Prairie Boy

today at the range this guy was telling me how he loves the 7mm rem mag and that he uses 120gr barnes x bullets with reloader 22 @ 3500fps. he says it's perfect for deer and he texas heart shot a deer one time and it went thru the whole deer and stoped just under the neck bones. perfect expansion after busting thru all kind of bone and muscle. they drop like a bag of bricks when shot in the heart lung area he said. i am a bit sceptical to tell the truth but then again with premium bullets why wouldn't it be possible? what do u think?

stubblejumper

The barnes x bullet behaves much like a failsafe in that it will penetrate a great deal more than a conventional bullet(almost double according to several bullet test's that I have seen) even in lighter weights.Therefore it is possible to shoot through most of a deer lengthwise especially if it is a smaller deer.As for the 3500fps ,what barrel length and is it a coated bullet and what pressures does he load too.Is this a chronographed velocity or an estimate.

Prairie Boy

he said he had a 26inch barrel and it is chonographed at slightly over 3500 actually. i didn't ask any details concering pressure or amout of powder and stuff since i don't reload and i wouldn't know what to do with that information. he is a respected member at the club tho and does long range shooting and has several rifles with 26inch+ barrels. he even has a 30inch monster i've seen him shoot before. i didn't doubt the velocity but rather the performance of a 120gr bullet. since it is a premium bullet afterall i believe his story is probably true.

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RuRu12

The performance story he is telling for the Barnes X sound plausible to me. I have tried the 140 grain X Bullet in my 7mm Remington Mag. Penetration was awesome, but I was disappointed in the accuracy. I was unable to work up a load that would consistently shoot under 1”@ 100 yards. Since the rifle I was working with will consistently group Nosler Ballistic Tips under 1/2”@ 100 yards, I found the accuracy of the Barnes unacceptable.

You can’t use data for conventional bullets of the same weight because the Barnes X being all copper is lighter than a conventional bullet of the same dimensions. In my 7mm Mag I found the difference to be about 10 grains. Meaning that the 140 grain X Bullet was almost identical in dimension to a conventional 150 grain bullet.


"If you can't change your circumstances then you need to change your perspective."

LARRY338

Ive shot nine deer with the 120 gr x bullets out of a 7x57 at about 2800fps, and I imagine your friend is right. At 3500 I think they would kill very quickly even on rib cage shots. They are tough enough that they arent going to fly apart like lightweight jacketed bullets at high velocity. I have seen the petals shear off on bone before, but the shank will stay intact and the nose will usually be almost double the caliber even with the petals gone. It seems to me that the x bullets kill faster with high velocity. This may be my imagination, but it sure seems that way to me. My oldest son shot several deer with 125 gr x bullets out of a 3006 at around 3100fps, and they would often drop deer shot broadside through the ribs. Ive seen the same thing with the 175gr in my 338/06. It wouldnt surprise me to see one go through a deer lengthwise, especially at 3500. In fact, its hard to stop one in a deer at any reasonable velocity. Me and my two sons have probably shot around 50 deer with x bullets and I doubt if we have recovered more than five or six bullets. I stopped a 160 gr in a buck that field dressed 190 that was coming towards me and was shot in the right shoulder, breaking the shoulder blade, cutting three ribs, went on through the guts, and lodged under the skin on the outside of the left hind leg. The velocity of that load was just 2900fps.

Quilly

i always though that the barnes X bullets and failsafes really don't expand as much as other bullets?
maybe he rolls his own to make it get to that 3500fps.