they kill fast and penetrate deep and are easy to get. Perfect!

.... where's that Nomex suit....

Cracks me up when guys can form an opinion of a bullet by killing one or two critters with it. mtmuley

Sometimes when you get poor results, one or two critters is all it takes to form an opinion. Unless your an idiot and don't catch on very quickly.

Sometimes when there are poor results, an idiot may be behind the rifle. mtmuley

Quick comeback, only took you 14 minutes.

My load development for my various rifles with the TSX/TTSX usually takes less than 10 bullets. With one of my 300WSMs it was over with the first three shots but I shot another three just to make sure.

I'm not camped out on this thread like some I guess. mtmuley

Me?

Two elk and two deer with it personally, and two elk I was involved in.

Great performance on each, and one of the deer was a test of a bullet equal to most shots on an elk...

bwinters -

There is a difference betweent the "X" and "TSX" and an even larger difference when it comes to0 the TTSX and MRX.

Which of the above provided the "less than stellar" experience?.

I ask because I, too, had less than steller experience with the old "X", couldn't bring myself to use the TSX as result, but am quite happy with the TTSX and MRX on antelope and deer. (4 of 5 went straight down.)

My first elk dropped to a 7mm 162g Hornady InterLock BTSP. As a result of that shot I quit using them and switched to Grand Slams, which performed well for the next 20 years. The only reasons I quit using them were the relatively low BC and Speer changed key manufacturing processes, going from a dual-core to a single core and essentially creating an new bullet that was unproven in my hands. Rather than test the new bullet I decided to go with true bonded-core bullets and have had no regrets. These days I run North Fork, TTSX, and MRX, all of which have proven themselves to me. My hunting buddy uses Trophy Bonded with results similar to the North Fork (not surprising given the similarities in design). I also load A-Frame, Partition, Scirocco II, and AccuBond, none of which have accounted for any game.

Cup-and-core bullets are reserved for lower velocity cartridges like my leverguns and handguns. You mention 3000fps as your minimum for such bullets, my minimum is considerably lower � around 2700fps impact, depending on bullet weight. Since I have had multiple opportunities to take very short range shots, even my .308 Win - which I only load to about 2700fps - gets North Fork and TTSX bullets.

Can cup-and-core bullets do the job? Most times �Yes�. They can also fragment and fail to reach the vitals, as none less than JB has noted. When it comes to cup-and-core bullets, bigger is better IMHO � especially as impact velocity increases. While I can�t speak from personal experience with AccuBond or similar bullets, I do like the way bonded cores perform in the North Fork and Trophy Bonded bullets, both of which have mono-metal rear sections. Both work very well on deer, lengthwise and broadside. I�ve seen the bonded portion of North Forks wiped almost completely away so that only the rear mono-metal section and the peeled-back petals remained - but that involved a lot of elk bones. There is nothing in the AccuBond design that would prevent a similar occurrence � except that when it happened there would be nothing left. Some Rick Jamison photos of various bullets at 3000fps impact velocities showed exactly that result � bonded core bullets turning into pancakes. Better than a standard cup-and-core, perhaps, but not what I�m generally looking for.

Perhaps I�ll have specifics on the AccuBond and Scirocco II bonded designs after antelope season. My group has 8 tags total and we will likely be using TTSX, AccuBonds and Scirocco II�s. Bullet weights will be .257 Roberts/110g and .30-06/150g for the AccuBond and 6.5-06AI/130g for the Scirocco II, so perhaps not � I expect complete pass-throughs.

Still, I don�t expect the AccuBond or Scirocco II bullets to perform any better than the North Fork and TTSX/MRX, and on heavier game such as elk I would not expect them to perform as well in all situations � but still better than cup-and-core alternatives.

Amen brother. Killed the biggest buck of my life, a 213" gross B&C typical muley with a 139 gr. Hornady interlokt.

I find these discussions about bullets to be very interesting. I've only hunted deer and hogs so I can't say what works best on elk or any game that size, but for me, I like the cup and core bullets better for deer sized game. It seems like to me that the faster and more explosive the bullet is, the more DRT's that I get. Our deer down here weigh on average of The two tradeoffs though are, more damage to meat especially if you hit a bone and if the bullet never exits you won't have a bloodtrail. I wouldn't know how well the X style bullets work on deer because I can't seem to get them to shoot accurately out of any of my rifles.

Hornady Interlocks are great bullets, been using them a long time but I've learned as others have here that you have to watch velocities and offer the picture below. The bullet on the far right is a 180gr Hornady Interlock recovered (operative word) from a 120lb impala shot at 80 on the point of the shoulder quartering towards out of a 300 Weatherby. Recovered weight of 79grs give or take. It electrified the impala,but my point is, it should have zipped right on through that little impala and had that been a bigger animal say an eland, Zebra, etc at similar range and velocity, the results might have been quite different. The other bullets are 300gr Swift A Frames recovered from Zebra, eland and Wildebeest and they all weighed from 298 to 265 gr for the wildebeest that was shot in the chest at 65 yards.

I love A Frames and Hornadys, but I've all but changed to TTSXs all around and push them as fast as I can and break bone. They penetrate, mushroom and blow through bone like no other bullet I've experienced. jorge

And in contrast, here are some pics of recovered Barnes TSX/TTSX's.

270gr TSXs recovered from Gemsbok posted by another member on the Africa Forum, about a 450lb animal with LOTS of muscle up front:

53gr TSX from Pat's 225'ish pound hog.





The only one I've recovered, 85gr X