150 Grain 30 Cal E-Tip experiences?

[3006savage]

Anyone have on game experience with the 30 cal 150 Grain E-tip. How would you rate:

1. Accuracy
2. Terminal Performance

Thanks

 

[loaders_loft]

I'm also interested to know more about the E-tip's as well, especially terminal performance on game. Slightly related, I've tried the 7mm 150gr and they are long with the ogive being pretty far forward, which made them seat nicely in my 7mm wsm where I'm limited by magazine length. Shot as good as anything else on paper using RL19 but have not killed anything yet with them.

Anyone else used these new E-tips?

 

[3006savage]

Loaders did you have to reduce your powder charge with these bullets like the barnes X bullets.

 

[loaders_loft]

nosler includes a slip in each box of E-tips that says not to exceed the mid-load from their manuals, for the equivalent bullet weight and caliber. On the phone, the Nosler Tech rep advised me to stay 2-3 grains below the Nosler published max. They also said to stay off the lands. I don't remember how much I backed them off, but I'll check if you PM me a reminder...

Since you mentioned Barnes, I'll say that I never used the X-bullets but I did use the 150gr TSX in my 30-06 with a variety of powders. The accuracy was poor compared to leaded bullets but I did kill a small hog with them. It was a complete pass through, quartering away.

In my opinion, if you're loading for 30-06, try the E-tip 180's first...

 

[JD338]

Here are some links to on game performance with 30 cal 150 gr E-Tip and terminal performance
with the 7mm 150 gr E-Tip-
Nosler Reloading - ammunition, hunting, shooting, and performance reloading expertise from the source.
Nosler Reloading - ammunition, hunting, shooting, and performance reloading expertise from the source.
Nosler Reloading - ammunition, hunting, shooting, and performance reloading expertise from the source.

JD338

 

[loaders_loft]

thanks. How did he get those deer antlers on that moose?

 

[Pdvdh]

thanks. How did he get those deer antlers on that moose?

I thought it was a mutant mule deer. But I bet it was better eating than the bigger bull would have been.

 

[MontanaRifleman]

I found max in my Finnlight 300 WSM for the 180 E-Tips to be 66 gr of H4350 which was a half grain more than for 168 gr TTSX's (65.5)
Also the ETip vel was very close to the TTSX.

 

[davkrat]

I realize this is an old thread, I stumbled across it looking for info on Etips. Here is a post I did on another forum last year. I have had some odd results accuracy-wise with the Etips. As many others have reported I get 2 or 3 bullets touching and then a 1" flier. One thing I have noticed is that the neck tension in some of my loads is way off about every 10th case I can pull the bullet by hand. Planning to get a bushing die at this time I'm just weeding out those cases and use them with other bullets. I've never had that problem with other bullets in cases fired from that gun using the same reloading dies.

Buddy got his first ever California buck. I told him not to expect ones this nice on a regular basis. For anyone who's curious the lead free Nosler E-tips worked fantastic. He was shooting a Varget load out of my .308 that launches the 150 grain E-tips at 2800fps, not exactly a magnum load :l At 280 yards it made absolute mush out of this deer's chest cavity. I'd say it's plenty of medicine for anything walking around California. The deer was somewhere in the 250 lbs. range, we each had 80-90lbs. packs on the way out.

We found the bullet in the offside front leg. It entered the ribs on the onside, scrambled the heart and lungs, took out about three ribs on the far side, entered the front leg and shattered the large "femur" type bone then came to rest in the muscle just under the skin. I'd say the E-Tips performed pretty dang good!

The key tactic: neither of us had shaved in 3 weeks :l