I shot three animals with factory ammo from a .300 at 3000 fps and have mixed feelings.
Water buck at 80 yards broadside through shoulder without exiting. Eland at 275 yard through shoulders exiting, and a kudu at 60 yards broadside in the neck with bullet being recovered and I can email or text pics of bullet to someone for posting( my computer is having problems) . Anyone else have good or bad to say?

High impact velocity =rapid expansion =reduced penetration.

Env + 1.
I took 7 head of plains game from bushbuck to eland with .338Win Mag factory Black Talon 230 grain and the performance was superb!
The differences were heavy- for- caliber and less velocity. Some recovered bullets:

I used them in 375 on one trip. plains game shot 7 animals perfect performance!

quote:

Originally posted by samir:
I shot three animals with factory ammo from a .300 at 3000 fps and have mixed feelings.
Water buck at 80 yards broadside through shoulder without exiting. Eland at 275 yard through shoulders exiting, and a kudu at 60 yards broadside in the neck with bullet being recovered and I can email or text pics of bullet to someone for posting( my computer is having problems) . Anyone else have good or bad to say?

PICTURE ADDED FOR SAM

My experience has been that they are too hard and act more like solids. A springbok we shot at 40 yards thru the shoulder went back to eating and then fell over, like it had been shot with an arrow!

Had the same experience with a springbok. Bullet went through both shoulders, and he took off running as if he wasn't hit. We found him dead 100 yards away without a blood trail.

Black Talon was the first iteration of the Fail Safe, IIRC. 20+ year old technology. I guess the industry has now had a lot more experience and understands the variables and little gremlins better.

I remember the Original Barnes X bullets had all kinds of issues, high pressure spikes, seating depth surprises, barrel fouling and poor accuracy. I got a face full of hot gas from a 243 that I was sure was safe. I just did not know that the seating depth needed to be deeper & the bullet jump must be minimum 50 thou.

Now the TTSX & the TSX are among the best in the business.

I guess if Winchester & Nosler had persisted with an affordable design and continued to improve it, this one would still be around.

Winchester Fail Safes went with me and my 300 WSM on my first two African Safaris, and I killed Eland, Kudu(2), Gemsbok, Springbok(5-including grand slam), bontebok, blesbok (common and white), black wildebeest, blue wildebeest, waterbuck, impala, red hartebeest, warthog(2), zebra(2), scimitar horned oryx, bushbuck, fallow deer, mountain reedbuck, common reedbuck, steenbok, barbary sheep, grey duiker, tessebe, lechwe, nyala and a few other critters. Never had a problem. Still have a number of boxes of them in 180 grains.

The funny part is that every time someone brings arifle to siite in with Fail Safe bullets, we never got really good accuracy.

I have also bought a load of 270 and 338 caliber Fail Safe bullets, and had accuracy problems with them, hence they are just sitting in the store.

Not sure if I had a bad batch or not, but remember weighing 270 130 grain bullets, and weight variation was 4 grains in a test of 100 bullets.

That is an awful lot of difference in bullet weight.

If anyone in the USA has any 270 gr. .375 Fail Safe bullets they would be willing to sell please p/m me.

They have worked extremely well in my H & H.