The only negative about Ballistic Tips is the 50 count box. Ridiculous, especially when many online sellers limit 2 boxes wether it's 100 count or 50 count.

Yes your friend’s advice is correct that most Nosler ballistic tips expand more readily than other cup and core Bullets. (There are exceptions) Don’t shoot the part you plan to eat with them. The lighter BT bullets may not exit if you hit big bones or take angled shots at 308 velocity. Some like those features and some want to always get an exit for tracking purposes. It is a give and take. If you have an animal up close they are going to make a mess. The posters on this forum as a collective have an aversion to recoil. Low recoil short actions are far and away the rifles most touted on this forum according to what i see posted, and a lot of them like the ballistic tips. A 30. cal Nosler ballistic tip is a good fit in a 308. In today’s market if they are what you can find for your 308 I would buy them. In a long action or magnum loaded with some zip, they are still a good choice beyond 200 yards. Inside 200 or for an all around bullet in long actions and magnums, either heavy for caliber cup and core or a tougher bullet is what I like.

I don’t know that I agree that Nosler’s BT for hunting expand more than other cup and core bullets. I don’t know how a fellow would prove or disprove that belief. After decades of using them, I have a pretty big sample size on performance, and they seem about perfect for my needs. I started with the first generation BT’s and never even had a problem with them. That said, they are messy. When used on deer, I can’t remember ever not getting an exit when I shot them in the heart/lung area. When used on hogs of any size I don’t remember any exits, so there is some limit on penetration.

I’d probably be just as happy with Sierra GK’s or Hornady SST’s.

Bullets that don’t expand as readily penetrate deeper. The jacket on most Nosler ballistic tips is not as tough some other cup and core bullets. The sleek design with a boat tail base was made to perform at longer ranges and expand at slower velocity at distance. Cup and core Bullets like the gameking you mentioned have a tougher jacket and work better in high velocity cartridges. It is give and take. At modest 308 velocity the ballistic tip works well but is messy due to the rapid expansion and corresponding energy transfer. As stated earlier it works really well in short actions. I shoot a 270 a lot and got away from the ballistic tip and went to a gameking for reliable albeit smaller exits on deer. I know that is kind of apples and oranges but shooting a bunch of both in short and long actions, that is the conclusion I drew about terminal performance.

Your experience is much different than mine. Ballistic Tips have a thick jacket and are reliable killers. They usually kill fast and exit.

It's a bullet designed for varmint calibers and is my favorite bullet for that purpose. I've had nothing but bad experience on big game with them. Barnes VOR-TX is a much better choice.

Anyone with a decent amount of experience, of which there are several here in this thread, know that this is a ridiculous statement that has no merit with regards to "normal" big game cartridges.

Some are and some are not, study the product, they spell it out.

I like the a Nosler BT for deer when it is leaving the muzzle between 2800-3000 FPS. I use a 150 BT all the time in my 7mm-08, it works very well at the ranges I shoot, which is between 70 and 380 yards. I have tried them at faster velocities and didn’t care for the results.

I wasn’t going to comment but your 100% correct, this statement holds water like a bucket with a 5” hole in the bottom of it Either someone’s a horrible shot, doesn’t know how to load ammo or is simply trying to pass on what they’ve heard 4th hand information from. This simply goes to show you that you have to weed through the BS on the innerweb to find the truth. I’ve killed no less than 200 whitetail’s and god knows how many pigs with a BT and the only and I mean only issue I’ve had was user error. Reading posts like this reaffirms some people are completely full of chit.

I have a bag full of bullets recovered from animals from over the years I’ve kept that will prove this idea is total BS, I recovered 2 from this last season alone and the bullet performed beautifully.

I would love to see a bag full of ballistics tips you have recovered from animals from over the years.

Haven't used a lot of 150 grain Ballistic Tips out of my 308 but I have used many out of my 7x57 and have caught very few, those in large feral hogs.

Well, one thing is absolutely correct, in that Nosler Ballistic Tips come in two versions - Varmint and Hunting. And they were not derived from or as Varmint bullets. They are a rework of the old Nosler Solid Base Boattail. Between Old Thumper and me, I suppose we’ve killed 400+ whitetail deer with Nosler BTs. And, like me, he probably started out with the first generation of the Ballistic Tip, which gets criticized often, but which worked just fine for me. I killed a hog back in the 80’s that the ranch owner said weighed just under 400 pounds. Biggest nastiest thing I ever saw. The first gen Ballistic Tip was under the skin on the far side of the hog.

I actually wish you guys would quit buying 6.5mm 120 gr BTs, so I can get some more.

To prove a point here’s a 165g from a 30/06 at 2906 fps I pulled from under the skin on the exit side in early November, it performed beautifully.

How did you recover that Ballistic Tip? Was it from a dead critter?

Show me a bullet you’ve pulled out that “Shattered” not some BS you found on the internet

I've never had one stay together like that. I gave up on loading them in 1987 after about 15 deer that they blew up in and retained probably 30-40 percent of their weight. Maybe they are making a better product today but I sure had a bad experience with them at the time.

I have a bag full of bullets recovered from animals from over the years I’ve kept that will prove this idea is total BS, I recovered 2 from this last season alone and the bullet performed beautifully. [/quote]

I would love to see a bag full of ballistics tips you have recovered from animals from over the years. [/quote]

To prove a point here’s a 165g from a 30/06 at 2906 fps I pulled from under the skin on the exit side in early November, it performed beautifully.

[/quote]
The ballistic tip bullets I have recovered from deer and hogs look similar to the above photo, expanded down the the solid base portion of the bullet or close to it.

LeonCarr’s post goes hand in hand with why I got away from them. It was not bullet failure. The bullet opens big and often did not exit shooting 130’s out of my 270. When they did exit it was generally a large exit. The density of the cover I hunt in makes an exit for ease of tracking a priority for me. Different horses for different courses….140’s out of the 7-08 were more to my liking.

I'm not going to post all of my BT's recovered, but they look almost exactly like that pic. NTX can't even come up with his own picture evidently. I cull loads and loads of whitetail does, almost 75 the past 3 years. Here's a good start on the 17 I culled in one weekend, 7mm08 and 120 BT's.

I almost posted that the .284 120 BT is one tough bullet. In my experience it behaves like an Accubond and you can push it 3,000fps in a 7-08.

Couple examples of the toughness of the 120 NBT via Steve Timm


http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a180/dogzapper/Moose.jpg

Here is a bullwinkle who was a very satisfied 120-grain Ballistic Tip recipient. He received the 120 under his chin at 91-yards and died instantly.

The bullet fully penetrated the moose's neck and left a one-inch exit. Meat loss was perhaps three ounces. As far as I know, the bullet is still in low-orbit of the earth.

Rifle was my beloved .280 Ackley and the muzzle velocity = 3,370 fps @ 10 feet.

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a180/dogzapper/elkguts.jpg

Here is another satisfied customer. This 6X6 bull received a 120-grain Ballistic Tip in the center of his left shoulder; the bullet broke both shoulders and was laying just under the skin of the far shoulder.

The bullet was fully expanded to .78" and weighed 108.8 grains.

Rifle was my 7-08 Ackley and muzzle velocity was 3,255 fps. Range from the muzzle to the bull was approx. 370 yards.

The bull was dead on the bullet impact and he fell/slid down the hill. This is a photo of the corpus delicious in the bottom of the canyon.


Steve

A little more information from Steve.


FYI the 120 NBT: Steve Timm Author said this:
(thanks Steve for your information)



"I push 120BTs at 3,370 out of my .280 Ackley. I've killed one Alberta moose, maybe a half-dozen big Alberta whitetails, about four antelope and about eight or ten mule deer with the load. Never seen any hint of a blowup.

The moose shot was at 91 yards. Bullwinkle was standing in a farm two-track, kinda angled. I shot him through the left carotid artery (cool..it spurts) and the bullet exited, leaving a two-inch hole and a totally missing cervical (neck) vertabrae. Moosie stood for about five seconds, long enough for me to rack in another round, and then he tipped over like a piece of plywood in a light wind.

When used in the .280 Ackley, the bullet seemingly always exits on deer and antelope, except for one antelope buck that I shot in the throat and found the bullet next to the bunghole, when I started to do the bad-nasty coring job with my filet knife. That bullet was expanded to about .75" and the core/jacket were one solid piece. The rest of the bullets, on both deer and antelope, totally penetrated and might still be in low-earth orbit, for all I know. Exit holes are not large, averaging about 1 1/2-inches to two inches, and blood shot meat is not bad. Yeah, I know the first few generations of BTs were "soft", but this bullet is much harder.

I've also used the 120BT in my 7SGLC ( 7-08 improved) at 3,250 fps MV. One shot I totally remember was hitting a major Montana mule deer buck in the face with the bullet at about ten yards. It was very early one morning and I was creeping up a hill, when I ran smack-dab into a large buck that was peeping at me through a juniper tree.. The horns were MAJOR.....up came the rifle and I shot it under the right eye. Didn't break the skull cap......just killed the living crap out of him.

It must be a guy thing, but I just love shooting critters squarely in the face, if I can. My friend, Roger Roberts, from Weeping Water, Nebraska, about had a hernia when I face-shot a caribou when we were hunting in Quebec...a face-shot at about fifteen feet is graphic and Roger ragged at me for the rest of the hunt about the shot. When I got home, I sent him a long video entitled "Face-Shot Things"; it was about a dozen short video clips melded together that would be great ammo for PETA Roger was SO insulted that he had to watch it fifteen or twenty times; then, he got his wife, Vicki, and the kids to watch it more. But I digress.

With the with the same load in my 7SGLC, I killed a 9 1/2 year old mule buck at 204 yards. Shot through the spine at dusk. Exit hole was maybe two inches, after removing a serious piece of spine. Biggest damned deer I've ever seen....anywhere. And in the gumbo. Karen and I WORKED to get that SOB out.

7SGLC also ended the careers of two 6X6 bull elk, not major bulls, but both were 300 B&C or so. One at about 375 yards and the other one was 400-ish. One was shot through the spine, between the shoulder blades, from above and the bullet penetrated to the brisket hide. The other was broadside...hit squarely in the center of the shoulder, broke both shoulders, but no mess, and penetrated to the off-shoulder hide. Both elk bullets expanded to about .80" and the cores were securely locked in the jackets.

I've killed oodles of big Alberta coyotes with the 120BT in the .280. Doesn't do much, except kill them, because the jacket is too heavy for predator use.

The 120BT, as we know it, came from shooting Silhouetta. Reportedly, the original version was too lightly built to get the reliably knock over the 500-meter steel ram. My buddy, Chub Eastman, was at the first big Silhouetta shoot where they were used and came back home to Bend, OR with the request to "build it heavier." line. Hey, it wasn't selling as a varmint bullet, so they apparently thought that they would build the bullet for their target market; the Silhouetta shooters. Sooooo, Nosler beefed up the jacket and, in doing so, they unknowingly created one Hell of a big game bullet.

Section one, I think you'll see what I mean. The bugger is built like the Ballistic Tip .338s-and-higher. Really heavy jacket.

I use .284"-120BTs on deer and antelope with no hesitation. And, when the opportunity avails itself to bonk a heavier head of big game, I have absolutely no worries with the 120BT."

Hope this helps.

Steve

The 9 shots I took this year with Barnes Vor-tx 270 130 grain put the animals down right there. First time using this round but it did what it was supposed to. Only 1 deer was mangled up but I aimed for the shoulder because it was heavy bodied deer. He fell right where he stood. I didn't try to recover any of the bullets, I just know they dropped my quarry. One neck shot on a doe made removing the head very easy.

The Nosler Ballistic Tip is all I've used on whitetails for many years out of my 243 & 25-06, they are nasty medicine on deer and work well. Period.

They will do some damage, though.