Bottom Gun
New member
We had an excellent elk hunt this year. My partner and I both filled our cow tags.
I filled mine in the afternoon of opening day with one shot at 150 yd using my new Sako in .338 Win Mag, which I was VERY pleased with. It certainly does a much better job on elk than my 30/06 did last year. I used a 210 gr Nosler Partition bullet in front of 73.0 gr of IMR4831. It put the animal down immediately.
My hunting partner collected his cow on the third day using his Browning 7MM Mag at 300 yd. He was using factory ammo loaded with 150 gr Nosler Ballistic Tips and he needed several shots to anchor his animal even though his bullet placement was adequate. Those bullets did not seem to perform as well as was expected. All his shots exited and but not appear to do much damage on their way through. We suspected his bullets weren’t expanding properly.
We spent the remaining three days of the season hunting coyotes. We took several at various ranges and were further disappointed in the performance of Paul’s ballistic tips. He center punched a coyote at approx 400 yd. Instead of dropping however, the dog ran full bore for about 100 yd, then dropped over dead. When we examined the carcass, we found the bullet had exited, but there was no evidence of any expansion.
In contrast, every coyote hit with my .338 was totally devastated by each shot, even out at 350 yd which was my longest shot.
Has anyone else had experience with the Nosler Ballistic Tips slugs? Did they work well for you? The reason I’m asking is because I have several boxes of these Nosler Ballistic Tip slugs at home in both .30 and .33 caliber. I was planning to load them later, but now I’m not so sure after witnessing their poor performance in 7MM caliber. I’d appreciate any input on these slugs since I don’t want to load up a bunch of ammo which won’t work properly.
I filled mine in the afternoon of opening day with one shot at 150 yd using my new Sako in .338 Win Mag, which I was VERY pleased with. It certainly does a much better job on elk than my 30/06 did last year. I used a 210 gr Nosler Partition bullet in front of 73.0 gr of IMR4831. It put the animal down immediately.
My hunting partner collected his cow on the third day using his Browning 7MM Mag at 300 yd. He was using factory ammo loaded with 150 gr Nosler Ballistic Tips and he needed several shots to anchor his animal even though his bullet placement was adequate. Those bullets did not seem to perform as well as was expected. All his shots exited and but not appear to do much damage on their way through. We suspected his bullets weren’t expanding properly.
We spent the remaining three days of the season hunting coyotes. We took several at various ranges and were further disappointed in the performance of Paul’s ballistic tips. He center punched a coyote at approx 400 yd. Instead of dropping however, the dog ran full bore for about 100 yd, then dropped over dead. When we examined the carcass, we found the bullet had exited, but there was no evidence of any expansion.
In contrast, every coyote hit with my .338 was totally devastated by each shot, even out at 350 yd which was my longest shot.
Has anyone else had experience with the Nosler Ballistic Tips slugs? Did they work well for you? The reason I’m asking is because I have several boxes of these Nosler Ballistic Tip slugs at home in both .30 and .33 caliber. I was planning to load them later, but now I’m not so sure after witnessing their poor performance in 7MM caliber. I’d appreciate any input on these slugs since I don’t want to load up a bunch of ammo which won’t work properly.