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| Photo copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers |
The Vor-Tx cartridges are loaded with Barnes' lead-free tipped TSX copper bullets. All-copper ammunition hasn't been around for very long and I was naturally suspicious of what performance would be like. Its very expensive compared to conventional ammunition. I knew that it could do a good job of punching holes through paper in just the right spot, but it takes more than just accuracy to make a good hunting bullet. I wanted to see what happens when this stuff encounters a deer at several thousand feet per second.
On a series of three hunts with students I used the Barnes bullets to assess their performance. In two cases the ammunition was fired through my Remington Model 700 .30-'06 with a custom 19" barrel. In the other case, the same ammunition was fired through a Savage Model 110 with a 24" barrel.
The first deer appeared on the other side of a deadfall and offered a shot at only about a dozen yards. The bullet went in through the front of the chest and exited through the heart just behind the front right leg.
This was a more challenging test of a bullet than a 100 yard shot, in my opinion. I'm going to use the Remington Core-Lokt bullet as a comparison, since I have a lot of experience using Core-Lokts and I suspect that they are probably the single most commonly used bullet on deer in the US.
When I have hit a deer in the chest at very close range with a Core-Lokt, the problem is that it works too well. The bullet is going so fast that it tends to expand to the point of fragmentation at close range. It still passes completely through the body, but leaves a very wide trail of meat turned to Jello and tiny lead fragments scattered alongside the wound channel. A Core-Lokt used for the shot that this student took would have destroyed a whole forequarter, all of the neck meat, and maybe the front of a backstrap.
The Barnes TSX copper bullet did what we needed it to do, and no more. It blasted apart the fronts of both lungs and the heart, but damaged only a handful of neck meat and part of a forequarter. This was exactly what I would want it to do. But what would happen when the same bullet made impact at around 100 yards?
I had the opportunity to find out only a few days later with another student. In this case, the deer was hit at about 110 yards distance. Once again, the bullet delivered a knock-out punch with a very clearly defined wound channel. It did exactly what I wanted to see done to the vital organs through both direct penetration and hydrostatic shock without turning a ton of meat into Jello. This performance was expected at such a typical distance, of course. A follow-up shot was also taken on the deer as it quartered steeply away, and this bullet did not exit after diagonally traversing roughly 24 inches of the digestive system and liver.
My third experiment came a few days ago when another student took a shot at a doe at around 80 yards. Again, the bullet did what it needed to do without ruining a ton of meat.
At three different distances I've seen Barnes' copper bullets perform extremely well. I have yet to have an opportunity to try them out at 200 yards or longer, but as a hunting instructor and guide specializing in teaching adult beginners, I am unlikely to encourage shots at such distances with new hunters.
The single disadvantage of Barnes' copper bullets is the cost. This stuff usually costs about twice as much as a box of standard ammunition. The price of copper has been steadily rising for years and I don't expect the trend to stop for a long time. For target shooters, this ammo would not make sense. Meat hunters like myself should consider copper bullets a reasonable investment given the weight of meat that we will get out of a single deer.
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