A reflection about Bullet performance

LOL! Gatehouse you should be the CO of the company I would buy from you , I will give you credit as it is a good bullet, But I will still argue dead is still dead and there aint anything that you can make deader lol!

Barnes should have a good bullet they had 100 years to think about it lol! and we are still paying for the development of it. I do not anyone here is saying teh bullet is bad, quite the opposite, its very good. But 20 years ago, there bullets were well Junk!

I use them all the time infact TSXs, and MRXs, and are loaded in all my magums, and if going on a Big game hunt or dangerous game hunt, they are loaded and ready.

But Deer, moose, and black bear tend not to care so much what you shoot them with..

The fact is the Old soft point still produce great results on our light skin big game in North America. When animals are only 12-18 inches thick, you do not need a very well built bullet to reach lung or break a 2 inch bone to hit the heart. Thats all I am not arguing with you I am just reflecting on kill sof teh past that I have seen, and done.

I am sure in your early days you used these bullets as well.

I've never said that a regular bullet wont' work, of course they will! But I maintain that premium bullets can open up many options for the hunter, from using a smaller cartridge if less recoil is desired, to flattening trajectories by using a lighter bullet with the same killing ability as a heavier standard bullet and of course the ability to penetrate well, when you don't have a broadside shot presented to you, and want to plow through most of an animal.

Given a broadside shot at 150 yards on a moose with a .270 and 140gr standard bullets, I'd say that is a dead moose. Change up the angle to a less desirable one, and your options just went down- unless you have a premium bullet that will penetrate deep.... heck, even Jack O'Connor wasn't impressed with the 270 on moose half the time, and it was mostly due to the bullets available at the time he started shooting moose with a .270.

Or maybe you are up close and only have a shoulder blade to shoot at with a bullet going 3000fps- Might expand too rapidly and not get desired penetration. I've had cup and core bullets blow up twice using a 7RM and 150gr bullets on close range shots- On deer shoulders!:eek: In both instances the shoulder was completely wrecked but the deer was very much alive and needed more shooting to get the job done!

Or maybe you have grabbed your .243 to go deer hunting and you encounter an elk- Those premium bullets sure look good now!:)

Loaded your 7x57 with 175gr bullets for moose at 100 yards and encounter a deer at 350 yards? Not that the shot would be impossible, but a little flatter trajectory might help you out! Wouldn't have been a better idea to load it with 140gr TSX bullets and cover both bases?

Like I said before, I don't just want a bullet to work when everything goes right, I want it to work when everything goes wrong, too! :)
 
Barnes triple shock 150 grain .311's you can use in an SKS, how cool is that. I plan on having a few trophy pictures with me stepping on the animal's head while sporting a rifle with a 35 round banana clip!
 
Or maybe you have grabbed your .243 to go deer hunting and you encounter an elk- Those premium bullets sure look good now!:)

Very True, however we do not have to worry aout that here:), and dont have things that wil eat you ...

I guess province to province this can change..
 
Very True, however we do not have to worry aout that here:), and dont have things that wil eat you ...

I guess province to province this can change..

Ontario is a big place with plenty of wilderness where one can encounter large animals. There are polar bears along the Ontario's Hudson Bay low lands and these guys can be encountered by goose and caribou hunters. There are plenty of moose north of Lake Superior and throughout the central part of the province. Black bears are frequently seen and occasionally will break into cabins, cottages, and become a menace in some campgrounds. Even in the over tamed region south of Sudbury along Lake Huron they have surprised folks with their lack of manners. If choosing a better bullet makes your deer rifle a little more effective and a little more versatile, what can it hurt?
 
I agree with you as well about wild life.

But

I don not concider a Black bear a threat because of bullet selection, do you ?

This Boar decided he did not like me, and would not back down. I was not to worried about bullet selection. I dont think he cared either as I shot him at 10 feet standing face to face. I understand what your saying but at 10 feet blowing a hole through him the size of football matters. And thats what I did. Was the first and only bear I had to Kill, in some 25 years. It was bear season at the time, this was suposed to be my cousins first bear.

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Barnes triple shock 150 grain .311's you can use in an SKS, how cool is that. I plan on having a few trophy pictures with me stepping on the animal's head while sporting a rifle with a 35 round banana clip!

The 150gr are better suited tot eh .303 British. Barnes is making a 120 or 123gr TSX for the 7.62x39 round, though.
 
There are plenty of old cast, cup/core and premium bullet that will get the job done. I used a hardcast bullet (45/70) for my last big game animal (spring bear) and it worked very well. On the other hand I'd like to try Barnes 300gr XFN, tsx on something. What can it do that hardcast can't? Maybee a better wound channel on deer? And it does out penetrate some 400gr jacketed bullets(speer/remington), which means less recoil, better (still bad) trajectory. :p

Great thread!
 
..... I don't just want a bullet to work when everything goes right, I want it to work when everything goes wrong, too! :)

2X!

I have switched to using the TSX five years ago and have no issue with them. It costs just a little more (say fewer than $5 per year) than the Partitions. The confidence is always there if I need to break big bones.

More importantly, I know there is no lead fragment in the meat.
 
I'm moving away from the TSXs after a few more than 50 big-game animals with them. No expanding bullet that I've tried will out penetrate them, but that comes at the cost of a smaller wound channel. Sometimes that's a good trade-off, frequently it is not. The few bucks for hunting bullets doesn't really enter into it.
 
Human nature seems to always be looking for something better newest latest fastest.I have a couple of the eary barnes X bullets and one I drilled through 6 ft of mulie buck Texas heart shot previously wounded 7x7.It did not even expand nor did the next one that broke both shoulders.I talked to Randy barnes and he admitted to having some problems with the jacket hardness.Fair enough.I use mostly hornady interlocks and have killed animals up to moose and grizzly no problems or as of yet failures.Partitions have never given great groups in my guns but they are for hunting.The old solid base were grenades waiting for a place to happen but very accurate...................Harold
 
2X!

I have switched to using the TSX five years ago and have no issue with them. It costs just a little more (say fewer than $5 per year) than the Partitions. The confidence is always there if I need to break big bones.

More importantly, I know there is no lead fragment in the meat.

I have been a long time partition fan, and never really worried about the lead fragments, although I noted them.

The TSX and TTSX just seem to drop animals faster.:)
 
The only lead bullets I use are ones that don't expand much at the velocity they run at, the rest I use Nosler etips. Don't like lead and fast guns b/c of lead poisoning and the destruction of meat. The nosler shoot well, are very consistent in weight, length, and diameter whereas I can't say the same for the barnes.
 
The nosler shoot well, are very consistent in weight, length, and diameter whereas I can't say the same for the barnes.

The TSX and TTSX both shoot more accurately in all of my guns than the partitions.As such,I could care less if the dimensions aren't quite as consistent.
 
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