50 Cal Elk Bullet

[RaggedHunter]

Curious to hear how they do for you. Remember there’s no additional wad used with those Fury Universals.

Good luck!

I actually got the Fury bore specific bullets. Going to try the poly wads with them.

 

[tankgijohn72]

Anybody shoot the cva long range bullets on elk?

 

[ElkArcher918]

Gonna start working on load development as soon as it stops snowing or raining here in CO. I've got 1 or 2 muzzy elk hunts planned for this Fall. I've got 2 CVAs: Accura V2 and Accura MR-X 50 ca. and enough BH209. Looking try the Hornady Boredriver FTX 290s and the Fury Universal Fit 320s. On paper the Furys look promising, only range time will tell.

 

[DMTJAGER]

The lead sled is going to break your rifle, mounts, scope, or some combo thereof.

I have read this in multiple forums based on peoples 1st hand experience. Think about it, if the recoil isn't going into you, and its not hardly moving the Leadsled its being redirected BACK into the firearm AND what is the weakest components of a scoped rifle? Hint, aint the rifle.
My only experience with elk and ML's has been using 300 grain .452" Hornady XTP's. The XTP worked superbly well, and are perfect for the velocities generated by BH209, but there are better if not much better choices in ML bullets for elk these days.

 

[Fuenstock]

I have a 50 cal mrx and found 320g tc maxxi balls over 100g of pyrodex to be accurate out of my mrx.
Bonus is this combo in my mrx seems to work ok with the factory peep sights which I’ve had trouble with using other bullet powder combos.
Harvested a mature cow at 106 yards and she dropped within 10 yards with a double lung pass thru.

 

[stdeb11]

I shot a cow last year with the 250gr Thor at 115yds. She stood for 30 seconds then dropped in her tracks. Wasn't a complete pass thru, but thru a couple ribs and bullet was right against the skin on the far side...granted a bull is bigger, but based on my limited experience I wouldn't hesitate to use it since it shoots really well.

 

[Oilcan]

I drew a Nevada Elk tag.
Anyone have any experience with the Barnes spit-fire T-EZ 290 gr Sabots on Elk ?
my gun is set up with these and is very accurate and I really don’t want to start the whole process over especially with components hard to find.
thanks

 

[ElDiablito]

That’s a good choice.

 

[DMTJAGER]

I drew a Nevada Elk tag.
Anyone have any experience with the Barnes spit-fire T-EZ 290 gr Sabots on Elk ?
my gun is set up with these and is very accurate and I really don’t want to start the whole process over especially with components hard to find.
thanks

I have shot more than I can accurately recall but before I recommend or offer my experience with them could you please tell me what your shooting them out of, what propellent your using and at what charge weight.
I would love to help if my experience is relative to your needs.

 

[ElDiablito]

He’s already shooting them well. I think he’s asking about terminal performance.

So you may be asking about velocity?

 

[DMTJAGER]

He’s already shooting them well. I think he’s asking about terminal performance.

So you may be asking about velocity?

Thanks for the heads up.

 

[DMTJAGER]

I drew a Nevada Elk tag.
Anyone have any experience with the Barnes spit-fire T-EZ 290 gr Sabots on Elk ?
my gun is set up with these and is very accurate and I really don’t want to start the whole process over especially with components hard to find.
thanks

Failed to notice you are already set up and shooting them. I have killed quite a few deer with with both the 290grn Boat tailed TMZ and 290grn T-EZ and the newer flat based T-EZ out of all three of my .50 caliber inlines was more consistently accurate.
Please bare in mind I've not done any serious load development with Barnes T-MZ's for a long time so I am going on memory, but I did fire over 300 of them so I'm confident in my results.

I never recovered one from a deer as all were pass throughs but they all left quite good entry and exit holes and did horribly nasty things to everything they passed through. I did shoot a bunch of them at 100 and 200 yards into soaked drained taped newspapers and stopped trying to catch projectiles at 20" of news print. I did recover a bunch of them after they went trough the news print from the dirt of the backstop and all looked like textbook picture perfect mushrooms full of newsprint under the fully curled back peddles never having one lost a peddle and average retained weight was 98%. Cant recall exact average expanded diameter but IIRC it was around .9" or essentially 2x original OD.

Wont say publicly what my charge weight weight of BH209 was but my MV was 2125 FPS out of my Knight Elite and 2108 out of my Encore 209x50 per my Caldwell Ballistic precision chronograph.
My smokeless 10ML-II was another matter entirely.
In my experience you literally CAN NOT shoot a 250 or 290 grain Barnes T-EZ fast enough to get to to fail, at least I couldn't pushing the 250grnrs at 2600+ and the 290's at 2350, and I feel very confident based on my experiences your only concern is to make sure when they hit an elk they are traveling at least 1200fps which is 100fps above Barnes minimum performance velocity for the 290 T-MZ again if IRC.

Best of luck.

 

[ElDiablito]

My smokeless 10ML-II was another matter entirely.
In my experience you literally CAN NOT shoot a 250 or 290 grain Barnes T-EZ fast enough to get to to fail, at least I couldn't pushing the 250grnrs at 2600+ and the 290's at 2350,

I find that you can get the petals to come off a Barnes at high speed. Although I’m talking way faster than you’re going to be pushing it with BH209. In my .45 sml, the petals are coming off in the 2650-2800 fps impact range. Still devastating on game though.

 

[kjw]

Following along. Drew a hams elk tag in Utah and I’m starting from scratch

 

[DMTJAGER]

I find that you can get the petals to come off a Barnes at high speed. Although I’m talking way faster than you’re going to be pushing it with BH209. In my .45 sml, the petals are coming off in the 2650-2800 fps impact range. Still devastating on game though.

View attachment 560670

IN my Smokeless 10ML-II I pushed the 245grn Spitfires to 2550-2600ish and 250gen TMZ/T-MZ T to 2600 and the 290 TMZ/T-MZ to 2350-2450 and won't saw I never lost a peddle just don't remember from the ones I recovered from the dirt back stop after they passed through 20" of soaked/drained newspaper. But I do have over 2 dozen of the 245 SF's 250 and 290 TMZ/T-MZs I recovered from the dirt backstop and every one held together and expanded quite nicely and certainly enough to kill what ever they would have passed through.
Awesome ML bullet if your ML shoots them well. For a VERY long time we .50 caliber smokeless ML owners only had the Barnes all copper ML bullets we could push to beyond much beyond 2200's let alone at or past 2300fps/mv. and nothing held up past 2400 until other companies besides Barnes started making all copper .452-.458" bullets you could use in a .50cal smokeless ML bullets. Hornady did quite a while ago offer a 325grn .458 FTX that worked great a 2300-<2400 and I have a decent amount of the most accurate ML bullet I have ever shot the Barnes Original .458" 300grn semi-spitzer but I also kept that bullet in the 2100-2350fps/mv. Also Precision ML bullets came out with some awesome ML bullets as well.
There was a website called Doug's Savage WS that specialized in smokeless ML's and guys there routinely pushed 245-250grn all copper Barnes ML bullets to 2800fps/mv.

Can also tell from the picture of your recovered bullet it looks like you knurl them for better gripping of the sabot, are I correct?

 

[DMTJAGER]

Following along. Drew a hams elk tag in Utah and I’m starting from scratch

What ML are you planning on using?

 

[kjw]

What ML are you planning on using?

Should be picking up a paramount pro Colorado in the next day or two. Since I can’t use a scope on the hams hunt I figured id get set to be able to use here in CO as well. I’ve tinkered with some muzzies before and shot a few whitetails with loaner guns but this will be my first personal.

 

[FrontierGander]

250gr - 300gr Thor

 

[Hnthrdr]

Anyone shooting the Thors with triple 7? Haven’t shot my muzzy in a few years but with the 209 shortage last year I picked up a bit of triple 7, have 300 Thors and some 370 miniballs, and 290 hornadys thst im going to test and see what groups best. Coming out of a accura v2

 

[UThunter6]

For a NM elk tag I had last year, I did a lot of shooting dif bullets and powder. I ended up with 85 grains BH209 by weight and 300grain Parker ballistic extreme. I was shooting a cva optima LR