When the good stuff doesn't work!!!

[thriller]

I know this post will stir up controversy. Many will disbelieve what I'm about to say, others will say my ammunition is slow and things like that, because I know you Americans love these bullets, but... I'm going to share here a few years of experience using monolithic bullets for big game hunting!

In almost 10 years of guiding hunting safaris in African countries, examining, collecting, and recording everything I can about hunting bullets and their actual performance against resilient African wildlife, I've discovered that monolithic expanding bullets, even the highest quality ones, when fired at the sides of animals at tight angles (back to front or front to back), can fail! What happens is that the tip deforms due to the lateral entry angle, and then the small opening responsible for initiating expansion closes! The bullet doesn't open and penetrate like a solid bullet. However, it doesn't behave like a solid bullet, often having an irregular trajectory within the animal. I've lost animals this way and had to finance others (mainly buffalo) injured by clients for exactly this reason! So, be careful with these shots at tight angles when using monolithic bullets without plastic tips! Important note: I love the Barnes TSX and especially the TTSX designs for buffalo. For every two or three hundred that work perfectly, I've had one that didn't. That's why I continue to use and recommend them.

View attachment 704780

I have had this happen on whitetail it’s why I don’t use tsx ever personally. I use a trophy bonded bear claw or swift a frame as my bullets of choice.

 

[Ontario Hunter]

My client is 87 years old, his reflexes are no longer the same, he took a while and the zebra moved, what matters is that in the end everything worked out.

I'll be lucky if I can hit the toilet bowl when I'm 87 years old! Tough shot and he made it work.

 

[DWB]

I have always liked me some lead up front in a bullet! Blessed to have a mate who makes and owns Spoor Bullet Company bullets with a well constructed solid shank and bonded lead! Accurate and deadly!

 

[Velo Dog]

Greetings fellow Hunters,

Due to witnessing erratic performance from hollow pointed bullets, in both rifles and handguns alike, I had abandoned hollow point designs, quite a long time ago.

I’ve settled peacefully on old fashioned lead core, round nose and flat nose designs, with plenty of lead showing at the tip, for most of my shooting, in both rifle and handgun alike.

That said, many caliber offerings from Swift A-Frame are spitzer and semi-spitzer.
Nonetheless, due to its excellent track history by now, that is the bullet I always recommend to people wanting to hunt buffalo, especially if they plan to use a .375 caliber rifle.

My understanding is that there are other bonded lead core brands available, such as Bear Claw and more that, also enjoy excellent history on many large game animal species.

For those who like to use hollow pointed bullets, I say that’s what they should use.
But for myself, no thanks.

Kind Regards,
Velo Dog.

 

[Spearhead]

Greetings fellow Hunters,

Due to witnessing erratic performance from hollow pointed bullets, in both rifles and handguns alike, I had abandoned hollow point designs, quite a long time ago.

I’ve settled peacefully on old fashioned lead core, round nose and flat nose designs, with plenty of lead showing at the tip, for most of my shooting, in both rifle and handgun alike.

That said, many caliber offerings from Swift A-Frame are spitzer and semi-spitzer.
Nonetheless, due to its excellent track history by now, that is the bullet I always recommend to people wanting to hunt buffalo, especially if they plan to use a .375 caliber rifle.

My understanding is that there are other bonded lead core brands available, such as Bear Claw and more that, also enjoy excellent history on many large game animal species.

For those who like to use hollow pointed bullets, I say that’s what they should use.
But for myself, no thanks.

Kind Regards,
Velo Dog.

I agree, I am partial to the A-frame (sorry @Green Chile I know you're sick of hearing a-frame it's what I have used for so long, BUT, Swift needs to step up production or lose out to guys that can keep up with demand.

 

[RR 314]

Interesting. Seeing this perhaps it is possible that Oswald shot both Kennedy and Connally with the single bullet.

 

[RR 314]

With one picture, you’ve just explained the Kennedy assassination.

Dang it. Beat me to it. Oooof. Should have read all pages/posts first.

 

[Mauser78]

lol... absolutely nothing against Americans, QUITE the opposite, without you and your wonderful industries, animals would be harder to die!! and if there's one thing I've learned in all these years getting dirty in shit and blood to find small bullets inside big animals is that there's a "ballistics of chaos"... bullets sometimes do unbelievable things until their energy runs out and they stop!View attachment 704799

@Crishuntbrasil
I know this post is about the Barnes. but I would like to hear what your opinion is with some of the other Big-Name brands that you recovered.
and do you have some experience with the Peregrine like posted earlier with the "piston".

 

[grand veneur]

I am also a fan of Barnes TSX and TTSX bullets because they shoot very accurately in all my rifles of very different calibers. As for DG hunting, I have only used the caliber .458 450gr TSX bullet once for shooting buffalo. The two bullets that I fired, the first shot and the final shot at the prone buffalo, looked like the ones in the Barnes advertisement, despite very different shooting distances. However, a PH in Zimbabwe a few years ago also showed me a TSX bullet caliber 416 fired from a cartridge 416 Remington Magnum that had not expanded after hitting the buffalo.

 

[revturbo9967]

I am not a Barnes fan for the most part other than use in Africa. I killed 9 animals in Zim with my 375 with the same 300 gr loads and everything was dead. First picture was from a buff, square on the shoulder. Bottom one was recovered from a croc in the skull. It was missing one of the petals.

 

[uplander01]

I would only add that the TSX is a mass market product that's affordable, available to handload and shoot regularly, are accurate, and is probably used more than any other big game bullet on earth. If you look at it from that perspective, if barnes tsx are used 10 times more than any other bullet, there are going to be more failures strictly from a statistical standpoint.

There is no doubt that Swift, North Fork, Cutting Edge and many more are really good, but they all cost a lot more, and are not always available.

 

[Philip Glass]

Without a doubt, the plastic bridge prevents this from happening more frequently, in side shots where the tip of the project hits the side of the animal and closes the firing hole. However, I have some Hornady CX 180 bullets fired from 300 Win Mag that also didn't work, they didn't open, and look, I consider the CX the best monolithic bullets on the market today! We've hunted more than a thousand animals with them, always in 300 Win Mag caliber!

I've had little experience with CX but new monolithics are intriguing to me. I've had two clients hunting exotics use them with poor results. Not terrible but they didn't open very well. It was factory ammo and close ranges in this brush country here.
I suppose I am struggling to understand how certain shot angles can foul a TSX tip and cause it to not open. Every shot encounters hair and skin first then meat, bone etc.
The only variation in recovered TSX or TTSX bullets I've found is a broken petal or two and that was quite rare and from a big animal.

 

[Bandera]

I recovered a 308 Winchester 165 grain Barnes TTSX from an Impala that that failed to expand. It was a frontal shot at around 150 yards. The bullet lodged on the tailbone.
Judging from the exit wounds on the other animals that I shot with the 308 Winchester the bullets expanded.
With the 375 Ruger 300 grain TSX they performed flawlessly on Buffalo, Zebra, Giraffe, Black Wildebeest.
My hand loads have a muzzle velocity of 2550. The numbers indicates they should be good out past 300 yards. 250 yards is the max distance I would want to shoot on plains game. Around 60 yards or closer for Buffalo.

I will say that I have yet to recover a Barnes bullet or experience a penetration on steel targets. Even solids just evaporate.

I trust the Barnes Bullets to do what they advertise them to do.

 

[Brian]

I know this post will stir up controversy. Many will disbelieve what I'm about to say, others will say my ammunition is slow and things like that, because I know you Americans love these bullets, but... I'm going to share here a few years of experience using monolithic bullets for big game hunting!

In almost 10 years of guiding hunting safaris in African countries, examining, collecting, and recording everything I can about hunting bullets and their actual performance against resilient African wildlife, I've discovered that monolithic expanding bullets, even the highest quality ones, when fired at the sides of animals at tight angles (back to front or front to back), can fail! What happens is that the tip deforms due to the lateral entry angle, and then the small opening responsible for initiating expansion closes! The bullet doesn't open and penetrate like a solid bullet. However, it doesn't behave like a solid bullet, often having an irregular trajectory within the animal. I've lost animals this way and had to finance others (mainly buffalo) injured by clients for exactly this reason! So, be careful with these shots at tight angles when using monolithic bullets without plastic tips! Important note: I love the Barnes TSX and especially the TTSX designs for buffalo. For every two or three hundred that work perfectly, I've had one that didn't. That's why I continue to use and recommend them.

View attachment 704780

I appreciate you post very much. Very useful info. Brian

 

[Ontario Hunter]

And then there's the Partitions that are designed to disintegrate ... partially (pun intended). Don't know if they even make them in thumper calibers but they are very effective on deer and plains game out of my 30-06. Curiously, I don't recall one Partition that strayed after impact, not of any significance anyway. I have found I can drop in weight for more range (which is almost never needed for my style of hunting) and still be very effective. Downside is they can be quite destructive and wasting meat is a concern for me. I was raised in a Montana working man's home. We got just one tag (two in the right district) per year. It was important to me, and everyone else in that community, that every ounce of meat be saved if possible. The times have certainly changed. These days it's all about bang-flop at any cost and/or shooting into the next zip code.

 

[skydiver386]

I've had little experience with CX but new monolithics are intriguing to me. I've had two clients hunting exotics use them with poor results. Not terrible but they didn't open very well. It was factory ammo and close ranges in this brush country here.
I suppose I am struggling to understand how certain shot angles can foul a TSX tip and cause it to not open. Every shot encounters hair and skin first then meat, bone etc.
The only variation in recovered TSX or TTSX bullets I've found is a broken petal or two and that was quite rare and from a big animal.

I don't think it's from the open hollow point tip becoming clogged and failing to open, because that's how they are designed to work. More likely it's one side of the tip being pushed in, and collapsing the hollow point and bending that particular petal or petals inward instead of outward.

In my experiments with these types of bullets, if you intentionally collapse one side of the hollow point, it will still be relatively accurate, but the collapsed side of the bullet will not expand.

In a conversation with a designer at Sierra bullets, he explained to me the phenomenon of Match King bullets that had been used by hunters to shoot Deer and other game. Often the nose would collapse INWARD instead of outward. These "hunters" would then complain to Sierra that their product was junk! Sierra has publicly stated many times that these Hollow Point bullets are meant strictly for target shooting and not meant as an expanding bullet for hunting. Some bullets will collapse inward, some will expand outward depending on the design, and on the forces acting on that bullet.

We've all seen solids recovered from big animals that were bent, and went off course. Most of us only consider the stress factors involved in the nose of the bullet that causes it to expand, but don't consider the massive side load on a bullet when it strikes something, especially bone, and different angles.

 

[Ontario Hunter]

I don't think it's from the open hollow point tip becoming clogged and failing to open, because that's how they are designed to work. More likely it's one side of the tip being pushed in, and collapsing the hollow point and bending that particular petal or petals inward instead of outward.

In my experiments with these types of bullets, if you intentionally collapse one side of the hollow point, it will still be relatively accurate, but the collapsed side of the bullet will not expand.

In a conversation with a designer at Sierra bullets, he explained to me the phenomenon of Match King bullets that had been used by hunters to shoot Deer and other game. Often the nose would collapse INWARD instead of outward. These "hunters" would then complain to Sierra that their product was junk! Sierra has publicly stated many times that these Hollow Point bullets are meant strictly for target shooting and not meant as an expanding bullet for hunting. Some bullets will collapse inward, some will expand outward depending on the design, and on the forces acting on that bullet.

We've all seen solids recovered from big animals that were bent, and went off course. Most of us only consider the stress factors involved in the nose of the bullet that causes it to expand, but don't consider the massive side load on a bullet when it strikes something, especially bone, and different angles.

Good explanation. Makes sense. This could certainly account for peculiar performance of these bullets on animals hit at obtuse angles.

I believe Sierra puts it right on the box that Match King are not to be used for hunting. The name kinda says it anyway. But Match King are often on sale which probably accounts for why they are being used for hunting. Cheap bastards. Or hillbillies who never learned to read? Hmmm. Illiterates reloading ammo. Now that's a scary thought.