When shooting the 250gr Hornady sp in my 358 Norma Mag I the tip of the bullets gets damaged in the mag. Is this going to affect my point of impact? To me it seems as if the POI will rise a little and that the gun will open up a little bit more with the deformed bullets.

Anyone know of any good bullets for the 358 with protected point. I know of the Nosler BT, but I don�t like that bullet. The Woodleigh PP seems nice but is it avalible in 358, or maybe an ordinary round nose will be less deformed.

any clues,

HVA

HVA,

Numerous published tests showed no that damaged tips had no measurable effect on hunting accuracy at ranges out to 300 yards.

I try to just make sure that I don't keep the same rounds in the magazine all the time. Shoot them in order of original loading.

If the recoil is bad enough to seat the bullets deeper into the case then you do have a problem.

Don

Conventional wisdom says there will be no appreciable difference in such a caliber as that. (But only the bench will tell for sure.)

My .358 Norma started out life as a .35 Whelen with 1-14" twist. It apparently didn't like anything heavier than 180gr so essentially was just an /06. I thought reaming to .358 Norma might get the speed to stabilize the heavier weights.

Apparently it worked. I'm getting a good reliable 1.25 MOA with 280 gr. Swift A-frames.

Try the Swifts. They are heavy for caliber (if one wanted to shoot 200 gr then any .30 cal magnum will do it better) and they are nicely blunted at the tip. A semi-spitzer if you will.

Don't let the extra cost throw you. You'll probably spend that much money in gasoline just getting to the range.

The Swifts all all protected points I believe . You also have the Kodiak bonded cores and Speer Grand Slams . The Grand Slams should work great in your Norma and they are priced below Partitions , probably about the same as ballistic tips . And , the regular Speer 250 gr hot cores are quite a lttle shorter than Hornadays and a shorter cartridge length might prevent some of the tip battering .

HVA -- Try the Swift A-Frame or Northfork bullets, their tips are nearly identical. I would call it a pointed-round shape. I shoot both with my .358 STA. Swift makes the 225, 250, and my favourite of theirs, the 280 gr. bullets. Northfork makes the 225 and 250 gr. bullets. These Northforks are my most accurate bullets by far. Their performance in my toughness test is also as good as the Swift, which I had considered the best until now. Good shooting.

------------------

Did some testing on this several years ago in .25-06 and 7mm Remington Magnum. I deformed the tips from barely touched to totally flattened, and it made no difference whatsoever out to 200 yards.

Even the inexpensive Rem 200 gr and up Pointed SP Corelokts have a nose that's hard to damage.

That's not a bad bullet for the money. Not at all.

I read an article a few years ago where a writer took a pair of wire cutters and cut the tips off of some bullets, loaded and fired them at 100 yards. He then loaded and fired some undamaged ones from the same box. There really wasn't any appreciable difference in accuracy.

Yup, read that same article, he really mangled some of the bullets too.