Does anyone know at what impact velocity the petals on 300 gr. TSX .375 bullets begin to shear off.

I have a .375 AI and I only push the 300 tsx
to about 2550 fps, great performance, low pressure and no shearing of petals. IMHO no need to go
faster with that bullet in Africa. Not sure what happens if you want to go faster.

Good shooting,

Tetonka
DRSS

I'm shooting them out of my 375 RUM at 2780fps and haven't noticed any shearing. However, I haven't used them on any big game.

Shearing of petals has more to do with what obsturctions the bullet encounters IMO..Sometimes the do and sometimes they don't..

If you spine shoot a buffalo, Hippo, even an Eland then 99% of the time you have an ugly bullet recovery, but who cares, a spine shot is final.

I hit a red deer with one [44 mag] and got a glancing blow on a vertabrae.One petal bent sideways and I wondered if it had tumbled . Though no real noticable damage to the bone the effect was obvious - the back half instantly collapsed ! The lungs were holed also.

About the speed it takes to penetrate a 6 inch mopane.

quote:

Originally posted by 458Win:
About the speed it takes to penetrate a 6 inch mopane.

Yes, dont shoot through trees. That is the only time I have lost a petal shooting a 375gn barns X on game.

I can't remember ever having a petal shear from the TSX. I did, not on purpose, shoot a blesbok after shooting the 235 TSX through a 9" mopane tree. The blesbok was DRT but the bullet did not exit and it still weighed exactly 235 gr. Best bullet performance I have ever experienced.

I clipped a thorn bush on the way to a Gemsbok (150 yards, 2500 fps at the muzzle) and sheared a petal shooting a 300 grain TSX. The entrance hole in the Gemsbock was oblong.

I would expect that any time you would push a 300TSX fast enough to shear off petals that you would not recover the bullet. Except maybe in Fjold's case where you encountered something along the way. I push 235gr TSX to about 3000fps and have never recovered one yet so I don't know if the petals shear off but I don't care either.

Only 300 gr TSX from a .375 H&H I've ever recovered was a Texas heart shot on a Hartebeast at abt 25 yards. MV of the load was consistently 2604 fps at 10 feet. Bullet under the skin of the front of the chest. Perfect mushroom.

The only Barnes X I've ever recovered from game was a 350 grainer from a .416 Rigby with an MV of 2700 fps. The bullet had lost all of the nose. Was a followup shot on a Buf on the ground. Could not see well in the long grass. Bullet entered the right ham, smashed the femur, and went through the entire gut and chest. Was under the skin of the chest.

I suspect you have to hit something pretty hard to break up a Barnes bullet.

I have only found one petal, it was from a 250gr Expander ML sabot fired at 2000fps out of my T/C Encore muzzle loader. It hit a large cow moose in the shoulder joint at 70 yards. Shed one petal and exited out the far ribs. I think thats still pretty impressive considering it has the SD of a shot glass.

I've only found one petal from a 180 grain Barnes TSX out of my 300 WM. The petal was found in the exit wound of a kudu I shot at 225 yards.

Just food for thought that I wanted to pass on to you. I am one of the people that believes that the petal shearing of the TSX is most often caused by the bullet "tumbling" in the game and turning back end first. Most TSX bullets are designed to hold together at the conventional velocity of the cartridge that you are shooting. To help avoid the tumbling, I would suggest that you drop down in bullet weight. For example, in a .375, shoot a 270 grain bullet and not a 300 grain. You are going to get a flatter trajectory and still have plenty of penetration.

The twist of your rifle gives the bullet enough spin to shoot perfectly straight though air but when it hits an animal which is 80% water, it must shed sectional density to improve the ratio of sectional density to rate of spin to stay on a straight course and not tumble. With a homogenous bullet which is very long to start with, you will get better results using a shorter, somewhat lighter bullet.

I've shot about 20 each, 6mm and 30 cals, into my sandbox backstop at 30 ft or so to 100yds, just to see what happens.

A few survived with all petals folded back perfectly but most lost one to three petals. My sandbox is a tough test for ANY bullet even solids...none of my rifles really like Barnes bullets except the blue ones, but give 1-2" hunting accuracy in any of them.

Yes, the barrels were squeaky clean and fouled(with Barnes bullets) prior to accuracy testing, but I didn't try all the powders in each burning range or every seating length. Might have hit a bugholer if I kept working.

If your game gets to the table, hangs on the wall and you're still standing, then the bullet is a success no matter WHAT it looks like.

Luck

I shot a small raghorn elk this year with my .338 Win Mag. After running down mountain a bit he folded 355 yards from me. No exit, no blood other than a trickle from the nose. Lungs were soup, and my 225 grain TTSX-Vor-Tx bullet looks exactly like Fjords. Processor recovered the bullet,it weighed 201 grains. Hitting a twig in the oak brush was possible, but I back tracked and didn't see any evidence of that in the snow. The theory of the TTSX tumbling inside the animal intrigues me. It was a double lung shot, I can't imagine why the bullet would tumble after going through the ribs. Unless of course I did hit something close to the animal before impact.

Fjold, I'm sorry I miss spelled you name, it was your Avatar's fault...

Heavier TSX bullets loose petals more often than lighter ones. Duncan McPherson has plausible explanation in his book, that the heavies expand over a longer dwell time than a lighter bullet. (In other words they slow down more slowly).



The 416 and heavier, like these 450 grain X, TSX and NF Cup Point, are more prone to this than a 375.



If you look at the hundred or so copper 375 bullets Saeed has posted on line, you can probably tell which have sheared off from turning over vs ones that lost petals front on.

Pictured are 400, 450 and 500 grain X bullets. They dont like velocity.



The "square" bullets in my experience have shorn off due to first expanding and then getting ripped off as they travel base forward. This was a 450 grain TSX which is alot more stable than a 500 grain.



Thats how they behave in water and wood planks anyway. Even a 1-12 twist at 2400 fps did not keep this bullet nose forward. Water rips the petals off, wood does not.

Andy

As soon as the petals start to open, the bullet destabilizes as it encounters differing levels of resistance impinging on the various points as they encounter varying levels of resistance and open at differing time intervals.

If those bullets are moving through a uniform medium like water, you get nice picture perfect upsets at lower velos and pieces and parts at higher levels.

Basically the same reason a wind mill turns, and why your tires thump when they are unbalanced....that's been happening to bullets as long as there HAVE BEEN bullets. That fact doesn't seem to stop those bullets from doing what the were designed to do.

Maybe donations would convince someone to run some "scientific" uniform test to determine just what the shear point actually is for a specific bullet at various velocities...or someone with a structural stress program could crunch some numbers.

Otherwise it boils down to...Yes, it happens and who knows the velo.

Luck

Andy:



I sincerely hope some folks on AR are paying attention to your last post . A lot said in a few short words !

So a 450 grain in a 458 Win Mag is perfect but will not work well in a Lott?

Slider, I like the 450 grain Barnes better than either the 400 or 500 grain.

As Dave Bush said, its best to drop down one bullet weight with the monometals.

The Barnes have a fairly narrow velocity range they expand and maintain X petals in compared to a bonded soft point.

Thats my take home lesson from testing all of the premium 458's available between 2001-2008 in 458 caliber anyway.

Once you shoot a critter at 75-100 yards, a Lott wont stress out a 450 grain TSX too badly.

I would much rather have a 400 or 450 grain North Fork soft point in win mag, Lott, or 450 Dakota however.



450 grain North Fork at point blank range 2550 fps and 400 grain from same buff (dead) at 2,700! (Similar penetration on both).

Alf, thanks for kind words.

Andy

Sawdust, dirt, sawdust and dirt mixed, magazines both dry and wet, may be a means of comparing bullets to bullets and thats a maybe, and dry magazines being the most destructive to bullets IMO, but they don't seem to coincide with live meat and bone..They do sell bullets and magazines and make excellent advertisements so all is not lost!

As I sit at my computer looking out the window on a cold Idaho day, I notice probably several hundred recovered from game bullets of all makes on my windowsill plus I have shoebox of expanded bullets somewhere around here..

What have I learned form all this bullet digging in blood and gore, getting blood to my shoulder and having to go all day without picking my nose because my fingernails are caked in blood...Actually not a hell of a lot..

Interesting:

What is harder on a bullet water or stacked paper?

You can poke your finger into water but you cant poke it through a magazine or a sheet of thin plywood.... so intuitively the paper and plywood should be harder on the bullet than water or is it?

What happens when you speed that finger motion up to say 2000 or 3000 fps?

Does the same still apply ?

To further confuse matters , water is incompressable while paper and plywood is.


Firing into water is tough on bullets but it is also a consistant medium and because of that it gives consistant results and usually results in picture perfect mushroomed bullets.

My experience with the TSX is a bit different than what has been stated here. I find the TSX to have the LARGEST variance in velocity spread and still produce satisfactory results. I must admit however, that I have seldom recovered TSX bullets from animals. Most of the time, they blow on through while producing 1 shot kills.

I've recovered quite a few TSX bullets from sand and I can tell you that when compared to the bullets recovered from game, the results are significantly different. The sand recoveries tend to show much more damage to the bullet while the game recoveries show more of the expected and advertised result.

Although posted elsewhere, including on another thread in this same category in this same timeframe, I'll repost this picture here. It is certainly not the end all, be all, definitive, final word on the issue, but represents an example of the results that have formed my opinion.



In particular support of my post, the second bullet from the left, is a 350gr TSX recovered from a Cape Buffalo Bull, 416 Rigby, point of the shoulder at about 30 yards. Estimated impact velocity is somewhere around 2700fps. The combination of close range (high velocity) and point of the shoulder impact indicate to me this bullet experienced severe stress. All 4 pedals stayed in place with the only unusual characteristic being that it flattened the center portion more than usual. Most times, we see a bit of a depression in the center where this bullet is completely flattened. Result was a perfect X appearance.

The next two bullets over represent what I would consider to be standard performance from standard impact velocity and shot placement. These are 2 300gr TSX bullets from a 375H&H fired into a Brown Bear, striking just behing the onside shoulder, and recovered in the offside shoulder bone structure after shattering the bone. Impact velocity was probably around 2200 fps or so as the range was 75 yards. These bullets show the typical X pattern but with that previously discussed depression in the center.

The bullet on the far right is a 225gr X (old style) bullet recovered from a Bull Elk shot with a 340WBY at extreme range. When I say extreme, I mean 800 yards or so. Maybe further. Certainly not something I normally do but this animal had been wounded and was just about to go over a mountain ridge where it would have not been recovered. In my opinion, an unethical shot under other circumstances but I think justified here. Point being that this projectile struck the animal at relatively low velocity due to the extreme range. It still expanded into the typical X pattern, although a little less than the two bullets to it's left.

Conversely, many of the bullets I've recovered out of sand or dirt backstops have had pedals missing or been deformed but in general, just didn't look the same in the surface texture of the bullet itself. I'm not sure these non animal test mediums are good for much other than a "That's interesting" comment.

For what its worth, I compared results of my bullet tests using 5 gallon Home Depot nylon buckets with the late George Hoffmans vast collection of 375, 416 and 458 slugs and they corresponded 90% for expansion and 95% for retained weight with his bullets dug out of buffalo. My two North Forks were also within that percentage. There is no doubt that bullets recovered from nylon 5 gallon water buckets closely correlate to large game.

Andy

quote:

Originally posted by Andy:
For what its worth, I compared results of my bullet tests using 5 gallon Home Depot nylon buckets with the late George Hoffmans vast collection of 375, 416 and 458 slugs and they corresponded 90% for expansion and 95% for retained weight with his bullets dug out of buffalo. My two North Forks were also within that percentage. There is no doubt that bullets recovered from nylon 5 gallon water buckets closely correlate to large game.

Andy

"That's interesting"!

Put the question to Barnes Bullets - they say, they "test" up to impact velocities of 2600 fps. Petals stay on at that velocity, apparently they don't know after that.

Here's the actual reply from Barnes.

"Hi,

The .375 cal TSX and TTSX bullets are tested to between 2600 and 2700fps for 100% weight retention. We don’t test them at a velocity where they lose petals. Petal loss may occur from 100fps higher to several hundred fps higher.

Thanks, Ty"

Ty Herring | Consumer Service - Lead Tech
Barnes Bullets, LLC

38 North Frontage Road, PO Box 620, Mona, UT 84645
Phone 435-856-1105 | Fax 435-856-1040 | tyh@barnesbullets.com

I doubt if it really matters if one or more petals are shed. I shot a large pig recently with a 160gn TTSX out of my 338 Win Mag. MV is 3390fps. The pig was at around 80 yards, and I hit him in the RHS rear ham. The bullet passed through ham, pelvis, intestines, stomach (packed full of grass and stuff), liver and lung, and broke a rib behind the LHS shoulder, bouncing off the fighting shield, and ending up in the lung. It was a quick and effective kill, even though the bullet lost one petal. So far that is the only Barnes bullet I have recovered from game, and nothing I have shot has gone very far when well hit with a Barnes bullet.