berger vld or barnes for long range

True!

But for the record, We shot a quartering bull at 200 ish yards last fall with a 215 Hybrid from my 300 win. It stopped short of an exit in the front of the far shoulder with (if I remember correctly?) was 26" and I put a 1" wide tape in the wound channel when we skinned him.

Jeff

Yeah, I don't doubt it at all.
I suspect you could count on 12-24 inches of penetration ever time.
Have you tried the 230 yet?

I am used to smashing both shoulders on a big animal (if required) and having the bullet exit the far shoulder...Perhaps my favorite was a big coastal brownie shot square in the chest facing north and having the (.416 350grTSX) bullet exit the rear ham and continuing South...Now THAT is what I call penetration! :)

I most often am shooting very large game so mix that and my belief that you are more likely to screw up a hectic shot at close range (than you are at longer distance) is my love for penetration above all else. Bergers definitely have a place in my bag of tricks..I wish they made a 50BMG bullet!
 
Yeah, I don't doubt it at all.
I suspect you could count on 12-24 inches of penetration ever time.
Have you tried the 230 yet?

Yes, we have been shooting the 230's in my son's 300 win for 2 years now. As far as I can remember every single one has exited at all ranges. Antelope, deer and elk out to 891 yards.

Here is a thread from when we started using the 230's in his 300 win and the 300's in my 338 Lapua.

http://www.longrangehunting.com/forums/f19/berger-230-300-otm-hybrid-terminal-results-80283/

Jeff
 
Let me start by apologizing for being long winded but this is an interesting subject with a bunch of things to consider. First off, most hunters that go after elk at 700 plus yards, end up shooting them a lot closer than that, including me. I might even say especially me as I've shot both elk and deer at 1 yard. Thus I wouldn't limit the discussion to 700 yards plus. Any bullet/gun I would use at 700 yards I would also want to perform at 1 or 100 yards. What do I mean by "perform"? That requires a bit of explanation.

I shot my first big game animal in 1963. For my Dad and me it was always about the meat. This was before Nosler invented the Partition bullet so not near as much was known about terminal performance. We tended to gravitate to what killed stuff with minimal meat damage. Thus it is probably not a surprise that today I'm a Barnes user. As they say, you can eat the bullet hole. (Not really since the hole is air but you get the idea.)

I've got Barnes TTSX or LRX loads worked up for 6mm Rem, 260 Rem, 270 WSM, 7mm WSM, 30-06, 300 RUM and 338 RUM. It is my belief that a Barnes bullet will upgrade the killing power of whatever you put it in as penetration is maximized while still giving good expansion. Barnes likely won't kill as fast as Berger for generic situations but it will kill in some situations where Berger won't kill at all.

A Montana whitetail and Washington 6X6 bull elk shot with the 338 RUM using a 210 gr TTSX (3,200 fps muzzle) are representative of what you can expect. The whitetail was at 220 yards and the elk at 358. Both were optimum broadside shots. Both had complete pass through. Both animals hunched up and stumbled for 20 yards and went down. There was not a scrap of meat damage in either. I shot the whitetail with the 338 as somewhat of an experiment. I expected that it would totally hammer that deer and was a bit surprised when it made it 20 yards just like the elk. After I thought about it I knew why and I like Barnes and my 338 RUM even more.

With Barnes bullets, the bigger the animal, the harder it gets hit. This is a feature of passing clear through whatever you are shooting. With a Barnes bullet, this works over a wide range of distances – especially if you have too much gun as is typical of guys geared up to shoot long range. On the other hand, if the bullet fragments and stays in the animal, how hard it hits depends only on the distance and then close is bad.

I admit that DRT there is better than 20 yards and a flop. I will, however, take the risk of tracking them for 20 yards as long as I get minimum meat damage. In the extreme I could go to a FMJ but the game would go a lot more than 20 yards. So a Barnes is kind of the Goldielocks bullet – just right.

More to the point however and the real advantage of a Barnes bullet are the times when you don't have a broadside opportunity as on another whitetail which was at 60 yards and ready to bolt if any move was made other than pulling the trigger. A frontal shot with the same 338 210 gr TTSX resulted in surprisingly little meat damage and DRT. So Barnes bullets allow you to take some shots that with a Berger may result in more wasted meat or a wounded animal. Where I hunt, which includes Montana, 60 yards is way more likely than 700 plus.

Barnes does have some downside versus Berger (besides higher cost) and that is the lower BC. But the flip side of that coin is that Barnes bullets are generally not as sensitive to seating depth as the Berger VLDs which is a trade I'll make.

Another relevant thought. How many guys that hunt dangerous game use Bergers? I haven't hunted anything dangerous but my friends that do would not consider Bergers. When you are talking dangerous game you are forced to consider the scenario where things go wrong and there is more to go wrong with a Berger like bone and brush.

Having said all that I'm neither a purist or a snob. In the interest of first hand experience, I've got some 180 Bergers worked up for the 7mm WSM and I might use them at 700 +. However, I'm guessing my order of LR Accubonds will show up soon and make those 180 Bergers a lot less interesting and maybe the Barnes too. But that is another thread.
 
Just to give another data point, last year me and a buddy both shot bull elk at medium ranges, both using a .338 210 TTSX. Below is the breakdown of each shot and specifics of how the bullet performed:

my bull:
- impact velocity ~1980 fps
- bull quartering towards me, bullet hit the leading shoulder hard and broke near side ribs. center punched both lunges and severed the pulmonary artery just above the heart.
- bullet broke ribs on far side and exited with ~1/2" hole
- bull died right where I shot it

friends bull
- impact velocity ~2160
- bull nearly directly facing shooter, bullet entered front chest, damaged both lungs, and also (ironically) severed the pulmonary artery just above the heart.
- bullet did not exit, stuck in the guts, did not recover.
- bull somehow managed to walk ~50 yards...

Tissue damage around wound cavity was not extensive. This goes towards the previous comment by Engineering101... you can kill elk and minimize tissue damage.

But, what if either of these bullets had missed the pulmonary artery? I guess I just was not impressed with the wound channel... I've shot animals with Accubonds from 50 - 350 yds that literally liquify the internal organs, much like guys here see with the Bergers at just about any range. I like the accuracy I get with Barnes bullets, but I think they leave me wanting more in the way of damage to internal organs. At least that's where my head is at right now...

Have a box of Accubond LR's waiting to be loaded, and we'll see how they perform this Fall. But they have to shoot good first which is a total unknown at this point...
 
With Barnes bullets, the bigger the animal, the harder it gets hit. This is a feature of passing clear through whatever you are shooting. With a Barnes bullet, this works over a wide range of distances – especially if you have too much gun as is typical of guys geared up to shoot long range. On the other hand, if the bullet fragments and stays in the animal, how hard it hits depends only on the distance and then close is bad.


I do believe that each animal gets hit with the same "hardness" that you are speaking of. Energy is energy no matter how big the animal.

I use both barnes in my 25-06 and Berger in my 338 Lapua magnum.
 
I do believe that each animal gets hit with the same "hardness" that you are speaking of. Energy is energy no matter how big the animal.

I use both barnes in my 25-06 and Berger in my 338 Lapua magnum.

Energy has nothing to do with it.
Barnes bend back rather than expand and use very little energy to in the "expansion" process.
A 2000fps impact kills much the same as a 3200fps hit.
Though 1800fps is the best minimum they will expand at lower speeds...say 1500-1600fps.

A conventional bullet shows a larger difference in the violence of expansion depending on the impact speed.
 
I shot Barnes bullets for a lot of years believing they were the best combination for meat loss and lethality until I got a chance to hunt a bunch of elk that I could observe every hit and watch it's affects, no flying through timber or cover just open field where you see everything. I came so close to loosing a couple elk because I believed the Barnes bullet was the be all end all of bullets that it made me realize that some of the shots on elk in the mountains that I though were clean misses were likely not, I have a very low tolerance for not recovering a hit animal and I was forced to look for better bullets.
The biggest eye opener for me was when I started shooting Berger, I'd find very little blood shot which as a meat processor rates high on my list of what I want to see, a little more than a Barnes but definitely acceptable and way less than a bonded tipped bullet. The biggest thing was the wound channel inside physically affected whole organs not just cutting something getting lucky, at longer ranges the bullets all exit and leave a blown out hole but it's not a pile of blood shot but just a hole which is acceptable. That kind of bullet performance has brought home more meat for me because I've brought home every animal I hit, and every animal I hit the hit was extremely evident with no guessing if I hit it. Switching to high sectional density bullet of the Berger design was the best thing that every happened to all my hunting, close or far. I don't like shoulder shooting unless I have to but the high section density bullet out perform the light fast copper bullets every day on that shot as well.

The best thing is to just not drink any Koolaid, load up and test different bullets, everything I shoot I have Berger, Matrix, Nosler, Barnes and Cutting edge bullet for and I test them till I settle on the one that delivers balance of performance I'm looking for in meat loss, lethality and accuracy.
 
Energy has nothing to do with it.
Barnes bend back rather than expand and use very little energy to in the "expansion" process.
A 2000fps impact kills much the same as a 3200fps hit.
Though 1800fps is the best minimum they will expand at lower speeds...say 1500-1600fps.

A conventional bullet shows a larger difference in the violence of expansion depending on the impact speed.


I know..but if you read what he was saying. He was talking about energy. I am saying that energy doesnt matter whether the animal is big or small. They both get hit with the same amount of energy. I was saying that that was a wrong way to look at it and people shouldnt be confused by it. He wasn't talking about expansion.
 
My point that a bigger animal gets hit harder than a small animal when the bullet passes ALL THE WAY THROUGH is based on nothing more than physics, specifically, E = 1/2 MV2. If the bullet is still moving after it exits the animal, it still has kinetic energy. That remaining energy WAS NOT delivered to the animal but is instead used on whatever it hits next be that tree, rock or dirt. Since an elk is thicker than a deer and made out of the same basic material a Barnes bullet will spend more time traversing an elk than it will a deer and thus have more loss of velocity and dump more energy in the elk. HOWEVER, the rate of energy dump is governed by the square of the velocity and is not proportional to the thickness of the animal. In other words twice as thick does not equate to twice the energy dump.

If you plot the equation for kinetic energy based on the velocity of the bullet as it slows down in the animal, the energy delivered to the animal is the area under the curve of that plot. Such a plot would only be accurate for a Barnes or similar bullet that loses no mass as it traverses the animal. What you would see on the plot is that more energy is dumped in the first 12 inches of animal than the last 12 inches. If a bullet is losing both mass and velocity like a Berger, the rate of energy delivery is even higher. This appears to align with how these bullets work on animals. The Bergers appear to be the ultimate hammer with a well placed shot and results in a lot of DRT while the Barnes just kill them while preserving the most meat. I've yet to lose a animal shot with a Barnes so all is good so far.
 
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