Those are the copper alloys. You like those? Never used them. I was always scared they were too hard even though they had a hollow front. Ive used the nosler partition and the front would shed, then the base would tumble erratically through the body. Usually the exit would be nowhere near inline with the entrance. I shot a buck with a 130 grain .270 NP in the shoulder broad side and the base came out at the back of the gut on the opposite side. It also had a huge exit hole in the front of the chest. Kind of freaked me out. Don't want to blow the horns off. Im sure the GMX is a more UNIFORMING bullet. That's not a word cause it aint in the dictionary.

Dawaba, find my old friend and mentor, the TuffPak guy from Bedford, and ask him about his adventures with the 9.3x62. Mention my name and location. Please say hello for me to his wife Karen, too. He's been using one for a long time and made more than few trips across the pond with one, and other of his extensive bag of toys. That's what mine was bought for, and it or I never got to go.
Ron

But, but, but... They're ballistic tips! They're gonna splode on impact! /sarcasm

I wanna find a black box of ammo with the words "tactical" and "ballistic tip" on them... Oh and it would have a green ballistic tip too. That way it would armor piercing and explode on impact with extra tactical deadliness...

Jk but fwiw any box of ammo hat I've seen marketed as "ballistic tip" has either been a varmint round or a rapidly expanding round meant for thin skinned game. That's how I came to the (wrong) inference way back on page 2. I thought that when it was marketed as "ballistic" on the box I thought It was the cool way to say that it's a fragmenting round.

Don't feel bad about him getting away. I had the same thing happen to me a week ago. I shot a broad side (quarterly slightly to me) 150-200 lbs hog at 170 yards with my 30-06 using 165 gr Rem Core-lokts and he got away. I shot right behind the ear, he dropped, about 5 seconds later he started flopping and was able to make it to his feet. He trotted off and stumbling. I tracked him in the snow for 500-600 yards with a good blood trail and never found him. I finally had to stop tracking because it led to Corps land. I couldn't believe it. This has never happened to me in my entire deer, hog, varmint hunting career. I have used the same gun and same ammo with great results.

Hogs are tuff animals. A lot of people always say shot placement shot placement, but we do not have control of the bullet after it leaves the bore and impacts the animal. People like to assume that we making bad shots and it always is a possibility, but it is not an exact science. When a bullet hits bone it can glance off in all kinds of directions. Sometimes not ending up where you expected it to. And some animals may be a little more juiced up on adrenalin or rutted up not realizing theyre even hit. Also a pushed animal can run a long way on just fumes. I shot a 400 pounder one time and it took 5 shots to the side to kill him. He just kept getting back up.

sure wont fragment, but ive had several that wouldn't expand either.

On the real, good info. I studied all the ballistic tip bullets when they took off and was left with a lot of questions with all the options I had to choose from. I looked at the GMX and TSX and saw that barnes had some unopened bullets that were recovered from testing. This led me to think that the copper alloys were a pretty hard mixture. Double lung a deer with no rib hit with one of those and you will need a miracle to find him. Not my preferred shot but Ive seen people that aim behind the shoulder. I aim high on the shoulder for the knock down and if they move around I give them another. I haven't had to track one in a long time. That copper alloy may be a good one for a shoulder shot on a hog. Ive never used them.

It sure would be helpful if you included caliber, load data, and shot distance with that claim, don'tcha think?

Don't know who the message was intended for, but the article I read about the copper alloys was in a guns and ammo magazine. This was back when we didn't just ask the computer how something works. I only remember them testing the copper alloys in a 150 grain 7mm and .308 diameters in standard loaded cases. The specs on powder cases didn't matter to me because they were just a standard load. And the distance was at a practical range that didn't alarm me. The pictures of the retrieved projectiles said it all for me, and that was that the copper alloys didn't always mushroom out, so I wasn't concerned about buying them or even loading some up. This was about ten years ago. The pictures did make an impact on my brain. All the rest was thrown in the gutter after I saw what I wanted to see. I've never used them, but out of the ballistic tip type of bullets that I have used and felt like I had some confidence with was the Swift Scirrico. I shot the safari load rem 150 gr. in the 7 mag. I did shoot a buck with one of these rounds at a solid 300 yrds. and he dropped down and got up then ran about 40 yards. It was a leg to heart shot just under the shoulder. Those rounds would give me 2 in groups at 300 yards with a sporter weight Winchester model 70 with trigger work, floated barrel, and a 6x18x50 bushnell scope. That's fantastic in my world. I quit shooting the belted magnums not long after this because ammo prices got out of control. Its been a while.

Barnes TSX and TTSX are proven hunting monolithic rounds (TTSX is basically a TSX with a ballistic tip) that expand reliably and consistently as long as you don't exceed the performance parameters (e.g. too low fps).

I don't really see why, the answer lies in the fact that if you don't hit something hard with them they will not reliably expand.

165 grain Hornady GMX
300 WBY
Max charge of H4831
Hog probably around 150-175 lbs.

Assumed double lung never recovered. Found small specks of blood for about 200 yards till a fence line. 100 Yard shot with good rest under a feeder.

Same load and similar shot as above but found that one. Very small entry/exit and a long sparse blood trail.

Shot a spike buck with it and hit the neck bone dead center and his head nearly fell off. Shot another hog straitgh through both shoulders and he was dead on the spot with a lot of internal damage and a decent exit. If you don't hit something hard/big bones, there is not telling if it will function right or not.

Well, I was planning to take this advice, but the hog didn't cooperate. I spotted a sounder Wednesday evening crossing a pasture. They were headed for a wooded area and I had to hustle to get into shooting position. I reached a suitable spot just before they went into the woods. Several hogs milled around a little before wandering into the trees, and I decided this sow offered the best possibilities. She was quartering away, and I was lining up for a shot to the neck which would have exited somewhere in her head when she suddenly turned to face me. She put her head down to root and I figured I'd better take the shot before she decided to disappear. She was about five yards away from the tree line, and roughly 120 yards away from me.

I aimed for the center of her forehead, missing that by an inch or two. The bullet impacted her right eye and the hydrostatic shock fractured the skull above the eye socket, sending fragments above the eye outward. The bullet exited her neck and then passed through her right foreleg. She went straight down and didn't move again.

The bullet was a 150 grain Hornady Interlock SP — a basic cup and core bullet.

One less hog in Lee County today!

The heart girth measured 32 inches, indicating a weight of about 120 pounds.
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Nice piggie, nice shot. Congrats.

i dont understand why more people dont shoot em in the head/ear. i know it might be a smaller target, but with the "shield" and all the other side effects of shooting them elsewhere, this seems to work best for me whether its a ballistic tip, core lock or whatever runnig down the ear canal at 3000f/ps seems to have a definite effect on them just my o2

Confidence...thats why...small target that moves alot

Exactly Right! I took the head shot a couple of posts up because that's what was available. Normally I go for whatever I think has the best chance of a sure kill. In the past that's often been shoulder shots because, with a .308, it'll knock their socks off. I'll probably take Flintknapper's advice and aim for the neck when the opportunity presents itself, but I don't want to take a chance on missing if I can help it.

I consider myself an average shot at best. I am NOT a super marksman, and I need every advantage I can muster.

Not to try and prove anyone wrong about bullets or such....but, I have killed 3 big boars over/at 300lbs in my life. All three had bullets in their shoulders from previous shots and all seem to be 30 caliber bullets. One of them was a barnes mono bullet. I don't know the distances that the hogs were shot from. The one that I got mounted had 3 or 4 bullets in it's shoulders that did absolutely zero damage to it. After shooting a couple big boars and not recovering them, I have resorted to only shooting them in the neck. Since I have done this, I have killed the last 3 I shot.

Now with this said, I have bought a case of .308 in the Winchester razorback XT load (Mono bullet). Next opportunity, I am going to shoot the big boar in the shoulder and see if the bullet does what they claim.

Disclaimer: I shoot Winchester BST in my 30-06 and Hormady SST in my .243, but these are for deer and antelope only. When I hog hunt with these calibers, I use cup/core bullets like Hornady Interlock and Remington Core Lokt and do head shots on big sows and neck shots on big boars (save the skull for mount). Any hog under 150ish, gets shot in the slates usually.

Gentlemen, Wow! I posted this weeks ago and forgot to check back. It is truly amazing how many of you have replied, and how many different opinions there are out there. I love this forum for exactly those two reasons. Appreciate all your replies.

I've only killed one hog with a rifle everything else bow.

30-30 150 grain in the shoulder and she dropped in her tracks.

125lb sow I'm sure boars are tougher.

Unless you are shooting a .22 or buck shot at long range, the shield really isn't a significant issue, certainly not to a centerfire bullet at 3000 fps.

The "ear" is a smaller target, often on a moving head as noted, located at the rear of the skull where the skull is thickest (and the only part where it may be actually thick), and so shots are fear to miss or glance. And that is another facet. Like the shield, people believe that hogs have "really thick skulls" and think that rounds will glance off of them because they are thick. The skulls are not really thick except for the occiput at the rear of the skull that can be thick, but it is on the back of the head, not the sides, front, top, or bottom. If a shot glances, it is because of the angle of incidence/impact, not because the skull is really thick.

And while it may be an issue of confidence, I have watched confident shooters miss.

Here is the shot of a confident shooter on a nearly stationary hog at less than 100 yards using a 3x scope on a .308. This hog ran and was picked up with subsequent body/chest shots.

Understand that a lot of your "experienced" hunters hunt with pie plate accuracy that they consider to be good enough for "the boiler room." Far too many don't bother to properly sight in their rifles or change ammo before a hunt and can't count of very good accuracy that would be needed for ear shots. Others don't know where to aim to compensate for drop in order to make such a shot. They sight in and practice at a given distance and then try shooting at some radically different distance, often with poor results.

I cringe every time sometime says they are sighted in with "minute of hog" or that their gun is "accurate enough to hit a hog at 100 yards." Heck, I had a keyholing rifle (worn barrel) that could hit a hog at 100 yards - could be the head, leg, butt, but you could hit a hog with it, not that you would know where.

I don't know if this one was supposed to be in the ear or behind. Either way, it missed the ear and failed to kill the hog. The round just went through soft tissue. Looks like a near perfect shot that perfectly failed. I killed this hog, apparently months after the first attempt had been made.




Sure, and sometimes they will run and some will run for quite some distance. A well placed shoulder shot that does not hit the spine can still result in a hog that runs 50-100 yards with a blown heart or lungs, potentially with little or no blood trail. I figure that 50-100 is about normal for this placement, if they run. Some will get farther.

I hadn't really given it much thought, but I rarely get as good a blood trail from hogs as I do from deer. Most likely that has to do with the bullet I use and where I place it. The shield on the off side of the pig is stopping the small bullet I use. The good news is that I don't generally have to do much tracking, so I haven't needed the blood trail.

And one other thing to mention is that over the years that I have hunted hogs (about 15 years, versus about 55 years for deer), I've used my 270 with 130 gr bullets, my 260 with 120 and 100 gr bullets, and my 220 Swift with 63 gr and 55 gr bullets. With the 270 I most always got a blood trail. With the 260, I got blood trails from the 120 grainers but not with the 100 grainers. Never got any blood trail with a 220 bullet, but did have success using that 63 gr Sierra to kill pigs. Soooo, generally speaking, the bigger the bullet the more effective they have been for me on hogs, at least when talking about blood trails. I shoot them behind the shoulder.

For the last several years, I've just gone with the 260 and the 100 gr bullet (Nosler BT) for all my hunting. Works fine on deer, pigs, and coyote here in central Texas. If I was hunting bigger deer and pigs, like we had back in Louisiana, I'd go back to the 120 gr Nosler BT probably.

I'm not saying that one caliber or bullet is better than another. I'm just passing along my observations on what I've used and how they worked for me.

I have better luck with ammo that creates more impact within the animal than pass through. No need in tracking them if their dead.

That doesn't always work.