Boomer said:
One disadvantage of the X bullet revolution is that it has fooled people into believing that a light X bullet can do the same job as a heavy bullet within caliber. This is not true.
On the contrary, it is quite true in some circumstances. You can, of course, either deliberately or inadvertently set up a test with parameters that rig the results either way. Using extremes in bullet weight is a good way to do it, right off the bat.
I have seen too many elk and moose shot with 165 grain high weight retention bullets instead of 180 grain bullets, and 225 instead of 250 grain bullets to doubt it. I didn't bother shooting newspapers or some other kind of testing - when you get big exit holes out of the lighter bullets as well, that is good enough for me. Wayne Van Zwoll, in an article not too long ago, talked of testing Swift Scirocco bullets on the body of a just shot grizzly. The only way he could get a 180 gr. .308 bullet out of a magnum to stay inside the bears body for recovery and inspection was to fire it through BOTH hip joins. This is pretty artificial, of course, shooting at such point blank range. But it begs the question: what is missing in the performance of this particular high weight retention bullet? Given the resulting expansion and penetration, what, in particular, does this bullet fail to do in performance that a 200 or 225 grain bullet would give. You'll get a slightly poor trajectory with the heavier bullet (whether that is important or not to you in the real world is your choice), and more recoil, but other than that, what?
Heavier bullets of similar construction result in larger expansion, and their greater mass at a given velocity means deeper penetration.
That is simply not true when presented as a general statement. In some cases yes; in other cases not at all. There are a great many variables here: the velocity envelope the bullet is designed to expand in, the impact velocity, the differences in weight between the two bullets in question, etc.
In a test I conducted, a 380 gr .375 bullet penetrated to the same depth as a 270 gr X bullet. The X expanded to .70" and the 380 to .90, despite the fact that the heavier bullet had 400 fps less muzzle velocity.
Did the media accurately emulate big game hide, muscle, and bone? How did the the temporary stretch cavity and permanent stretch cavities for each compare? Did the 300 gr X bullet show any difference in performance when compared to the 380 grain bullet?
And most of all, perhaps the question is how badly were the 270 grain X-bullets failing that a 380 grain bullet of some other brand provided superior performance on game? When is enough, enough? My brother happens to love hunting elk and moose with 325 gr. X-bullets in his .416, loaded to just under 3000 fps. Chances are it both out-penetrates and out-expands the 380 gr. .375" bullet you are talking about. Assuming it does, do you think my brother's .416 has any real world advantages over that .375" because of its' greater penetration and expansion? Or, perhaps, are we well past the point of where enough is enough - at least in North America?
catnthehatt said:
The idea of a lighter bullet for caliber comes directly from the Barnes company. Their reasoning is that the bullet needs to be lighter in a given weight for calber of rifle.
I have never seen that line of reasoning expressed myself, in either Barnes' website or their reloading manuals that I have. The arguments I see from Barnes on their website and in my reloading manuals are penetration, expansion, and weight retention.
It didn't take long for the gun cranks within the ranks of hunters to realize they could get similar results out of X bullets, going down one weight class, that they could get out of conventional lead core bullets. This wasn't exactly rocket science - serious hunters that were reloaders have often been believers in high weight retention for expanding bullets, all the way back (in my case) to the old Bitterroot Bonded Core bullets, the Woodleigh's, and Barnes' original bullet. There are others from back then whose names I have forgotten. Barnes aren't the only bullets today that show extremely high weight retention - the Swift Scirocco is yet another example. Bonded bullets are getting a lot of interest from bullet manufacturers these days...
It isn't a case of a bullet NEEDING to be of a lighter weight in a given caliber of rifle - it is a case of hunters finding out they could go down one weight class of bullet, get a little flatter trajectory (which lots of guys deem to be quite important), and get equally good terminal results. I'll bet more than a few guys find their marksmanship marvelously suddenly improves when dealing with less recoil as well...
For instance, intead of using a 180 in a 30'06, a person could shoot a 165 or a 150 and get the same expansion and hitting power of the 180, and better trajectory( I suppose).
This is presumably because the lighter Barnes is going to lose less weight and expand better than the heavier 180 grain Barnes, but it has to go faster and facilitate the expansion.
I can't say I have ever heard Barnes advertise that their lighter Barnes bullets are going to lose less weight than their heavier bullets, or that they will expand better than the heavier bullet.
