Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 35 Bullets

last year I started posing some information about 35 bullets and my big 358 Norma. Winter got in the way and I have completed some high speed tests on some good candidates. I under-estimated the ammount of wet phone books needed and will need to resupply before getting all bullets tested.

Media: Water Soaked NWT Phone Books allowed to drip dry for 1 hour.

Bullet/ Impact Velocity/Expansion/Retained Weight/ Penetration
225 X/ 2760ft/sec/ .502x.772 224.9 14.7"
250 Barnes O 2630 unrecorded 86/jacket,46/Core 10.9"
250 Speer 2655 .565x.755 183.4 13.25"
250 Nosler 2675 .605x.655 183.6 13.7"
250 North Fork 2631 .642x.735 222.7 14.7"
275 Hawk 2495 74x.835 120/Jacket,94 Core 13.25
300 Barnes O 2364 .80x.84 280.3 13.8"

What the numbers don't show is the wound volume which I wasn't prepared to measure but was very interesting to witness. The out of production 300 Grain Barnes (.049 Jacket) is amazing...it tore the third-fifth phone books almost in two and created an incredibly disruptive track.

The Hawk made a good mushroom but expanded to the heel with the core acting as a hat loosely attached to the top of the jacket. The 250 Barnes O also overexpanded with the jacket preceding alone limiting penetration.

Not much to choose between the Nosler partition and the 250 Speer....the Speer bullet is quite reliable at this impact speed but can be made to lose it's jacket on harder media that the Nosler will survive. However, the Speer bullet has a very good reputation on Moose and is much more effective than Hot Core bullets in other calibers I have tested.

The North Fork and Barnes X tied for penetration with the North Fork making a wider hole. The Barnes X made only a moderate hole in the first half of travel but past 7" left the widest hole.

I wish they would bring back the Barnes 300 grainer.

I'll take some pictures when I can.

Id point out that the speer 250 is the only standard bullet design listed, and it does very well compared tp bullets easilly costing two to three times more.....I loaded for others in our elk camp, and used those 250 grain 35 caliber speer bullets work great on the 358 win and 35 whelen

I was going to test the 250 Hornady Spre and RN and the 250 Norma Triclad but the phone books were just wrecked. In some cases I couldn't even get two shots into the front phone-books because the wound channels were immense (300 Barnes), In other cases two shots. The phone books further back could take several shots if I was careful to keep shots well separated. In any case I was going through twice the phonebooks as used when testing 6.5 bullets a few weeks ago( 140 Nosler Partition rule and all tested 160 RN's core separate when impacting faster than 2400-2500.)

I was pleasantly impressed with the Speer.

Which speer bullets were used the standard sp or the grand slams?

The standard Speer 250 gr Spitzer is an amazing bullet.

We have used it for more than thirty years, in everything from the 358 Win at 2200 fps to the 358 Norma Magnum at almost 2900. Big moose, mountain caribou, both bears, bison, they all go down in a hurry.

Rarely do we use a second shot. It just plain works! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Ted

"The standard Speer 250 gr Spitzer is an amazing bullet. "

Id second that! in the 358 win (2300fps) and 35 whelen (2500fps) its expansion and penetration charicteristics on both ELK and DEER seem to be close to ideal at the ranges my friends and I USUALLY hunt at (10 yards -250 yards)

North61,
If you ever get around to it, would love to see how the Woodleigh 310gr RN performs in the 358Norma.
Cheers...
Con

I have some Grand Slams ordered but the bullets I have been testing are the standard Speer hotcore spitzer. The bullet is very accurate too. That said, after a lot of wet paper testing I am going with the 250 Nosler partition for Moose (sorry Ted). Call is superstition but I have had such good luck with partitions from 60 grain .223 to 300 grain 45 caliber bullets that I just can't make the step to a standard bullet even if it has outperformed my expectations. I will be using the 250 Speers for caribou and will build up confidence from there.

Trying an attachemnet of the bullets (pretty crappy I used the viewfinder which didn't center the shot.

Sorry folks the attachement appears not to show the picture when downloaded. Sorry... I don't have the time to fart with it.

Actually the time I could find the technical ability is harder to find.

North61,

Could you please comment on the 225 grain BX a bit further? This is the bullet I have used in my 35 Whelen, and have been very satisfied with it. It appears from your tests, that the bullet penetrated well and stayed together.

I had wondered about the 300 gr Barnes as a friend had given me an old box to try. I loaded up a bunch for bear hunting, but no bear came out and I have since just shot them up.

BigBullet

An early generation of X bullets (1990 ) did not open up at much less than 2000ft/sec. Every later lot I have tested from open up down to 1800 or so.

My latest lot has the funky blue coating and do seem to operate at lower pressure allowing a little more powder and a slight increase in velocity.
haven't tested the Triple Shocks but they look like the best X yet.

You would need something much bigger than a Norma to seriously stress these bullet..In 225 grain it penetrates about as well as the best 250 grainers leaving less destruction in the first half of travel than other bullets of the but more in the second half.

The 250 Nosler Partition or Speer for instance left holes over 30% larger about 3-5 inches in. By the 7-9" zone the wound volume had reversed in the Barnes X favour.

The standard bullets have a wound channel that looks like a slightly elongated beet in cross section while the X bullet looks more like a carrot. Both have the wide end towards the front but the X is more nearly cylindrical in cross section.

What this means on game I have no idea as I haven't shot a lot of game with X's ( I always seem to pick something else).

My guess is that a lead/copper bullet will give quicker kills on side lung shots where you can take advantage of that big destruction pulse. The X would be better if the shot placement requires some penetration before entering the kill zone. Quartering shots for instance.

Ironically I just tested a few 35 caliber bullets myself the other evening (in a 358 Winchester). They included only cup and core type bullets including the Hornady 250s, both SP and RN; the Speer 250 SP Hot-Cor and 220 FN; the 225 Nosler Ballistic Tip; the 225 Sierra BTSP GameKing, and the 200 Remington PSP CoreLokt.



The test media was Beadex� brand drywall compound. Some might question this material as a bullet testing choice. The material had been discarded in a local public dump and I hated to see it go to waste. It was the type of material which comes packed in plastic bags which are placed in cardboard boxes. The boxes were mostly soggy or missing altogether but the compound itself was still in the bags. To test the bullets I stuffed two bags of media in a five gallon bucket, stepped back to 15 yards and fired the shot. In every case the bag in front was blown around considerably with some of the "mud" sometimes reaching my position. I attempted to do a brief, simple search for the bullets after every shot but it was not very thorough due to the messy nature of the media. Most bullets seemed to be getting into or through the second bag which I wasn't changing as it seemed to retain most of its substance.

The bullets were each loaded over a maximum charge for the 250s of 44.0 grains IMR 4064. After one sample of each had been fired, I did a final search in what was now a considerable mass of "stuff" on the ground, then I scooped up the second bag of material which was still a bag, though a holey one, and brought it home for the wash out.

Unfortunately, I did not find either the 200 Remington or the 250 Speer but maybe I'll find them if I go back and look again as the rains of September will likely wash them out. There were no big surprises. The 35 caliber may not be the most popular of calibers but it sure has its share of good bullets- and these aren't even the "good" ones!

Klikitarik, I remember your post about the 225 Ballistic Tip losing it's jacket on a fox. They really do lose their cores easily. Very nice photo...I gotta learn to do that!

I had just posted in the Big Game forum about my bear hunt that I just returned from, in which I took a 2 1/2 year old bear with a 225 gr. Sierra BTSP from a .35 Whelen. It was a one shot kill, but the jacket and core separated on a straight broadside shot at 65 yards. Found the jacket under the hide on the off side, never found the core.

I have heard many good reports on the 35 BALTP on deer and don't doubt its effectiveness. I have used the 33 cal 200 grain BALTP on caribou and moose and know it has some toughness to it. Some folks lump both the 33 and 35 cal BALTPs into the same group in terms of use. I don't think they are equally capable. I have intended to, I even planned to compare the two in this test but then settled on what was simpler and went with a single rifle. I do have several hundred pounds of the same test material behind the house which I may yet use to compare the two. Drywall compound has too much water and is consequently rather "hard" when testing bullets - I don't have much faith in water tests. I hoped that the bullets wouldn't just blow up on the stuff. My velocities ranged from 2130 fps with the 250s up to 2255 with the lighter bullets so they weren't exactly real challenging velocities for the bullets.

I'd love to see you post pictures of your results. I am no techno whiz by any means and have figured stuff out, much of it the hard way. I'd be happy to give you some pointers if you like. PM me if you want to.

I have yet to use the Sierra on anything that I can recall. Every time I have tested it in something it has stood well alongside other reputable bullets. It actually surprised me at how well it did here with more retained weight than even the 250s I recovered. I wish I had the Speer 250. In my experience, the Speer is softer than the Hornadys and opens more rapidly than the Hornady SP so I suspect it may have lost as much, if not more, weight than the Hornady SP. Sierra uses a variety of core alloys to help get the performance characteristics they desire. In this bullet they use a somewhat harder alloy it seems and it produces a flatter faced mushroom which also means a broader one somewhat like is sometimes seen with bonded types of bullets. Since the Sierra is not bonded, that broadness may be one of the things which cause the core and the jacket to separate as there is a lot more for tissue to grap than on one of the other bullets which "ball up" instead. I have used other GameKings in both 33 and 37 calibers and they have performed well even on tough targets making real good holes in spite of jackets which sometimes come loose. It is often forgotten that it is the hole that counts, not the remains of the bullet. Nice bullet remains pictures simply suggest the potential for a great hole. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Here are two bullets that I used in my 35 Whelen on some big blackies this spring.... plan on using them on Elk and Moose this fall as well. Both shoot to the same point of impact, and I am so far extremely impressed with both bullets (225 TSX + 250 Speer Hotcore).





280_ACKLEY

280,

Good info. The old 225 X was actually the bullet I liked better than anything else I've tried. That bullet was simply lethal and "right now". I haven't yet tried the TSXs in anything. (Maybe I'm finally suffering what some Barnes users have complained about in the past - they keep changing things- I'm just tiring of it and don't have both the time and desire to keep trying to find something that works again.) It's very interesting that you're getting a jacketed bullet shooting to the same POI as the solid copper; that has never been my experience with the XFBs. I like it if it holds true generally with TSXs.