Discussion Forums

Thomas Pavelka

Here's one of the 30-06 Encore setup. Rather handy rifle it turned out to be.

For this musket I have decided to go with the Nosler Partitions as Nathan has suggested.

In my case, where shots are going to be in feet sometimes, and generally not more than 50 meters the following observations won't amount to a hill of beans.

But for the sake of understanding, and those who shoot across pastures, I find myself wondering what the damaged tips of boxed ammo do in the field.

It seems that commercial ammunition gets a bad go of it from the time it is made. The boxed ammo is thrown around in shipping, gets a shaky ride on airplanes, bounces around in the freight carrier's truck, and then lands on the counter of our sport shop where we at last get our crabcrackers on it.

Many of the lead tips on Nosler Partitions are somewhat flattened, some are a bit crooked. In a given box there is not much in the way of uniformity.

This makes me wonder just how much this can affect terminal performance. Obviously, the true sharp point will have a higher coefficient. But lets say that the tip of the next bullet is flattened out to .080 of an inch. How much does this do in the way of dropping the coefficient, and, it would seem this would also show a different POI due to this damage.

The second part of this sad tale is now we have a sharp pointed bullet entering game and it performs on cue in as far as expansion and penetration. But, the next round, now has a .080 metplat. Can we expect the same rate of expansion, or will it in fact "open" faster due to the flatter tip?

Assuming that one could get a box of all sharp pointed bullets, or, one gets them through careful reloading, the fact remains that cartridges get battered in magazines and general handling while going in and out of pockets.

Would not it make sense to put a carbonite tip on a Nosler Partition and completely eliminate this quirk?

Just wondering.