taylorforce barnes bullets are exactly why i have doubts. I do alot of crop damage shooting of deer and have the oportunity to shoot alot of deer and test alot of bullets and the original barnes bullets did not do well. They would punch a small hole through a deer and very few died quickly. Ive heard the new barnes bullets are much better and with some reservation have loaded some up to try this year. One thing ill say so far is they sure do shoot better then the old ones. I too dont need any non lead bullets but just like trying differnt things.
Barnes has attempted to address all the problems mentioned, but let me add a little disclaimer I have never fired any Mono Metals out of any of my rifles. I have however read just about everything I could on these bullets, as when they came out they had some impressive numbers. Cost was the biggest factor in me not using these bullets, since good premium hunting bullets like the Nosler Partition was about 1/3-1/2 less in price. Plus I don’t think that mono-metal bullets are vastly superior in any way to what was/is already available.
The Barnes X bullets fouled the bore because of pressure plain and simple. The original X bullet was made without any driving bands like the current TSX style. Since solid copper is harder than cup and core bullets and with such a large bearing surface that drove pressures through the roof and this cause severe copper fouling. The reason they didn’t expand well is the hollow point was narrow, and because of the pressure problems they couldn’t be driven fast enough to open properly all the time. From what I’ve read this problem really affected the sub .30 caliber bullets, once you went .30 cal or larger they performed as advertised. Even though Barnes stated reliable expansion around 2000 fps everything I’ve found you need at least 2200+ fps at impact and even then expansion was so-so out of small calibers.
Barnes addressed this issue by adding the bands to the bullet; this reduced the size of the bearing surface of the bullet. Plus as the ignition of the powder starts to deform the bullet the copper has a place to flow between the bands instead of fouling the barrel. With the TSX Barnes improved the hollow point as well making it larger and deeper. They recommend as well that you drop bullet weight not only because the all copper bullet is longer than a standard cup and core bullet of the same weight, but that way you can push them faster as well to have higher impact velocities.
Hornady and Nosler both chose guilding metal to instead of solid copper. Guilding metal is soft compared to solid copper, thus in theory it shouldn’t have the potential to foul like copper. Hornady added driving bands similar to Barnes, Nosler chose not to. Barnes came out with a polymer tipped bullet called the TTSX to again improve expansion, Hornady and Nosler have both added this as well to their bullets. I’m thinking both companies have learned from Barnes’s mistakes and have taken measures to insure their bullets perform as advertised.
I have a buddy who shoots 110 grain TTSX bullets out of a .270 WSM. He has taken quite a few deer and pronghorn with it and one elk. He swears by the Federal Premium ammunition that he runs through his A-Bolt.