Best longrange hunting bullet for medium sized game.

[KodiakHntr]

Don’t hear Barnes and long range hunting used together very often in the real world...

Personally, I get pretty hesitant using Barnes past 450-ish after having seen a “few” critters shot past 450 with various flavours.
Maybe hesitant isn’t the right word. I will definitely poke holes in 500+ yard shoulders with a TTSX/LRX but I am mentally prepared to put a follow up round into any patch of hair as soon as the crosshairs settle from recoil that presents itself if that animal is still on its feet. Doesn’t matter what part of the anatomy it is, if there aren’t legs paddling air after the first shot with a Barnes it gets a second hole. Or a third.
I don’t have much faith in temporary wound cavity damage when it comes to mono’s.

[.264winmag]

Personally, I get pretty hesitant using Barnes past 450-ish after having seen a “few” critters shot past 450 with various flavours.
Maybe hesitant isn’t the right word. I will definitely poke holes in 500+ yard shoulders with a TTSX/LRX but I am mentally prepared to put a follow up round into any patch of hair as soon as the crosshairs settle from recoil that presents itself if that animal is still on its feet. Doesn’t matter what part of the anatomy it is, if there aren’t legs paddling air after the first shot with a Barnes it gets a second hole. Or a third.
I don’t have much faith in temporary wound cavity damage when it comes to mono’s.

Only ran one ttsx through a good size Muley up in the timber, 7-08 inside 30 yds high lungs had to put another in his gearbox as he was suffering. Same shot with a cup/core I’d be sitting on an extra round...

[.264winmag]

That's because you're posting links to data that's from 2011...

It’s a large website if you care to browse it. Which my personal empirical evidence on bullet performance at extended ranges I feel no need to switch projectiles and play with fire. I’ve found no evidence to suggest that monolithic projectiles are superior to the frangible cup/cores.

[.264winmag]

Have you checked out the Lrx lineup?

Dabbled with them in the 264 pressured up quick at modest velocity and couldn’t keep them in the breadbasket at extended ranges...

[Bustercluck]

Dabbled with them in the 264 pressured up quick at modest velocity and couldn’t keep them in the breadbasket at extended ranges...

I had trouble getting accuracy out of my ttsx hand loads too, the factory stuff works good, but it’s expensive as hell to buy. I loaded them pretty close to the lands and I’m wondering if I seat them shorter if they might perform better. I have my same load sitting in a box, i might just push them in a bit and see what happens.

[.264winmag]

I had trouble getting accuracy out of my ttsx hand loads too, the factory stuff works good, but it’s expensive as hell to buy. I loaded them pretty close to the lands and I’m wondering if I seat them shorter if they might perform better. I have my same load sitting in a box, i might just push them in a bit and see what happens.

30-50thou off the land’s definitely helped lower pressures but didn’t do enough in the accuracy department for me. I had better luck in the 7-08 for accuracy but unless I’m considering a steady diet of Texas heart shots I don’t feel the need to run them for short range work and be pessimistic about a longer poke.

[.264winmag]

Then there’s the fact that they’re grossly overpriced, over 1$ per pill doesn’t make it any more enjoyable at the range when you don’t see em stacked in there

[375shooter]

Willyqbc and his hunting partners collectively, have an impressive amount of experience using Barnes bullets in hunting situations. If we're lucky, maybe he'll be along to share some of this wealth of information in regards to the lethality of the LRX line.

Just to give you some food for thought.......

If you think about your own experiences, ask around, or can search up the old poll that was done on here, you will find that the vast majority of animals are shot at under 150 yds....and the farther out you go, the less often those shots happen. Because of that, I start with a group of bullets that I know will perform up close at top velocities.....these would be your Barnes, accubonds, partitions etc. From there I look for ones that have the lowest minimum velocity needed to function, as that will get me the longest useable distance.

Usually these days, that ends up being the Barnes LRX......realistically no upper limit on speed, they will smash through and hold together at the highest velocities. they also have a reasonable bottom end....for your 300WSM that would be about 1600 fps and 1000 ft/lbs for the 175 and 190 LRX. On your 300 WSM that would put the 175's operating range approximately 0-700 yds comfortably. Ive been loading barnes for 20 years and have never found them to be difficult to tune.
There are softer bullets out there that will get you more distance, but you will have to sacrifice performance up close for the very rare occasion that you may need to go long. Not worth it in my books, set up for your most common shot, and make the compromise on your least common shot

JMO
Chris

[VLD43]

I had trouble getting accuracy out of my ttsx hand loads too, the factory stuff works good, but it’s expensive as hell to buy. I loaded them pretty close to the lands and I’m wondering if I seat them shorter if they might perform better. I have my same load sitting in a box, i might just push them in a bit and see what happens.

I have always had lots of success with Barnes bullets. They usually like lots of jump. I know the .030 to .070 rule, but I have found that sometimes they like well over that. Somewhere between .100 and .150. Al of my barnes loads shoot sub MOA if I do my part. Have never had anything walk away from them, right out to 500 yds.

[KodiakHntr]

Only ran one ttsx through a good size Muley up in the timber, 7-08 inside 30 yds high lungs had to put another in his gearbox as he was suffering. Same shot with a cup/core I’d be sitting on an extra round...

I've killed or been close witness to a lot of stuff being killed with most (all?) flavours of Barnes, except maybe the XLC's. I don't recall shooting any of those ever, but I could be wrong.
I WANT to like them. But the only times I have had relatively consistently quick kills (as in, whump/thump on the ground) was with light for caliber bullets pushed over 3300fps at the muzzle. That was *fairly* consistent across the spectrum if impact velocity was above 2600fps. I did see a couple of hinky things happen with 168 TSX's on elk where the impact was over 3000 fps that didn't impress me much as far as temporary wound cavity damage went, and a failure to open OR penetrate. Although I also had some immediate bang/flops on bull elk with the same combination out to 100-ish yards.
My only real elk rodeo was a 168 TSX from my 300 Ultra that entered a big bull at 12 yards quartering in that completely broke the onside legbone, punctured one lung, caught liver, and was under the hide under the opposite side hind quarter. He spun around, almost went down, took another one that was supposed to be a hard raking texas heart shot but ended up only slipping along the body and hitting the other front leg back to front, breaking that bone. He made it 600+ yards over the next 6 hours on two broken front wheels, when I jumped him up at maybe 30 yards and put another quartering away round through his remaining lung and out in front of his off side shoulder. A minute + later he still needed a finisher to the base of the skull when he was trying to get up and fight me. Internal damage was adequate in my opinion to kill him inside a minute of the first shot, but apparently he didn't share that opinion. I chalk that up to "some animals die harder deaths than others".

I had some ridiculously decisive kills with 45 tsx/223AI on big muleys (3850fps mv) out to 200-ish yards and 50 TTSX's at 3200 from 223's out to 177 yards, 53 tsx produced some runners, 62 TTSX had some runners, 120TSX at 3450 fps mv showed bang flops regardless of placement.

All that said, my 280AI with 150TTSX at 2850fps mv has folded up 3 elk and 3 moose like the ground reached up and grabbed them from 90 yards to 424 yards. Another bull elk ran maybe 60 yards after being laced through ribs and off side shoulder, and the first 50 yards didn't show any blood at all on the snow, but I think in the last 10 yards ALL the blood was out. When they work, they work really well. But sometimes they don't work all that shit hot. A couple of the longer shots showed minimal expansion on flesh and recovered bullets that didn't expand all that great, but were instantaneous kills. Go figure.

For me though, Barnes are always going to be for punching shoulders at close to moderate range. I don't trust the damage inflicted once they start getting stretched out there. Broken shoulders are always on the menu for me when using a mono, and the thought that there might be a follower needed immediately.