Barnes Bullet eXpansion

[barnesuser28]

Post some pics of expanded barnes bullets please state the caliber, weight, cartridge fired from, impact velocity, and range

 

[lloydsmale]

shot 6 deer last year with tsx bullets. one with the 300 wby 3 with the 2506 and 3 with the 257 wby. didnt recover a bullet. As a matter of fact didnt recover two of the deer. Only two deer ive not recovered in many years. The 4 i recovered showed very little damage not much of a wound channel other then the one i shot with the 300. It hit the shoulder bone and tracked down the leg and blew out the bottom of the leg. bone fragments destroyed the lungs. I contacted barnes about this and all they would say is basicaly @@@ happens. Sorry fans but i wouldnt use another one on deer. they may work well for taking game larger then a guy should with a given caliber like say shooting a moose with a 25-06 but for deer there just to stout. On the other hand i also took 3 deer with noslers etip solid 140 out of one of my 7 mags and that bullet decked all three deer on the spot gave excellent wound channels and did exit out the other side. Seemed to work much better then the barnes.

 

[marioq]

Interesting occurrence. I've used them on elk and work GREAT AT 400 yards in my 300. Interested to see them at 800-1000

 

[lloydsmale]

my shots werent near that long. the shortest was with the 300 wby at about 200 yards and the longest was one shot with the 257 at 420.

Interesting occurrence. I've used them on elk and work GREAT AT 400 yards in my 300. Interested to see them at 800-1000

 

[300 ultra]

shot 6 deer last year with tsx bullets. one with the 300 wby 3 with the 2506 and 3 with the 257 wby. didnt recover a bullet. As a matter of fact didnt recover two of the deer. Only two deer ive not recovered in many years. The 4 i recovered showed very little damage not much of a wound channel other then the one i shot with the 300. It hit the shoulder bone and tracked down the leg and blew out the bottom of the leg. bone fragments destroyed the lungs. I contacted barnes about this and all they would say is basicaly @@@ happens. Sorry fans but i wouldnt use another one on deer. they may work well for taking game larger then a guy should with a given caliber like say shooting a moose with a 25-06 but for deer there just to stout. On the other hand i also took 3 deer with noslers etip solid 140 out of one of my 7 mags and that bullet decked all three deer on the spot gave excellent wound channels and did exit out the other side. Seemed to work much better then the barnes.

+1 have had poor experience with 140 TSX out of a 270 win on deer. Now I use partitions. No more problems

 

[Autorotate19]

I shot a bull elk at about 100 yards with a 168 ttsx out of a 300wsm. I don't have any pictures but I can tell you that the bullet looked exactly like the advertisements, a perfect mushroom. Great elk bullets.

 

[Fred Ea]

My best friend loves the tsx and talked me into getting some. I bought some for my 7stw- 150gr., they shoot very well but when it comes to performance on deer, I'm not too sure. I shot a small, crippled buck last year at 200 yards late in the afternoon, the deer was in some sage and went down (I thought). Got down to were he was and the deer was not there. My two hunting buds looked for sign for a good 30 minutes and decided to come back the next morning when the lighting was better. We went back and looked for another 45 minutes and could not find any sign, so I chalked it up as a miss which I couldn't believe. I shot the rifle before hunting that afternoon and it was dead on. The following week after deer season went out, we were hunting rabbits in the same area and we found the deer about 175 yards from were I shot the deer. I knew it was the deer because of the deformed horns it had. So I don't know what happened on that one, we couldn't find any sign of blood or even any sign of hitting the deer at all the day I shot the deer.
Long story short, I went back to what works, Nosler accubonds and hadn't lost a deer since, have killed around 10 since with no tracking job needed.
My best friend still loves them and still hunts with them with kills to back them up, maybe it was just a story of bad shot placement on my part. I will stick with the AB's for now.

 

[Autorotate19]

A couple of my friends used to use them and complained of them penciling through when they shot elk behind the shoulder. I have never had that problem but I always shoot them in the shoulder. Great bullet when you need penetration. If you wanna go for behind the shoulder something more frangible would work better. Just my .02

 

[lloydsmale]

i guess some guys here are just looking to punch paper and for that they may do great too. As a matter of fact i was really disapointed as all 3 of those guns did the best they ever did for accuracy with tsx bullets. It amazed me as ive had poor luck with the older style barnes. I shoot alot of deer every year. upwards of 50 and sometimes even more. We do crop damage shooting for a big potatoe farm and get unlimited doe tags. I get a good chance to see what works and what doesnt. For the most part what works is bullets like sierra prohunters and nos bts. they put down deer right now even at long range.

Some will complain about meat damage but what ive found is if you put the bullet behind the shoulder none of them tear up to much meat as i dont eat ribs anyway. Put a bullet on the shoulder and it doesnt matter much what bullet your using or even what caliber your shooting and your going to ruin that shoulder. Im not a big fan of premium bullets. Ill use speer grand slams or partitions sometimes if i can get them to shoot well but what i find with them is they penetrate deaper and because of it damage more meat. Some of the most shot up deer ive seen have been with partitions. Keep in mind all of this is refering to deer. Step up to bigger game and things change. Where i wouldnt be unsure of the results of a 140 bt out of a 7stw making it into the vitals of a whitetail at 25 yards id be a bit leary of getting enough penetration on a moose at those ranges. But id bet a dime to a dollar that if i just stepped up to a 160 sierra or bt it would get the job done.

 

[Edd]

Barnes says their ttsx bullets will fully expand on a grape. I've killed Antelope and Deer with a 25-05 and Barnes X bullets. They have all fell down like you hit them in the head with a hammer.

 

[lloydsmale]

Ed all i can say is Im telling it the way it happened. Im sure if you called nosler or sierra theyd sing the praises of there bullets too. Im not really badmouthing them. Like i said if i was going to hunt elk with a 243 id probably load some again but not for deer. From what ive seen if you shoot enough game with them your going to have a bad experience. You can use what you will but ive lost confindense in them and wont again. Funny thing is i shot a couple with etip noslers which are another monolithic bullet and out of my 7 mag they slammed deer. Bottom line though is a couple experiences isnt near enough to make judgements on either bullet. I just have put a few to many miles on tracking deer last year shot with them to risk another. By the way my hunting partner shot 3 last year with 100 grain tsx bullets out of his 2506 too. One was lost and two took some tracking. he agreed with me totaly. As a matter of fact theres 8 boxes of tsx bullets sitting by the door right now. Ive got a buddy who loves them and he wants them. hes used them in africa and sings there praises. I respect him totaly so like i said im not the last answer in this. Bottom line though is he can play with them as i dont want to play anymore.

 

[barnesuser28]

The tsx has some eXpansion problems but the ttsx if you took the tip off you would see that it has a much larger meplat without the tip so it expands faster and with less force. So the ttsx has a higher b.c and expands much faster

 

[lloydsmale]

the tipped ones were the ones i had problems with.

 

[barnesuser28]

so does anybody actually have pics?