Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 165 grain Nosler Partition, .30 cal., on Elk, Your thoughts?

It really doesn't matter what all of you believe to me. This is what happened and I found the bullet where I said I did. I was there, you weren't. Obviously the bull was dead from the second shot so I was able to recover the first bullet. Time and place- Selway-Bitterroot wilderness area in Idaho 1985. Geez, someone doesn't agree with your opinions of a bullets performance and the insults start. How about-"odd, it shouldn't do that", but no, here come the "bs" claims. Now, the next bull I shot was with a 250 gr. Grand Slam, and both shoulders were broken. Kinda what one would expect from a .338.
The guide service was Moose Creek Outfitters, now long defunct.

Firestorm -

Your post has certainly justified your user name!

I have no experience with the 210 NP on elk, but I would have to regard your description as well out of the ordinary for what I would expect from that bullet.

Personally, I have very few bullets recovered from elk, as I tend to use 250 grain bullets (NP and Swift A-Frames) in my .338. Elk really do not slow these bullets down.

I am prepared to believe that a Nosler Partition might not work as expected in some isolated instances.

In the 1980s, while hunting on the ranch where my friend Finn Aagaard lived, my wife shot a small whitetail with the 130 grain Nosler Partition from a .270 Winchester at about 75 yards with no obstacles between her and the deer.

After a three hour search we finally found the deer dead, well hidden underneath some small brush. The deer had *two* entrance wounds maybe nine inches or so apart (hard to remember exactly now). That 130 grain Nosler Partition apparently came apart in mid-air.

Now I have used that bullet and other Nosler Partitions quite a bit. Never before, nor since, did I experience anything like that. I regard Partitions as one of the most reliable bullets anyone could use. I regard that experience as a strange anomaly, and in no way typical. It was a one-off, strange bullet performance, and that is all.

I have also seen a bull elk hit at about 45 yards with a 175 grain Nosler Partition from a 7mm Rem Mag that ran about a quarter of a mile over dry ground. There were no more than two small drops of blood over that distance, but we tracked it by the disturbance on the ground made by the running hooves. It was dead when we found it, having apparently died in mid-stride. It was a straight through shot that hit both lungs, but no bone. Apparently the bullet simply did not expand enough to produce a quick kill.

Both of these instances are not typical, and stand out as glaring inconsistencies in a lifetime of using Nosler Partitions.

I can believe you maybe had something unusual happen with the 210 NP on your elk, but there is no way on earth for a guide to be justified in calling Partitions "trackers", unless his clients were not putting the bullets in the right place.

There are bullets that will drop elk faster than Partitions on average. But when the dead elk is typically found anywhere from zero to a hundred yards away, it doesn't take much tracking skill to find the elk.

Nosler Partitions remain one of the most reliable bullets made, and I do not find them inferior in any way.

Firestorm I don't think anyone doubts that you saw what you saw...or that it happened.But as WinM70 points out,one bad example does not tell us much about how bullets perform across a spectrum.

I doubt the insults were directed at you..just people's way of expressing "doubt".....just that there is collectively a lot of Nosler Partition "experience" on here,dating back decades;likely far more than even your elk guide has,and given the tens of thousands (100's of thousands?)of animals those bullets have taken over 6+ decades,(everything from elephant down,actually)they have a proven track record for very consistent and reliable performance.

So, folks may collectively be a bit underwhelmed with what one guide thinks of Nosler Partitions because such statements fly in the face of their own experience.

Firestorm,

You said "I shoulder shot an elk at 75 yards with a 338 with a 210 gr partition and it did not break through the shoulder. The second shot did drop it like a rock through the spine. "

If you don't mind, could you expand on that description a bit. Very curious about the physiology of this hit. I gather you mean that although it broke bone it did not continue into the boiler room. Exactly what part of the shoulder did it break? Probably not the scapula...ball of humerus, shaft of humerus? Where did you find the bullet and what did it look like? What did the elk do when hit? Run, stop, fall? What was the actual effect of that first hit? Obviously it did not get out of sight immediately. How big an animal was this elk?

Thanks

Dead Elk is what I was thinking.

CRS has it nailed. You can kill any elk that walks with that load, if you hit it in the right place!

My guess as to why that guide would refer to Partitions as "trackers" is because he had seen Partitions do what they were designed to do, however his hunters may have failed to put their bullets where they were susposed to. The result would have been a caliber size entrance hole and no large blood letting exit hole.

Partitions were designed with a fast opening front half to quickly transfer a lot of energy from the bullet to the animal, and a solid back half for deep penetration. This causes the bullet to shed the lead core back to the partition, and the remaining back half has an almost 1/2" wide flat front surface that often will not penetrate the tough, elastic hide of the far side of the elk.

The 180 gr .30 caliber Partition was my favorite elk bullet for many years. I usually don't spend a lot of time recovering my bullets, but I do have some, including six .30 caliber Partitions that I found just under the skin on the "off" side of the six bulls that I shot with them. They are all exactly like the Partitions that I described above. None of those bulls left much of a blood trail, but all of them had shredded lungs, and tracking wasn't necessary.

Put a Partition into the heart/lungs of an elk and you'll have a dead elk. Put a Partition into the paunch of an elk and you'll have a long and difficult tracking job.

I also don't like shoulder shots on elk. I like eating elk meat too much, and I don't like eating bloodshot meat. A bullet (or arrow) placed broadside, in the crease right behind the shoulder, and 1/3 up into the body will result in a dead animal and very little meat loss.

buffybr - for the six 180 grain Partitions that you recovered, what cartridge were you using them in? Also, generally what kind of distance was the shot?

Totally with you on this, we love elk burgers too much to waste them! Sure if the critters quarterly to me and time is short I'll take the point and bust them. Side from that I'll avoid them and hit them in the arm pit.

Dober

.30 Gibbs chronographed at average 2995 fps, all shot at probably less than 200 yds. Other than my first elk that I shot many, many years ago, I haven't shot or shot at an elk at over 300 yds.

buffybr - if you shot an elk with the 180 NP using your .30 Gibbs, and the elk was standing broadside to you, did your 180 NP normally exit the other side?

These six didn't. They were just under the hide on the off side.

Just for comparison, here's a couple of pics of the entrance and exit holes from a 168 gr Barnes TSX.

5 point bull elk shot broadside, tight behind the shoulder at about 100 yds from my .300 Weatherby, chronographed velocity of 3290 fps at 10'.

At the shot, the bull turned, took 3 steps, and fell dead.

Top arrow points to the entrance hole in the ribcage, bottom arrow points to the .30 cal hole in the hide.


Exit hole just behind the "off" shoulder. Again the top arrow points to the hole in the rigcage, and the bottom arrow points to a 1"+ exit hole in the hide.

How can you not like that? I'm a little old school. I still like the partitions,but can't argue with performance like posted above. I recently traded in a T3 30/06 that the previous owner had wonderful accuracy with. He was shooting 180gr TSXs over H4350. I've been watching for a box of them to pick up and try. I do however have reservations about them not opening up on light bone like ribs at 06 velocities. This is where I believe (rightly or wrongly),that the partition would perform better.

That often happens with elk, even with some magnum calibers. The hide is very stretchy and will bulge way out when hit from the inside. It's like a big elastic net. I've found lots of bullets under the skin that way.
I would like to see a slo mo video or even a still shot of a fully stretched hide.

The Barnes seems to set up a smaller frontal area,so may be inclined to exit more easily and penetrate the rubbery hide better,so that may be why they exit.Also, they tend to blow the petals under high velocity,which sets the stage for the smaller frontal area.

But I have seen recovered 375 Barnes TSX recovered from eland at 300+ yards that broke the shoulder, yet retained all the petals.Clearly at that distance the velocity had fallen off and the tough bullet retained that wide frontal area that caught the offside hide and didn't penetrate through.Another shot into a kudu at 80 yads blew the petals;yet remained in the animal.

I have found that a 180 Partition from a 300 Win Mag or Weatherby, will sometimes exit,an elk on broadside shots, and sometimes will not...depends on what exactly you hit and the impact velocity.I know I have one or two here that I have dug from elk.Others have blasted on through.

Another factor is the higher rotational velocity of a bullet fired from a 30 cal magnum will cause more dramatic bullet upset than the same bullet fired from ( say) a 30/06.The added velocity and added rpm's all place additional stresses on the bullet and may cause contribute to pedals shearing off,and more dramatic and rapid expansion.

No doubt a Barnesis a"tougher" bullet....it has to be because it has no jacket and lead core that will fragment and disintigrate under high stress(but it seems it will blow the petals).none of this means that a Partition is in any way inadequate....just that you may not be able to drop as far down the weight spectrum to get pretty much the same results.

JMHO but no seem to always exit an animal, and personally I haven't seen any differences in how they kill whether they exit or not...it never seemed terribly important to me because the damage is done beofre the bullet reaches the off side.

To me, the good thing about a bullet being able to penetrate well is its' ability to break heavy bone eiither at the begininng of the wound channel, or at the end;even after traveling through a lot of elk.If it does that, I'm happy....cause you are standing over a very dead animal.

Man I miss my 300 wby....It loved the 180 partitions too....