barnes xxx no exit hole????

N

northsman

Inactive
i have a consern, i just shot my first moose last saterday at around 75 yards with a 7mm mag using 58 grains of imr4350 topped with 160 gr. barnes tripple X bullets and there was no exit wound, not even a mark on the other side of the rib cage. i hit a rib on the way in but i thought these bullets were all about penatration. its the first time trying these bullets, anyone else ever see or hear of this? the shot was perfectly broad side. the moose took two steps and dropped i am pleased to say, just not understanding why there was no exit.
 
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Key terms:
75 yards
7mm Mag
'hit a rib'

Using a bullet outside its design parameters will almost always result in an undesirable, or unpredicted outcome.

The bullet was traveling too fast.

Open the distance, or slow the bullet down. Also, avoid hitting ribs with high velocity projectiles; the two concepts don't play well together.
 
I wouldn't worry about it. Obviously the bullet did it's job. There's no guarantee that a bullet is going to exit, even a Barnes bullet. Bullets can be deflected by smalls twigs. So striking a large rib on a moose at fairly close range could have deflected the bullet further into the body cavity. Just curious if you found the bullet and what it looked like?
 
You won't get it to work perfectly every time. A bullet that really expands doing a lot of damage runs the risk of stopping in the hide on the other side usually. A bullet that always exits may not kill as quickly. It would be nice if they all did their thing, killed quickly, and left a nice exit wound for blood trail as well. That only happens every time in bullet advertisements.
 
the shot was perfectly broad side. the moose took two steps and dropped i am pleased to say, just not understanding why there was no exit.
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I'll go with FrankenMauser, for the most part, though I don't think ribs should be a problem for a 160 gr. bullet, which is heavy for the caliber. A bullet designed for big stuff, like moose, should go through heavy bone, if it has to, and reach the vitals.

75 yds. is close range for a 7mm mag.. The bullet was going so fast that expansion was quick and probably a lot (and devistating).

You can expect more penetration as the bullet slows down at long range--which might not be applicable for moose terrain.
 
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I wouldn't be concerned about a lack of an exit wound. When you use a bullet designed to expand and or break apart, they won't always exit the other side.

Keep this in mind as well, all of the energy of that bullet was transferred to the moose. If it exited, only part of the energy was transferred to the moose. The rest would have be used ended up in a tree or the ground.
 
The bullet expended all of it's energy in the animal.In many circles that would be perfect bullet performance.Exiting bullets do not expend all of their energy and it is wasted.Congratulations on a quick humane kill.:)
 
Your absolutely sure there was no exit? Did you find a bullet or any fragments during the skinning and field dressing? You should have found something if you were looking and there was no obvious exit wound.

Sometimes a bullet doesn't travel in a straight line after impacting with the animal. Plus the exit may have been very small as sometimes the Barnes X bullets petals shear off and only the shank continues to penetrate at close range if the velocity is really high, or it fails to open if the velocity is too low. Plus Barnes always recommends that you step down in grain weight to get reliable perfomance from its bullets. If you would shoot a 160 in your 7mm Rem say using a Nosler Partition for moose, they would suggest you go with a 140 or 150 to get the velocity up there higher.

Barnes had some problems with the old X bullet not opening on impact and penciling through. The TSX and TTSX were made to fix the problem along with the copper fouling issue. The TSX added a larger diameter and deeper hollow point and the TTSX added a polymer tip to improve expansion. Both have groves cut into the shank to reduce copper fouling, where the X bullet had a smaller diameter shallower hollow point and no groves.
 
Bullets do weird, unexplained things.

I was hunting on the AK Penn and shot a caribou with a 7 Rem Mag, using Nosler Partition. The bullet didn't exit, nor did it expand. Just knocked off the little exposed tip. I knew it was a good hit, but I had to neck shoot the sucker to bring it down. Found the non-expanded nosler in the chest area.

You can never tell want a bullet is gonna do.
 
The bullet was going so fast that expansion was quick
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Right there is the single greatest complaint that I have ever heard about the 7mag. I really won't pretend I understand the physics but it appears that speed vs bullet design becomes a very big issue w/ this caliber.
I shoot .308 bullets loaded to about 2900 in my rigs and have the opposite issue, they don't open up real well at close ranges. Excellent at longer distance but their dynamics are obviously different than the 7.

I would think you should continue experimenting w/ different bullets until you find one that works well for you.
I just pulled a Barnes TTSX out of a bull elk. 168gr from my 300win which opened well through the spine and dumped all of it's energy due to hitting bone. It was in one piece and just inside the hide. I haven't cleaned it up yet and weighed it, but I'll bet it retained at least 90percent.
I'm still a big fan of Hornaday BTSPs' too.
elkman06
 
From what I've read over the years, a two step and drop is pretty impressive. The bullet was impacting around 2900fps with that load.
 
kraigwy is right, bullets do strange things. It is unusual in my experience for a Barnes not to exit at any range I have ever used one 15-300yds. You got a DRT so it's not a problem.
 
Took two steps and died? Sounds like the bullet did exactly what it was designed for.

If there was no exit then you should have been able to recover the bullet. I bet you'd find that it's a perfect mushroom and almost completely intact, having lost a petal or two at most.


I just had a discussion with a Barnes tech last week in regards to their 7mm TTSX bullets. He told me that he has personally tested them at impact speed "well beyond 3,300 fps" and that the entire lot fails their QC if the bullets come apart. Worst case scenario is that a bullet that hits a heavy bone (not rib) will shed it's petals and the rest of the bullet (85% by weight, I believe) will remain intact.
 
there was no exit wound, not even a mark on the other side of the rib cage. i hit a rib on the way in but i thought these bullets were all about penatration.
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Sounds to me like it penetrated just right. It made it through the rib without disintegrating, what else do you want? Take a look at that rib bone, it is almost as thick as a man's wrist. Cree Indians used to use moose ribs for sled skids and war clubs. They are plenty stout. Your bullet worked fine.

the moose took two steps and dropped i am pleased to say
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Sounds like it worked just right. So what's the problem???
 
Many of the newer SUPER bullets are excellent preformers but that doesnt mean they are great penatrators. The problem with these new bonded or solid copper bullets is the fact the expand to such large diameters that it is like trying to push a washtub through an animal. Many proffesional guides have noticed this. The Nosler Partition has such a good reputation because it mushrooms violently on entry, then the mushroom folds back to just slightly larger than the original diameter, thus allowing the bullet to penatrate to great distances. However the exit hole is smaller than most bullets make, leaving many people with limited experence to believe that they didnt expand at all. This idea is an excellent concept. Even if the newer SUPER bullets retain most of their weight, when the frontal area is large, penatration wains.
 
i thought these bullets were all about penatration
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If they were, the bullet would have gone through without expansion and your moose would have dropped after half a mile--maybe.


The bullet has to be about expansion also, and the fact that it didn't go all the way through N. America's largest herbivore isn't an indictment of it's ability to penetrate.

It's typical for a bullet to be stopped by skin on the far side.
 
The bullet has to be about expansion also, and the fact that it didn't go all the way through N. America's largest herbivore isn't an indictment of it's ability to penetrate.
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If it's a Shiras Moose, it's not much bigger than a Bull Elk (some are smaller than Elk). How big they get depends upon local conditions, more than anything else.
 
Having the bullet exit after a good hit on big game seems to be a requirement of some shooters. Not sure why. I understand blood trail, but that is not a high end requirement for the hunters I hang out with. If the projectile kills the animal humanely and quickly, that is the ONLY requirement for me.
 
barnes tripple x

thanks guys, i am very happy with the results of the bullet,i also hunt archery and in that situation where the animal has to bleed out an exit hole for tracking is preferable, just that i bought the tripple x for the penatration that was advertised because i was going after the bigest deer in the woods. i had a bunch of 140 grain nosler partitions loaded and honestly was going to use them but was told by many to go with a heaver deeper penatrating bullet like the tripple x. and with a broad side shot..... well just never expected it not to pass through. i checked the other side of the rib cage and there was not so much as a mark. when i feild dressed the moose i kind of felt for the bullet, everything was very mushed up in there. im drawn for cow elk in the same zone oct.15-31 and will use the same bullet again and see what happens.

i too believe that with rifle hunting that if a bullet uses up its energy inside the chest cavity and puts the animal down quickly this is preferable just thought that there should have been an exit with that praticular bullet. but if this is not out of the norm which is the theme i'm kind of getting here than i will try it again.
 
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