Best Cartridge for Copper

[jrebel]

My next rifle will be a 338 Lapua pushing 225 (+/-) grain HH.  That should be a killing machine to my hunting ranges.  Light for caliber bullet at im guessing 3300 fps.  Sounds like a hoot.

[jasnt]

You want a fast twist with plenty of mag room.  Personally I chose a 300wm 1:8 shooting badlands super bulldozers.  Best bc in the hunting mono world.  Great accuracy and amazing terminal performance.  I won’t use anything else on game

[highside74]

You want a fast twist with plenty of mag room.  Personally I chose a 300wm 1:8 shooting badlands super bulldozers.  Best bc in the hunting mono world.  Great accuracy and amazing terminal performance.  I won’t use anything else on game

Oh man they have a 150gr .277 bullet that would be killer in a 6.8 western. .710 BC wow

[Sneaky]

You can use solid bullets that are not "light for caliber" if your rifle has a fast enough twist to accomodate a long bullet. Since copper alloy weighs less than lead, a "standard" weight bullet will be longer when solid copper. The length of the bullet is what can cause issues if your rifling is not fast enough to stabilize the bullet. There is a ton of good info out there regarding ideal twist rates for what you want to accomplish. Many manufacturers are now producing barrels with more modern twist rates to accomodate longer bullets.

The 30 caliber advice is good advice as most of the big names in the bullet world make different weights. Many great options are widely available for purchase.

Jasnt, what do those badlands bullets weigh in at?

[highside74]

You can use solid bullets that are not "light for caliber" if your rifle has a fast enough twist to accomodate a long bullet. Since copper alloy weighs less than lead, a "standard" weight bullet will be longer when solid copper. The length of the bullet is what can cause issues if your rifling is not fast enough to stabilize the bullet. There is a ton of good info out there regarding ideal twist rates for what you want to accomplish. Many manufacturers are now producing barrels with more modern twist rates to accomodate longer bullets.

The 30 caliber advice is good advice as most of the big names in the bullet world make different weights. Many great options are widely available for purchase.

Jasnt, what do those badlands bullets weigh in at?

I think what he meant was if you normally would shoot a 180gr in a lead bullet if you go what would be considered light for that particular caliber going faster performs well in copper. Say like a  162 or 165

[slavenoid]

The Barnes LRX is 100% copper and designed for long range hunting. Heavier weights, longer bullets with better bc than the TTSX

I did some looking on the Barnes website. It looks like they have it all figured out with the factory loads with the LRX. Based on their ballistics and some minimum fps charts I found they have quite a few cartridges that should work. Maybe it's not all that complicated after all.

[CaNINE]

You can use solid bullets that are not "light for caliber" if your rifle has a fast enough twist to accomodate a long bullet. Since copper alloy weighs less than lead, a "standard" weight bullet will be longer when solid copper. The length of the bullet is what can cause issues if your rifling is not fast enough to stabilize the bullet. There is a ton of good info out there regarding ideal twist rates for what you want to accomplish. Many manufacturers are now producing barrels with more modern twist rates to accomodate longer bullets.

The 30 caliber advice is good advice as most of the big names in the bullet world make different weights. Many great options are widely available for purchase.

Jasnt, what do those badlands bullets weigh in at?

I think what he meant was if you normally would shoot a 180gr in a lead bullet if you go what would be considered light for that particular caliber going faster performs well in copper. Say like a  162 or 165

 

[jasnt]

You want a fast twist with plenty of mag room.  Personally I chose a 300wm 1:8 shooting badlands super bulldozers.  Best bc in the hunting mono world.  Great accuracy and amazing terminal performance.  I won’t use anything else on game

Oh man they have a 150gr .277 bullet that would be killer in a 6.8 western. .710 BC wow

some great terminal result pics on those 140’s over at long range hunting


The bulldozers I’m shooting are 205gr  verified my bc at .407 g7 out to a mile so far. 
I prefer to spin copper faster than recommended.  AIDS in terminal performance and helps bc stay consistent at much longer ranges than I shoot for critters.  Jme

[elkboy]

I have shot several whitetails with copper now. Great performance. Just took a whitetail buck at 60 yards (not long range, I know) with a handloaded Barnes LRX in 7mm-08. I'm a pretty average rifle shooter, but I can hit a 6" plate pretty consistently at 450-500 with those Barnes.

[BigGoonTuna]

The 110gr TTSX from a .270 is a poor man’s .257 weatherby…

[Taco280AI]

145 LRX is the only thing I run in my AI now. Sub half MOA, I think 7 deer with it and one elk. Most never went anywhere, the farthest anything went was maybe 40 yards, other than the buck that rolled over 100 yards down the hill. Sub 50 yards, the buck simply dropped. 510 yards, same. My bull was trying to get up so hit him twice. Have yet to recover a bullet.

[Sneaky]

You can use solid bullets that are not "light for caliber" if your rifle has a fast enough twist to accomodate a long bullet. Since copper alloy weighs less than lead, a "standard" weight bullet will be longer when solid copper. The length of the bullet is what can cause issues if your rifling is not fast enough to stabilize the bullet. There is a ton of good info out there regarding ideal twist rates for what you want to accomplish. Many manufacturers are now producing barrels with more modern twist rates to accomodate longer bullets.

The 30 caliber advice is good advice as most of the big names in the bullet world make different weights. Many great options are widely available for purchase.

Jasnt, what do those badlands bullets weigh in at?

I think what he meant was if you normally would shoot a 180gr in a lead bullet if you go what would be considered light for that particular caliber going faster performs well in copper. Say like a  162 or 165

 

Yeah thats true that copper performs better with speed generally, but is a lighter bullet "the best" option in copper? Its all about what you like, but take .300 win mag for example. Per Barnes website the 190gr long range bullets in their factory loaded ammo are above 2000FPS (safe expansion threshold) at 500 yards....The same is true in factory loaded ammunition with 180 GR nosler E-tips and 180 gr hornady CX. I would consider 180gr pretty standard for a .30cal magnum. You just need to remember like Jasnt said to select a bullet that jives with the twist rate needed to stabilize the longer bullets if thats what you choose.

[Stein]

I wouldn't shoot a lighter bullet just because it goes faster.  I would start by shooting different weights and see what is more accurate in my rifle and go from there.  If that weight happened to be heavy AND went below the recommended velocity before it got to the max range I wanted I might lighten it up.

I'm not sure a bullet going 2,300 fps at impact is any more lethal than one going 2,000.  In my mind, it's binary, not linear.  It opens reliably or it doesn't, it doesn't open more the faster it goes.

The biggest difference in my mind is that lead bullets will open at lower speeds so you just have to watch the terminal velocity.

I could be wrong, that's what Barnes led me to believe when I talked with them about velocity.  I also recovered bullets from a 60 yard hit and a 360 yard hit and they looked the exact same.

[jamesjett]

My 7MM REM MAG loves Barnes 150gr. TTSX’s.   If you reload start them .070 off the lands and work back.  They like to be seated deep.  I almost gave up on them until I spoke with a tech at Barnes and he was spot on.  I have taken several black bears with them and two were VERY large bears.  DRT!

[Sneaky]

I wouldn't shoot a lighter bullet just because it goes faster.  I would start by shooting different weights and see what is more accurate in my rifle and go from there.  If that weight happened to be heavy AND went below the recommended velocity before it got to the max range I wanted I might lighten it up.

I'm not sure a bullet going 2,300 fps at impact is any more lethal than one going 2,000.  In my mind, it's binary, not linear.  It opens reliably or it doesn't, it doesn't open more the faster it goes.

The biggest difference in my mind is that lead bullets will open at lower speeds so you just have to watch the terminal velocity.

I could be wrong, that's what Barnes led me to believe when I talked with them about velocity.  I also recovered bullets from a 60 yard hit and a 360 yard hit and they looked the exact same.

Its definitely linear in the physical change in the bullet at different velocities as well as what the bullet encounters during penetration.

The binary part of it has more to do with defining what "reliable expansion" is. Generally this means caliber and a half expansion or 1.5X the original caliber measurement. At lower velocities you can actually see  bullets that are moving slower expand deeper due to a lack of expansion. Did it achieve enough expansion to cause enough damage to ethically take the animal? Thats more of the yes or no part as I understand it.


heres a link that shows the differences in expansion based on velocity in a test medium:

https://forum.nosler.com/threads/monometal-expansion.29316/