Nosler E-TIP extended range accuracy

[105Coues]

Has anyone tried the E-TIP at extended ranges (5-600)? Big fan of their AB's and BT's but never shot the E-TIPS. Concerned with accuracy and long range low energy performance. I tried the barnes years ago and the best I could get was 1.5" groups at 100. The 270 Win in question will shoot half inch groups with the other Noslers. Terminally the barnes were awesome at close range on a spike elk.

 

[Varmint Hunter]

Has anyone tried the E-TIP at extended ranges (5-600)? Big fan of their AB's and BT's but never shot the E-TIPS. Concerned with accuracy and long range low energy performance. I tried the barnes years ago and the best I could get was 1.5" groups at 100. The 270 Win in question will shoot half inch groups with the other Noslers. Terminally the barnes were awesome at close range on a spike elk.

You may want to try a few E-tips at short range first. I could not get acceptable groups in any one of the several rifles that I tried them in. IMO, the Barnes TSX bullets are much easier to work with.

 

[105Coues]

THX> I will but I don't have them yet. They are provided by AZ game and fish to try to reduce the lead the condors eat in gut piles. I still have some of the barnes I tried years ago because my rifle didn't like them. Was hoping these might be better in my rifle.

 

[Varmint Hunter]

THX> I will but I don't have them yet. They are provided by AZ game and fish to try to reduce the lead the condors eat in gut piles. I still have some of the barnes I tried years ago because my rifle didn't like them. Was hoping these might be better in my rifle.

My guess is that the lack of grooves which allow for displacement of copper as the rifling engraves the bullet shank is the problem. But that's just a guess. You may want to try the Hornady GMX bullet which is similar to the Nosler but has the grooves like a Barnes.

 

[Shane Lindsey]

Greetings,
Did you try adjusting your seating depth on the Barnes. I too have a 270 (Rem 700) and I get 1/4" groups with TSX's. I initially got about an inch with them going with an overall length of 3.34. Did the testing and now they are my best shooting load out of that rifle.

I would suggest looking at the Berger seating depth test on this forum (sticky) if you aren't sure how (I wasn't, it opened my eyes to just how much more I could get-I'm a rookie). It didn't take long to find the sweet spot.

Good luck,
Shane

 

[105Coues]

I tried the older barnes before the tsx. I may not have tried real hard with them since at the same time I had the 150 partitions that would shoot half inch five shot groups. I only shot the elk with them as I was curious to see how it would perform. he was 75 yards and was down before i could shoot again. All four petals broke off the bullet and i recovered it in the off shoulder.

I read some good things about the etips today so i am going to try them. Thanks

 

[MontanaRifleman]

I used to shoot the 180 E-Tips in my 300 RUM. I worked up loads for the E-Tips, 200 AB's and 210 Bergers in that rifle and the E-Tips shot slightly better than the other 2. Best 3 shot group @ 427 yds was 1.8" (.4 MOA). Shot them with .5 accuracy to 500 and 600 yds in that particular rifle.

Later I found Cutting Edge (monometal lathe turned) bullets to be more accurate and easier to load for.

 

[BrentM]

I have shot Nosler BT/ ET bullets for many years. Clear back to 1998. I say that because I went to Alaska and hunting caribou with my 3006 and 165 ET.

I used 180 AB BT Nolser in my 3006 now and at 500 yards, the max range I sent this rifle up for I had 1 MOA 5 shot groups. At 100 it shoots .38 3 shot groups. I have no experience with it at longer range. I set up 6.5-284 for LR hunting, primarily wolf.

Anyway, I have shot the Noslers in 165-180 grain in the 30 cal. and I used them exclusively in my 220 in 55 gr. I realize that is not a LR caliber but for varmints that rifle was deadly to 500 on priarie dogs and yotes.

Personally I really like Nosler as I had great luck with the bullets. My 6.5 shoots 140 Berger VLDs due to the higher BC in the 6.5 line up.

 

[DPO]

I have shot the Etips out of a 7 wsm they were very accurate. I personally have not shot a animal with them my shooting partner has and loves them. I think the min velocity on them is 1800fps or 2000fps cant remember for sure but its something to look into if u r going to shoot long range animals.

 

[MontanaRifleman]

They advertise down to 1800 fps. I would probably go a little higher myself.

E-Tip — Nosler

 

[Marlinproud]

Anybody tried the 150gr out of their .308's?

How was the performance on game?

Thanks

 

[Michael Courtney]

Anybody tried the 150gr out of their .308's?

How was the performance on game?

Thanks

We measured the G1 BC of the 150 grain ETip in .308 to be 0.324, which is much lower than Nosler's claim of 0.469. With a BC this low, we determined that there are much better bullet choices for hunting with a .308, even at moderate ranges.

See: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555975.pdf

One other concern is that Nosler only uses 10% expansion to determine the lower limit of their expansion window. A .308 bullet that has only expanded by 10% is only .339 inches in diameter, so we felt that 2200 fps is a much more reasonable estimate of the lower velocity needed to achieve adequate expansion.

The combination of a much lower BC than advertised, and a higher expansion threshold make this bullet a poor choice for anything but short range applications.

 

[Marlinproud]

We measured the G1 BC of the 150 grain ETip in .308 to be 0.324, which is much lower than Nosler's claim of 0.469. With a BC this low, we determined that there are much better bullet choices for hunting with a .308, even at moderate ranges.

See: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a555975.pdf

One other concern is that Nosler only uses 10% expansion to determine the lower limit of their expansion window. A .308 bullet that has only expanded by 10% is only .339 inches in diameter, so we felt that 2200 fps is a much more reasonable estimate of the lower velocity needed to achieve adequate expansion.

The combination of a much lower BC than advertised, and a higher expansion threshold make this bullet a poor choice for anything but short range applications.

Really? I cant believe its bc is so low considering its a longer bullet then the ballistic tip (bc .43) Will have to shoot both at the same velocity and see which drops more at long range.

 

[Michael Courtney]

Really? I cant believe its bc is so low considering its a longer bullet then the ballistic tip (bc .43) Will have to shoot both at the same velocity and see which drops more at long range.

The 150 grain E-Tip in .308 has a different boat tail angle and length, a different ogive, and is not really analogous to the NBT in any way, so I'm not sure why you think it will yield a higher BC. But probably the factor that increases drag the most is the pronounced shoulder or step discontinuity between the plastic tip and the front copper portion of the bullet.

In spite of some expectation that longer bullets should have higher BCs, this expectation is not realized in most copper bullet designs, even though they are roughly 20% less dense, thus ~20% longer for a given weight and diameter. For example, the 150 grain NBT has a BC advertised at 0.435. For comparison, the Barnes 150 grain TTSXBT has an advertised BC of 0.420 and the Hornady 150 grain GMX is advertised at 0.415. The Nosler claim of BC = 0.469 for their E-Tip would be exaggerated even if the shape was as aerodynamic as the comparable Barnes or Hornady copper bullets, but the shoulder and the suboptimal boat tail make it even worse.

Then you should consider that Nosler also exaggerates the BC of most of their Ballistic Tip bullets also. The published Litz measurements average around 6% lower than Nosler's claims, and the Litz measurement for the 150 grain NBT is a G1 BC of 0.406, much lower than the Nosler claim of 0.435. We measured the BC of the 150 grain NBT to be 0.381. We've corresponded with Bryan extensively to understand possible reasons for differences between his measurements and our and we've concluded that various factors probably contribute to differences between our measured BCs, including: 1) Different lots of bullets can vary dimensionally. We've seen 13% difference between the different lots of a given bullet (same rifle, same measurement method, same intial velocity). 2) Different barrels or changes to a barrel like polishing can shoot the same bullets with different BCs (same lot, same initial velocity, same measurement method). 3) BC can vary slightly with velocity.

Measurements by both Bryan Litz and by us suggest that Barnes measures relatively accurate BCs and that differences between Barnes' advertised BCs and independent measurements are both high and low so that the Barnes BCs do not seem to be systematically exaggerated as the Nosler BCs seem to be.